Alan had insomnia for many years before finding The Insomnia Clinic, initially triggered by drug and alcohol abuse. This led to Alan believing he was stuck with poor sleep forever, and that he would never sleep properly again. 

He says, “I took up Kathryn’s course a few months ago prior to lockdown. I was in a really bad place; I’d been suffering from insomnia for about two and a half years and prior to that, much of my insomnia had been drug induced. I’d had a pretty hectic campaign of alcohol and drug abuse and I thought that had changed my brain in such a severe way that I was never to sleep properly again. So, going through a period of constant sleeplessness was just something I felt that I’d have to manage, but it was unmanageable. I was going through periods where I’d have five hours sleep in six days and it was really severe. I didn’t think there was any help for me, and I began to lose all hope. I tried everything imaginable in terms of sleep hygiene but as Kathryn pointed out immediately, all the things I was trying to do were actually contributing to building a tumour of thought about sleep with expectations growing and growing and emphasising the fact that I had a problem.”

Working with Alan to reframe his thinking around sleep, and strip back all the negative thoughts he had about never being able to achieve good quality sleep again, we were able to make positive steps, resulting in Alan now being in a far better place.

Alan says, “That was the biggest relief and the tools Kathryn’s given me, and I’ve been using since to manage my sleep, thereafter, mean it’s considerably better now. I actually sleep without sleeping tablets and sleep very well. There are periods I can wake in the night and struggle to get off to sleep, but the methods I’ve been taught are reinforcing the fact that I always get back on track. This is a remarkably different place to before, where I was so broken and anxious about what was happening to me that I was hyperventilating at the breakfast table. Please feel assured that if you’re reading this you’re probably in a situation where your sleep can be helped, and this course can absolutely help you. I couldn’t recommend it enough.”