My Insomnia Story & How I Used IFS to Recover
I’ll start my insomnia story with the good news – after nearly 30 years, 2022 was the first year I stopped identifying as an insomniac.
I was finally able to crack the code of my lifelong sleep issues because of a chance encounter with Internal Family Systems (IFS). The concept of parts just really, really worked for me - and I “accidentally” used it to cure my insomnia.
If you’re here because you were searching for insomnia success stories, pull up a chair and let me share mine. I hope it helps you to learn how I cured my insomnia with IFS, and that you gain some insight into how you might too.
An Insomnia Story
I used to dread going to bed, which probably sounds familiar to you. Whether it was childhood sleepovers or lying next to my partner as an adult, I remember always being so jealous – how did people just fall asleep like it was nothing? It felt absolutely mysterious and entirely out of reach.
My thoughts surrounding sleep usually sounded something like this:
"Why bother – I'll just lie awake again. Might as well do something else."
"No matter how hard I try, I just can’t consistently sleep"
"Why can't my body just do what it needs?"
"I feel exhausted - like I'm carrying a heavy weight in my body. How am I still awake?"
"I've tried so many fixes —sound machines, earplugs, warm milk, medication —but nothing works consistently."
"My sleep issues are just not fixable. I guess I’ll always have insomnia."
I would get in bed and read for hours just to avoid that moment where I had to lie there and hear these thoughts in my head. I did what felt like everything to manage my insomnia over the years – changes to my nutrition, exercise, pills, environment, habits – you name it. As many of you might also do, I lived with a baseline of "rules I had to follow." Little to no caffeine. Little to no alcohol. No eating late at night. Going to bed at the same time every night. Always using earplugs and blackout shades. Taking a pill when things got especially bad, and using any other trick I could think of to get some rest.
Have you ever been so tired that you’re sure you’ll be able to sleep, but instead you end up lying awake anxious when that sleep doesn't come? I'd do everything I knew to coax myself to sleep but find myself in a familiar place nearly every night – definitely not asleep, and definitely unhappy about it.
The Low Point
For anyone who's ever struggled with insomnia, you know that not being able to sleep goes far beyond just how it impacts your nights. It affects your mood, your work, your relationships, and your overall capacity for living your life.
Before becoming an IFS practitioner, I had a corporate job. I was an executive director in a financial consulting firm. That meant running operations for a 100-person practice on top of 50+ hours of client work per week. I knew I was burning out - and not sleeping was a big part of that. I eventually requested to move out of my position into a part-time role— at the time, my definition of success was inseparable from my job. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I thought I just needed a little space to breathe, and then I’d go right back to climbing that C Suite ladder.
Around this time, I developed chronic migraines and horrific sciatic pain. I had hoped that dropping to part time would be a temporary pitstop before a return to my career, but my body had other plans.
I started to realize that I could no longer do what I’d always done—try to push through the limits my body was trying to set for me. I needed to actually slow down and make a fundamental change.
Introducing IFS for Insomnia
When I was in pain daily, I spent a lot of time lying in bed (during the day and at night). I had been using IFS for trauma recovery already. I knew it was a good way to get in touch with my subconscious mind, create a field guide to my neural wiring, and slowly, over time, change that wiring. What I did not yet realize was just how much of a difference doing that work would make to my sleep.
IFS is often called "parts work" as it helps us foster communication and harmony between competing parts of ourselves. It relies on compassionate inquiry to make space for more challenging emotions, beliefs, and behaviors rather than shutting them down.
One night, when I was lying in bed, it occurred to me to ask my parts, "who's awake?" It turned out a lot of my parts were awake. As I got curious about who was awake, I started wondering what they might need to be soothed to sleep. This was an absolutely pivotal point in my insomnia story.
I learned that some were more awake than others on different nights, and they all had different needs. It suddenly made sense to me why sometimes the methods I used to support sleep worked well and sometimes they didn't work at all. My systems' reasons for not sleeping were different every night, so my needs for sleep support were different.
A lot of my parts had jobs to keep me out of my body (because of my personal trauma history) – but now that they have been supported and let go of that for the most part, I'm able to notice that my body is tired, be with that, and fall asleep easily most nights. It's become much more habitual for my parts to fall asleep without being soothed.
Where I am now
I'm not one to claim that insomnia ever fully goes away. Since 2022, I’ve no longer identified as an insomniac and I do feel that IFS is how I cured my insomnia - but that doesn’t mean I sleep perfectly every night. To mean, my insomnia being cured means that I sleep well most nights and I’m able to understand, be with what’s there, and not get stuck on the nights when I don’t. Insomnia healing is about learning to navigate our unique challenges with the tools that resonate with us personally. Just as we grow and evolve over time, so does our approach to how we change, guided by what works best for us in the present moment.
Despite some nights where I don’t sleep well, I definitely consider myself an insomnia success story. For those of you who like hard data, I get an average of 7-8 hours of sleep a night (7.3 if you check my sleep tracker!), and with that comes an immune system that functions incredibly well for the first time I can remember, a sense of peace and calm throughout most of my days, and a more relaxed approach to sleep rules – I trust myself to be able to handle sleep difficulties when they come.
NEW IFS for Insomnia Course
I’m definitely a little obsessed with all of this and the power it has to transform insomniacs into insomnia success stories. That’s why I've developed a comprehensive course called "IFS for Insomnia," designed to walk you through every stage of applying IFS techniques specifically tailored to insomnia. The course will help you identify the internal components keeping you awake and understand what they need to rest.
I created this course because I completely believe in this method. I cannot even explain to you (although I’m sure you can imagine!) what a change it is to be confident that I will sleep well most nights and to understand and accept exactly why I can’t when I can’t.
I want this for you, too – and I’m glad you’re here.