244: Sleep Again Program Sneak Peek

Welcome to this week's episode. This week is a little bit different – I'm sharing with you a real live coaching call inside Grieving Moms Haven. This is part of the Sleep Again Program that I'm going through right now with the moms inside Grieving Moms Haven. And you can get a little glimpse of our first call together. I took out a lot from this call. So there are not any conversations that I had with moms in there. I also took out the processes and the meditations that I did with the moms on this call. Know that there was some communication back and forth with some moms, and we also did some meditations and processes that really help kind of clear the threat that I talk about in there and help calm their bodies and minds down to be able to sleep. That is part of this call that is not in here.

If you want to take part in this Sleep Again Program, it's not too late. You can come and join us. You can go to grievingmomshaven.com or if you're listening later and that's closed you can message me at Cultivated Family and let's see what we can figure out. Cultivated Family on Instagram. But there it is not too late to join if you're listening in real-time part of the Sleep Again Program, it is going to be amazing. It is amazing. If you are struggling with sleep, I would highly recommend you come and join us. But otherwise, enjoy this part of the Sleep Again Program:

“Hello, welcome to sleep again. And I am so excited to be back here with you. So excited to be kind of. I can't see you all right now, but hopefully, you'll interact and I'll be able to talk with you. Today we are starting to sleep again. I'm starting the Sleep Again Program and I will dive more into it after we do the grief in your body guided meditation. So if you're new here, we always start every call with this grief in your body guided meditation. I'm very happy to be back with you and to be doing this again and starting the Sleep Again Program.

As I said, my intention with this program is we're going to spend the whole month of July. We'll have a total of four calls. We can also connect and talk in the community area. I just want to give you some guidelines and some things that you can focus on this month. My intention is to assist and guide you to be able to be sleeping better. What that looks like for you might look different from the next person. I just really want wherever you are in your sleep, by the time we're done, for it to be better than what it was right now. So if you can take a moment and if you want to share.

Marianne says, So happy to be here with you and everyone too. Yes, I'm so excited.

I'm glad you made it. It looks like you did make it. And if anybody wants to share and also even for yourself to like to make a note of like, how are you sleeping right now? How has sleep been? I really want to make a difference for you because sleep just doesn't always happen after your child dies. And there are so many reasons why. And I'm going to walk you through a lot of that.

We're going to do different processes and meditations and tapping sessions throughout this these four different calls that we're focusing on sleep. If anybody wants to raise their hand or put in the chat box or even just make a note for yourself, like how is your sleep right now? I'm super curious to know how this is affecting you or has been affecting you since your child died.

Not good. I fall asleep, but I don't stay asleep.

So that kind of seems to be. The theme is like maybe falling asleep but not staying asleep. I don't know if anybody else has a different story. I just want to say that this is so common after your child dies, and I'm going to kind of share why. But it's just it's an experience I think all of us have had after Aria died. I'll just share a little bit about my story with you.

For those of you who don't know me, who are new to me, Aria died when she was 15 months old, and four weeks later I had a new baby. And so Aria died in her sleep. So sleep has been, this huge trigger for me in my life. You know, my daughter died in her sleep and I have a newborn that's sleeping. I'm not sleeping. I'm checking on her all the time. I think all of you know that when you've dealt with this sleep, it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. Then you're stressed about sleep and get anxious about sleep and ask, am I going to be able to sleep tonight? And then you're worried that you're going to wake up in the morning and then you're like, I didn't get enough sleep. And it becomes this big, huge thing. So how many of you have had that kind of anxiety around sleep? If am I going to be able to sleep tonight trying to make myself so exhausted in the day so that maybe I can fall asleep without having either racing thoughts or nightmares or like your brain start to go where you just have to get yourself so tired so that you can fall asleep. Does anybody have that?

Nancy says I've had a lot of anxiety surrounding sleep.

So, yeah, this is very common and normal. It can even make it harder to go to sleep when we have this anxiety and fear and worry about sleep. The whole course, I'm going to be sharing some ideas and thoughts and if you can, for this time, for this month. We're doing this together, just go with what I'm sharing and saying and try out these things. If after the month you don't notice anything, you can say: Megan, you're all hogwash. You don't have to believe anything I say. Just try it out and see and just be curious. Because with curiosity, then you can test it out and see how it works for you. I might share some things that you might be like, that is just crazy but it doesn't hurt to try it out.

I'm going to start off by sharing just some things about our mind and how our mind works. When our mind perceives a threat, for example, our child dying has created this sense of threat. Obviously, our child died, but it can be like, okay, when's the next thing going to happen? Even like the trauma and the pain of them dying and everything that happened around it, it's this big threat, right in our mind is on alert. Our mind is watching for that threat. It's impossible to sleep when you have this threat. The whole entire thing of what I'm going to do is to help minimize the way your mind is perceiving the threat so that your mind can be like, okay, it's safe to calm down, it's safe to go to sleep or it's safe to rest your mind. Or there's the old part of our mind which is where we don't have any control. Right?

This is the primitive part of our mind and this part of our mind. The only thing it cares about – Do any of you know what the only thing it cares about? The only thing is survival. Yes. So this primitive part of your mind, the only thing it cares about is if you survive. So it's looking for a threat. It's watching for a threat. It's keeping these threats so that you stay alive. That's the primitive part of our mind. That's something we don't have control over. It's not something we even are conscious of or think about so much. It's just part of our brain.

So, if somebody says I was going to make some or I was going to make some dinner for my friends, and I'm really nervous because I want it to be like I want them to enjoy it. I want them to like it. But I'm super, super nervous. Do I think in my head if somebody asked me? Well, are they going to stop being your friend if they don't like it? And I'm like, No, no, I just want them to like it. And you're like, Well, are they going to hurt you if they don't like it? And you're like, No, I just want them to like it. But because I'm nervous, because my mind is perceiving that threat, my primitive brain is like, You are going to survive. This is so big in your head. Dealing with that threat is a perceived threat. It's not actually a real threat. Always dealing with that and helping your brain erase that threat. So it's not there. It's not perceiving the threat that is going to make a huge difference in being able to go to sleep.

For example, an animal out in the wild, like, say, a rabbit, and say a wolf is going to chase it. Their body is designed and made to not go to sleep, right? It's like there's a wolf. Oh, my gosh, I need to be wide awake. There's a threat coming into the rabbit's mind, right? And so our mind and our body is made the same way that if there's a threat coming in if we're perceiving a threat, there's no way we're going to sleep. There's absolutely no way our body is going to let us go to sleep and stay sleeping and feel rested and feel calm because there's this threat.

Is this all making sense? Yes. If anyone has any questions, feel free to put them in the chat box or in the Q&A box.

All of this is really the way our mind is designed to protect us. You're not messing up or you're not doing it wrong or it's you know, you can't just keep trying harder and harder to get to sleep. And then when we create like we have this anxiety, I talked about this anxiety and fear about sleep, about am I going to be able to sleep, Can I get to sleep? And I am like all of this, it becomes this big threat. When we're thinking in our head that I need to sleep, I have to sleep, I need to get to sleep. Oh, my gosh, I didn't get enough sleep. All of that is this threat that makes it actually even harder to sleep. When we think that falling asleep or we don't always think we're not even so conscious of it, it can be just in our unconscious mind.

Say someone was going to go try to fall asleep and I went to them and I was like, Hey, you need to fall asleep, if you don't fall asleep, we have all these monitors attached to you. If you don't fall asleep, I'm going to hurt you in some way. Well, do you think that person is going to sleep? Are they going to be able to fall asleep? Because there's a threat in there in the room with them, and then they're trying to fall asleep and they're thinking they have to fall asleep. There's all this anxiety around it and then all of a sudden there's no way you're sleeping. This totally makes sense because your mind is perceiving that threat and it's not going to let you sleep. Your body is working exactly how it's supposed to, right? It's keeping you awake because there's a threat.

Any questions? Anything that doesn't make sense? Anything that you don't agree with? I just want to clarify on each call, I'm kind of going to bring a different aspect of this and go a little bit deeper. The starting point that I want to start with on this call is how your body is working exactly how it's supposed to. It's keeping you awake because there's a perceived threat or fear or anxiety, all of that's keeping you awake. We start to wonder, like, there's something wrong with me. Why can't I sleep? And there's nothing wrong. Your body is working how it's supposed to. Aside from truly true medical things, I'm just talking about when grief happens, like when our child dies and this whole thing away with grief and sleep.

Something I want to do with you is a process in which when we think about being able to sleep, what I would love for all of you and where I can see all of you going is when you can go to bed not fearing going to sleep. You are going to sleep, you go easily to sleep. You fall easily to sleep and you rest peacefully at night. When you wake up, you feel rested. You feel like you’re energized. You felt like that was a good night to sleep. And you realized that the anxiety and the fear and the worry about sleep is completely gone. It's just not there. You can go to sleep and it’s just not this big deal anymore. It’s not even a problem. It’s just you go to sleep and it’s fine.

Does that sound great to you guys? Or do you love to be able to sleep like that?

I would love that! I would love that for you, Nancy. That’s where I’m seeing you going.”