Sleeping with a Bed Partner Again | Ep 38

When you have insomnia, even minor sleep disruptions feel GIGANTIC in the mind.

I could hear a pin drop two rooms over.

And the reason? A complete mystery to me.

I had no idea.

Which only made my brain freak-out WORSE.

There had to be something seriously wrong with me.

But I have good news.

If you’re someone who notices every noise, every movement, every sleep disruptor known to man...

There is absolutely nothing wrong with you.

Nothing at all.

You just have a super amazing brain.

It loves you lots and lots and wants to protect you from anything that could mess up your sleep.

That’s why sleeping next to someone else feels so completely impossible.

Your brain is CONVINCED this is a terrible idea.

But you know what?

It doesn’t have to be this way. Tune into this episode where I walk you through a 3-step process that will guide you back towards sleeping peacefully with a partner again.

Enjoy!



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Full Show Notes and Transcription

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About Beth Kendall MA, FNTP: 

For decades, Beth struggled with the relentless grip of insomnia. After finally understanding insomnia from a mind-body perspective, she changed her relationship with sleep, and completely recovered. Liberated from the constant worry of not sleeping, she’s on a mission to help others recover as well. Her transformative program Mind. Body. Sleep.® has been a beacon of light for hundreds of others seeking solace from sleepless nights. 

© 2023 - 2026 Beth Kendall

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Mind. Body. Sleep.® with Beth Kendall is your trusted source for holistic insomnia recovery, blending neuroplasticity, nervous system health, and mind-body coaching to help you finally sleep again.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Hello and welcome to Mind Body Sleep, the podcast for anyone out there who wants to understand and recover from insomnia using a holistic perspective. I'm Beth Kendall, your host. Let's get started. Hello, everyone. It is great to be back with you on this beautiful September day in 2024. If you're new here, welcome. I'm so glad you found your way to the podcast. My name is Beth. I'm a sleep coach for people with insomnia. And through the Mind Body Sleep Mentorship, I approach insomnia not just as a physical issue, but as a manifestation of hyper-arousal, which stems from a fear of not being able to sleep. So it's much more about understanding how hyper-arousal can manifest physically when we're caught in a conditioned cycle of fear around not sleeping. Today I'm diving deeper into a topic that usually comes up later in the healing process, which is how to sleep with a bed partner again. This conversation came up recently in the mentorship, and there was a lot of interest around it. So I thought it would be a good topic to share here on the podcast. And certainly I went through this situation myself many, many times. So I understand all the ups and downs of it from the emotions to the logistics. So let's talk about it. What I'm going to do with her permission, of course, is share this person's question because sometimes that's the best way to answer what probably many of you are wondering as well. And I've changed a few words just for readability, but here's what Megan wrote. However, I'm still struggling to share a bed with my husband. It's been hard to distinguish if sleeping in the guest room is a sleep effort to protect my sleep, or if the sleep disruptions I experience, like different schedules, night wakings, and heavy breathing, are valid reasons that sleep always feels a little worse when I sleep with him. I sleep with him on the weekends when our sleep schedules are more aligned, and it seems like it's always poor and restless sleep, which has made me think it will just be forever impossible to share a bed with him without feeling like a zombie. But when recently out of town, I successfully shared a bed with him for three consecutive nights. Not perfect, but good enough. And I was so surprised because this hadn't happened in a long time. This has got me thinking that it might be a sleep effort or control issue after all. I would really like to continue recovering to the point that I can share a bed with my husband and have more flexibility and confidence in my sleep across different environments. How would you suggest I think about this? I'm generally happy with my sleep when I'm in complete control of my environment, but it feels like I lose confidence when unknown variables are introduced or when I'm anticipating disruptions. This is such a great question. Thank you, Megan, for asking. Okay, so let's first talk about the whole idea of needing to sleep in a separate place when you're going through insomnia, because this was an incredibly difficult thing for me to go through at the time. And I had a lot of guilt and shame about not being able to sleep in the same bed as the person I cared about. I really felt like I was letting my person down because I knew they just really wanted to be able to sleep with me, and I really wanted to be able to sleep with them. But honestly, I just wanted to be able to sleep at all. So it really added another layer of pressure to the whole situation. And I knew they didn't really understand what I was going through or why my brain would go into full activation mode at the prospect of sharing a bed because I didn't understand it myself. And I just basically felt like a failure for not being able to do something as simple as share a bed with another person. So I really get this. And this whole time, you're not really understanding that your brain has developed a hypersensitivity to anything related to sleep. And it's particularly confusing because it's not reflective of your true desires. You really do want to sleep with your person or your dog or whatever life circumstance comes along. You just don't realize that your brain is interpreting all of this as a major threat to your safety, which is why sleeping with someone else feels so incredibly difficult. Let's break this question down piece by piece because there's a lot here. And I think what we apply to this situation can be applied to many other situations during insomnia as well. And again, I'm going to go a little deeper with the foundations in this episode. So if you're new or it isn't making a lot of sense, I would recommend going back and listening to episode one, which is called Redefining Insomnia, episode 18, which is called Insomnia and the Perceived Danger Connection, and probably episode 30, which is called the number one most powerful tool to recover from insomnia. And I'll link those up in the show notes. It's pretty common when you're on this path to see better sleep in predictable environments first. And this makes a lot of sense because, like Megan said, there's more controllability in these situations and less variables that the brain could perceive as a threat. And it's kind of nice when this happens because we get some evidence that we do still know how to sleep, even if it is just at home or in certain environments. Now, when we get ready to face a challenge or welcome the next stone on the path, in this case, it's rejoining a bed partner, our brains love to think we need to do something different or reinvent the wheel. But it's really just the same process over and over that I teach in the mentorship. So let me walk you through that three-step process. The first step is understanding the what and the why, where the brain is coming from and why it would react so strongly to the prospect of sleeping with another person. Now remember, with insomnia, the brain has developed some fear around all things sleep. So any change, even a positive one that we want, can feel like a threat to its sense of survival. Its role is to protect you and monitor for anything that fits its current definition of danger. So when something comes along that's going to rock the status quo, it responds by sounding the alarm bell and creating hyperarousal because it wants to discourage this behavior any way it can, which just means you have a working brain. Now, one of the interesting things about Megan's experience was the out-of-town sleep she had with her husband, which was pretty good for three consecutive nights. I suspect there was no other option but the one bed, which actually ended up working in her favor because it eliminated the brain's propensity to want to analyze all the different options for this scenario, right? When there are options, our brains automatically start doing a cost-benefit analysis of every possible scenario. And we spend a lot of time and energy trying to make the right choice, all of which can create hyperarousal. So sometimes less options means less analysis, which can be a good thing when it comes to sleep. And you know, I've heard this many times where people are in a situation where they can't accommodate insomnia, and that's what ultimately proves to them that they can sleep and do things they didn't think they could do because there was no other option. I think this was a part of Sasha Stevens' story, who wrote the effortless sleep method, where she was on a vacation overseas, and she was on one of those tours with a tight schedule, and she was so focused on the vacation and the tours and everything else that it took her focus off of sleep, which of course is when it comes best. So that was a big turning point for her in her recovery. Okay, so the first step in the process is understanding the what and the why, which leads me to the second step. The second step is responding in helpful ways. This is our chance to teach the brain something new and recondition the automatic response that's firing off whenever we implement a change. And this is so much easier when you understand where the brain is coming from in the first place, right? We have to understand the why to let go of the why because it makes sense that some hyper-arousal might show up. It's not this big mystery where you feel like you just have this really bizarre broken brain that isn't operating like other people. So we can update that programming and create different associations by responding in new ways. And that's the main focus of the mentorship, which is centered on the four pillars of safety. The pillar of trust, that your body does know how to sleep in different places. Your ability to sleep doesn't change from room to room. It's the mind's perception of what it means to be sleeping next to someone else that can create some hyper-arousal. As you continue in your process and realize that it truly is safe to rejoin a bed partner if that's what you wish. And there's no actual danger in this scenario, that heightened sensitivity will start to come down. The pillar of acceptance that whatever shows up is just working itself out. We're peeling back the layers of the onion. And if some sleep anxiety shows up, it's okay. It doesn't mean that anything has gone wrong. It just means that was the layer that was ready to be acknowledged. The pillar of mindfulness and not projecting into the future. One bad night of sleep doesn't mean that every night will be bad. It just means some hyper-arousal showed up because it was sensing some danger, but every night is a new night and another opportunity for sleep. And lastly, the pillar of self-compassion, that we don't need to go about this perfectly. There can be some flexibility in the process, and there are no grades. If we approach these challenges like they're a battle, well then that's what the brain gears up for, too. But if we can give ourselves some grace, be curious about what the brain is up to, and allow the process to unfold in whatever way it needs to, then we're stepping out of the battle. And that naturally leads to less hyper-arousal and better sleep. The final step in this three-step process is just living your life. Everything you learn here on the podcast or in the mentorship will naturally integrate through the journey of life. When you're going through insomnia, there's a strong internal drive to apply logic and intellect to this very passive process of sleep. We're all naturally pretty good problem solvers. So we like to search for that one magical piece of information that will give us back our sleep. But here's the thing, you guys, we never really lose this ability in the first place. We just start overcomplicating this naturally simple process so that it becomes an effort. And that effort becomes a habit. And that habit becomes a belief system. A lot of times people will ask me what the best approach is to rejoining a bed partner. Do we just rip off the band-aid and be done with it? Or do we go at a more leisurely pace that feels doable? And you know, there really is no right or wrong way to do this. It's much more about understanding where the brain is coming from and being able to recognize that what it's perceiving as a threat isn't truly dangerous. And one last thing I'd like to offer in terms of separate bedrooms that I wish I would have taken into consideration all those years ago when I was feeling so bad about it is that it's okay if you do just want to sleep in separate bedrooms. There's no hard, fast rule about this. And many happy couples sleep in separate bedrooms for lots of reasons outside of insomnia, and it's not an issue. That's all for today, my friends. Wishing you all the beauty and wonder in your lives. Until next time, I'm Beth Kendall, and you've been listening to the Mind Body Sleep Podcast. Take care. Thanks for being here today. If you love what you heard on today's episode, don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe to the podcast. And if you need more support with your sleep, join me in the Mind Body Sleep Mentorship. This three month one on one program will transform your relationship with sleep so you can get back to living the life that you love free from the fear of not sleeping. Head on over to FKendle.com for more details. I'll see you next time.