Former Insomniac by End Insomnia Podcast By Ivo H.K. cover art

Former Insomniac by End Insomnia

Former Insomniac by End Insomnia

By: Ivo H.K.
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Welcome to Former Insomniac with Ivo H.K., founder at End Insomnia. After suffering from insomnia for 5 brutal years and trying "everything" to fix it, I developed a new approach targeting the root cause of insomnia: sleep anxiety (or the fear of sleeplessness). In this podcast, I talk about the End Insomnia System and I share tips, learnings, and insights from overcoming insomnia and tell the stories of people who did so you can apply the principles to end insomnia for good, too.Copyright 2026 Ivo H.K. Hygiene & Healthy Living Personal Development Personal Success Psychology Psychology & Mental Health
Episodes
  • What If You Stopped Trying to Sleep Tonight?

    What If You Stopped Trying to Sleep Tonight?
    Mar 21 2026
    Here’s a question worth sitting with: What if your goal at night wasn’t to fall asleep—but to find genuine peace while awake?That probably sounds absurd. You’re reading this because you want to sleep. But the relentless pursuit of sleep is part of what’s keeping you stuck. Every attempt to force it is a sleep effort, and sleep efforts backfire. You truly cannot control whether you fall asleep on any given night.What you can control is how you respond to being awake. And that changes more than you’d think.A better goal for 2 a.m.When you’re awake and don’t want to be, you have a choice. You can spiral into anxiety, toss and turn, and mentally beg your brain to shut off. Or you can do something that makes the moment more bearable—and quietly retrains your nervous system in the process.One of the most effective options is practicing mindfulness in bed.If your default at night is racing thoughts and mounting dread, mindfulness gives your mind somewhere else to go. Instead of getting pulled into the worry spiral, you gently direct your attention to something neutral—your breath, your body, the present moment. It’s not exciting. But compared to lying there marinating in anxiety, it’s a genuine upgrade.Here’s the important part: you’re not doing this to fall asleep. The moment it becomes a sleep strategy, it becomes another sleep effort—and it stops working. You practice mindfulness for its own sake. You do it because it’s a better way to spend the time. You do it because it’s slowly teaching your nervous system that being awake at night doesn’t have to be a five-alarm emergency.The irony? When you practice mindfulness without trying to make sleep happen, it often has an immediate calming effect. But you have to let go of that outcome to get it.A technique to try tonight: the body scanThe body scan is one of the simplest and most soothing mindfulness practices you can do in bed. Here’s how it works.Starting with your toes, bring all of your attention to whatever sensations you notice there. Don’t try to change anything—just observe. Spend about fifteen seconds, then move up to your feet. Then your ankles. Then your lower legs. Keep moving slowly upward through your knees, thighs, pelvis, torso, chest, back, hands, arms, neck, head, and face—all the way to the top of your skull.When you reach the top, scan back down in reverse. Repeat for as long as you like, finding a pace that feels natural.A few things to know going in. Your mind will wander—that’s completely normal. When you notice it’s happened, just return your attention to wherever you left off. If you can’t feel much in a particular area, notice that absence and keep going. There’s no wrong way to do this.Some people find the body scan quietly absorbing—a gentle distraction from the anxious chatter. Others discover something unexpected: a new awareness of what it actually feels like to inhabit their body. Subtle sensations you’ve never paid attention to. A sense of grounding that was always available but never noticed.What to expect (and what not to)Don’t expect to lie down, do a body scan, and suddenly feel blissfully at peace with insomnia. That’s not how this works.What happens instead is gradual. Over time, you experience less unnecessary suffering at night. You build confidence in your ability to handle being awake without falling apart. Your body and mind become less reactive to the experience of wakefulness—and that lower reactivity is exactly what allows sleep to come more easily in the long run.If your mind drifts while you’re in a restful state, that’s fine. Normal sleepers lie in bed resting when they can’t sleep. But if you notice yourself spiraling into worry, redirecting your focus to the body scan will help pull you back.And if mindfulness in bed doesn’t click for you? That’s okay too. It’s one option among several. The key is finding what helps you stop fighting the night—and start making peace with it.-If you're looking to recover from insomnia for good by fixing the root cause (hyperarousal) 100% naturally (no pills, supplements, or CBT-i), then: ​Schedule your $97 FREE Sleep Evaluation Call​To peaceful sleep,Ivo at End InsomniaWhy should you listen to me? I recovered from insomnia after 5 brutal years of suffering. I've now coached 100s like you to end their insomnia for good, 100% naturally, by fixing the root cause - hyperarousal.
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    6 mins
  • Try Singing Your Worst Fear About Sleep Tonight (Seriously)

    Try Singing Your Worst Fear About Sleep Tonight (Seriously)
    Mar 14 2026
    When you’re lying awake at 2 a.m. with a thought like “I can’t take another night of this,” it feels like that thought IS your reality.It feels solid, heavy, and permanent—like this is just how things are now and how they’ll always be.But it’s not permanent. It’s a thought. And like every thought you’ve ever had, it will pass.Here’s what’s interesting: the same situation that feels catastrophic in the middle of the night often looks completely different by morning.That’s not because the facts changed—it’s because your thoughts about the facts changed.When you start trusting that your perspective will shift, it becomes easier to hold those dark-hour thoughts with a lighter grip.This doesn’t mean anxious thoughts won’t be persistent. When you’re stressed or in a difficult stretch of insomnia, the same worries can loop back again and again.That’s normal.But each individual appearance of that thought is still temporary. You can notice it, let it be, and redirect your attention—knowing it will move on, even if it comes back later.You can even say to yourself,“I allow these thoughts to be present.”Not because you enjoy them, but because giving them room to exist—without fighting—takes away their power to control you.Try something right now.Set a timer for five minutes, sit still, and just watch what your mind does.You might start by noticing something in the room around you.That reminds you of something that happened yesterday.Which reminds you of an errand you need to run.Which connects to a conversation you’ve been putting off.Then a sound pulls your attention somewhere else entirely—and suddenly you’re thinking about dinner.Five minutes. Dozens of thoughts. None of them stayed.This is the nature of thoughts: they’re impermanent. They come, they go, and they change constantly—often without you even noticing.Even the thoughts that feel the most urgent and permanent are already on their way out.A surprisingly effective tool: sing itThis next technique might sound absurd. That’s actually why it works.Take a thought that’s been tormenting you. Something like“If I don’t take something to help me sleep, there’s no way I’m getting through tonight.”Now sing it to the tune of “Happy Birthday.”Go ahead. Try it, even just in your head.Feels different, doesn’t it?When you sing a distressing thought—or say it in a goofy voice—something breaks loose. The thought loses its authority.You can’t take it quite as seriously when it’s set to the melody of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” The grip loosens, and you get a moment of space between you and the thought.To be clear: this isn’t about mocking yourself or dismissing your pain. The fear behind the thought might be very real.But the technique helps you see that the thought is just words your brain strung together—not a life sentence.And when you can see that, you’re free to make a calmer, wiser choice about what you actually do next.For instance, maybe you’ve been working on handling difficult nights without sleep aids.On a particularly rough night, the urge to reach for a pill feels overwhelming.Singing that desperate thought gives you just enough perspective to recognize:Yes, I’m scared. And I’m choosing to stay the course anyway, because that’s what serves me long-term.Putting it togetherNone of these tools are about achieving a perfectly quiet mind. That’s not the goal, and it’s not realistic.The goal is to stop being pushed around by every thought that floats through.You do that by remembering two things: your thoughts are input, not commands—and they’re temporary, even when they don’t feel like it.When you can hold your thoughts lightly instead of clutching them, you free up an enormous amount of energy that was going toward mental wrestling matches.And that energy? It’s much better spent on living your life—and letting sleep come naturally.If you're looking to recover from insomnia for good in as little as 8 weeks by fixing the root cause (hyperarousal) 100% naturally (no pills or supplements), schedule your FREE Sleep Evaluation Call.To peaceful sleep,Ivo at End InsomniaWhy should you listen to me?I recovered from insomnia after 5 brutal years of suffering. I've now coached 100s like you to end their insomnia for good, 100% naturally, by fixing the root cause - hyperarousal.
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    5 mins
  • Why Your Mind Lies to You at Night (And How to Stop Believing It)

    Why Your Mind Lies to You at Night (And How to Stop Believing It)
    Mar 7 2026
    Here's something that sounds obvious but is surprisingly hard to live by: just because you think something doesn't make it true.We treat our thoughts like they're authoritative.A thought shows up—"I'll never sleep normally again"—and we respond as if a judge just handed down a verdict.We feel it in our chest. We build our next three hours around it. We let it dictate what we do.But what if your thoughts aren't verdicts? What if they're more like suggestions—some useful, some not—that your brain offers up constantly, whether you asked for them or not?Defusion: stepping back from your thoughtsIn Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, there's a concept called "defusion."It's the opposite of being fused with your thoughts—caught up in them, identified with them, controlled by them.Defusion doesn't mean arguing with your thoughts or trying to replace them with better ones.It means noticing you're thinking, and then stepping back to observe the thought from a slight distance.You become the person watching the thought instead of the person being the thought.This distinction matters for insomnia. When you're fused with an anxious thought at 2 a.m., it runs the show.When you're defused from it, you can see the thought clearly, acknowledge it, and still choose what you do next.Thoughts are input, not realityThink of your thoughts as mental input—offerings your brain is handing you throughout the day.Some of that input is brilliant. It helps you solve problems, make plans, and navigate your life. But some of it is noise: looping, anxious, catastrophic, or just plain inaccurate.When you start seeing thoughts as input rather than truth, something shifts. You gain the ability to evaluate each thought on its merits instead of automatically obeying it.A helpful thought shows up? Great—let it inform your decision.An unhelpful one keeps looping? You don't have to take it as a directive. You can acknowledge it's there and redirect your attention to whatever you're actually doing.This is especially useful when an anxious thought urges you to do something that would undermine your progress—like abandoning your sleep plan or adding extra "sleep efforts" that backfire.When you can step back and recognize "That's a thought, not a command," you get to choose the wiser path even while anxiety is present.And from that mindful stance, you can have compassion for the part of you that's afraid—without being consumed or controlled by the fear.A simple tool: label it "thinking"Here's one of the most practical defusion techniques there is. When you catch yourself spiraling into anxious thoughts, simply say to yourself:"Thinking."That's it. One word.What this does is powerful. It breaks the spell. When you're caught in a chain of worried thoughts, you're inside the story—living it, reacting to it.The moment you label the experience as "thinking," you step outside. You're back in the present, and you get to choose what happens next.If the word "thinking" doesn't resonate, try:"I'm having a thought." or"I'm having the thought that I won't be able to sleep."The exact phrasing doesn't matter. What matters is the shift: from being your thoughts to noticing them.Sometimes the thought is worth your attention, and you'll choose to engage with it.But often—especially in the middle of the night—you'll recognize you're just mentally spinning. Labeling it lets you stop the spin and redirect.One important noteThis isn't about blocking thoughts or forcing them out. Anxious thoughts might come back again and again, especially when you're in a stressful stretch. That's normal.The goal is simply to hold them more lightly. To let them be present without fighting them, and to keep doing what matters to you—including sticking with your path toward better sleep—even when anxious thoughts tag along for the ride.You don't need a quiet mind. You just need a different relationship with the noise.If you're looking to recover from insomnia for good in as little as 8 weeks by fixing the root cause (hyperarousal), schedule your FREE Sleep Evaluation Call.To peaceful sleep,Ivo at End InsomniaWhy should you listen to me?I recovered from insomnia after 5 brutal years of suffering. I've now coached 100s like you to end their insomnia for good, 100% naturally, by fixing the root cause - hyperarousal.
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    4 mins
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