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Former Insomniac by End Insomnia

Former Insomniac by End Insomnia

By: Ivo H.K.
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About this listen

 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
  • Why Your Nervous System Isn't Broken (Even When It Feels Like It)

    Why Your Nervous System Isn't Broken (Even When It Feels Like It)
    Apr 11 2026

    Here’s something that might surprise you:

    How you feel the day after a rough night has a lot less to do with how much you slept - and a lot more to do with how you spent the hours you were awake.

    When you spend the night fighting wakefulness - tensing up, ruminating, mentally begging your brain to shut off - that burns an enormous amount of energy.

    But when you spend those same hours in a calmer state, even without sleeping much, you wake up with noticeably more in the tank.

    Same amount of sleep. Very different the next day. That’s actually great news, because it means you have far more influence over how tomorrow feels than you thought.

    The energy you didn’t know you could keep

    Think of your nightly energy like a bank account. Every time you react to wakefulness with alarm - catastrophizing, tensing up, spiraling - you make a withdrawal. By morning, you’re overdrawn before the day even starts.

    But as you learn to meet those wakeful hours with more calm and less resistance, you plug the leak. That conserved energy shows up the next day as more patience, more clarity, and a surprising sense of

    “Huh, I actually feel okay.”

    This builds in two stages. First, you learn to stop adding fuel to the fire. The racing heart might still happen, but you stop reacting to it with panic—and that alone makes a real difference in how you feel the next morning.

    Second - and this comes with time - your nervous system actually starts to settle at night. There’s less fire to begin with. At that point, even a short night stops feeling like a crisis. It’s just a short night.

    Making room for the hard parts

    None of this means being awake at night becomes enjoyable. It's still uncomfortable, especially early on. You're going to feel anxiety, restlessness, frustration. That's part of the process.

    But here's what changes the experience: expecting the discomfort before it arrives. When you walk into a rainstorm with an umbrella, the rain is the same, but you handle it differently.

    Preemptively making room for discomfort takes the surprise out of it, and surprise is what triggers the biggest spikes in reactivity.

    You won't always handle it gracefully. Some nights you'll accept the discomfort with calm. Other nights you'll be miserable and convinced nothing is working.

    Both are completely normal.

    What matters is holding the intention, even loosely, and trusting that your capacity to sit with discomfort grows over time.

    Your body is doing exactly what a stressed nervous system does

    If you've ever experienced your body jerking awake just as you drift off, your heart racing the moment you lie down, or waking suddenly in a state of alarm for no clear reason, you're not broken.

    These are textbook signs of a nervous system stuck in alert mode.

    The tricky part is that these sensations feel alarming, which triggers the exact same system that's causing them. It's a feedback loop. But it's also a loop you can interrupt.

    Step one is simply understanding what's happening.

    These aren't signs that something is wrong with your body or brain. They're signs of hyperarousal, your nervous system doing its job a little too enthusiastically. Just knowing that takes some of the fear away.

    Step two is practicing a different response when they show up.

    Instead of panicking, you acknowledge what's happening:

    "This is hyperarousal. It's uncomfortable, but it's not dangerous. It will pass."

    That message, I'm safe, there's no threat, is exactly what your nervous system needs to hear to start standing down.

    These symptoms aren't permanent. They're just the volume your nervous system is set to right now. As your sleep anxiety decreases and your system recalibrates, the volume comes down on its own.

    You're already in the process of turning it down. Every night you respond with a little less alarm is a night your nervous system learns it can relax.

    If you're looking to recover from insomnia for good in as little as 8 weeks by fixing the root cause (hyper-arousal) 100% naturally (no pills, supplements, or CBT-i), then:

    ​Schedule your FREE Sleep Evaluation Call​

    To peaceful sleep,

    Ivo at End Insomnia

    Why 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
  • The Counterintuitive Rule for What To Do When You Can't Sleep

    The Counterintuitive Rule for What To Do When You Can't Sleep
    Mar 28 2026
    Here’s a radical idea for your next 2 a.m. wake-up: instead of lying there in misery, willing yourself to sleep, do something pleasant instead.Read a book.Listen to a podcast.Watch a show.Something you genuinely enjoy and find at least somewhat relaxing.It sounds almost too simple, but there’s real logic behind it.You already know you can’t force yourself to sleep. So the question becomes: what are you going to do with the time?You can lie there fixating on how awake you are, mentally calculating how many hours are left before your alarm, and spiraling into dread about tomorrow.Or you can occupy your mind with something that shifts the experience from pure suffering to something at least a little more bearable.That shift matters more than you think. Because when you turn being awake into a slightly less terrible experience, you lower the anxiety that’s keeping you awake in the first place.You have two versions of this to tryVersion one: do it in bed. Pick something you enjoy—reading, an audiobook, a podcast, a show—and do it while you’re lying down.The goal isn’t to knock yourself out. It’s to give your mind something to chew on besides worry.A quick note on screens: if they rev you up, skip them.But if watching something is the thing that actually helps you relax and accept being awake, that’s more valuable than avoiding blue light.Lowering your anxiety about sleep matters far more than optimizing your light exposure.As you do your activity, pay attention. At some point, you might notice your eyes getting heavy, a yawn sneaking up, or your head starting to nod.When that happens, stop what you’re doing and close your eyes. See if sleep is ready to come.If it’s not? No problem. Go back to what you were doing, or try a different approach. The key is patience.Trying to grab sleep the moment you feel a hint of drowsiness is just another sleep effort in disguise—and it’ll push sleep further away.Version two: get out of bed. If you’re lying in bed and your nervous system is running hot—heart pounding, body tense, mind racing—sometimes the best thing you can do is physically leave. Get up. Change the scene.This isn’t giving up. It’s giving your system a reset. The simple act of standing up, walking to another room, even just going to the bathroom—that physical change interrupts the anxiety loop you’ve been stuck in, often without realizing it.Fresh input, fresh perspective.Once you’re up, do something relaxing. Read on the couch. Watch something low-key. Listen to a podcast. Same idea as version one, just in a different location.When you start feeling sleepy—drooping eyes, yawning, nodding off—head back to bed and see what happens.If you’re still awake after a while, you can get up again or try something different. There’s no wrong move here, as long as you’re not white-knuckling it.The trap to watch forWhether you stay in bed or get out, there’s one thing that will undermine all of this: turning it into a strategy to make sleep happen.The moment “I’ll read for twenty minutes, and then I’ll definitely be tired enough” enters your mind, you’ve turned a pleasant activity into a Sleep Effort.And Sleep Efforts don’t work. They add pressure, which adds anxiety, which pushes sleep further away.So let your intention be simpler than that. You’re doing something enjoyable because being awake doesn’t have to be miserable. That’s it.If sleep comes, great. If it doesn’t, you spent the time doing something you like instead of something that made you feel worse.One more thingThere will be nights where this feels easy—where you genuinely settle into a book and drift off.And there will be nights where you’re agitated no matter what you try, convinced you’ve lost all your progress.Both are normal. Neither defines the trajectory. You just keep going.If you're looking to recover from insomnia for good by fixing the root cause (hyper-arousal) 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 ...
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    6 mins
  • 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
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