From Night Call to Sound Sleep: Richard’s 40-Year Odyssey | Ep 14

In this compelling episode, I sit down with Richard Wills MD, resident sleep coach for the Mind. Body. Sleep. mentorship program. Throughout this thoughtful interview, he candidly shares the remarkable 40-year journey that has been his struggle with insomnia.

Tune in for a captivating story of how insomnia starts... and how it ends.

Here’s a sneak peek of what you’ll hear:

• How insomnia started in med school
• How sleep deprivation became glorified during his residency
• The challenges that came with doing CBT-I three times
• How he cultivated an attitude of indifference
• The creative strategies he used to befriend wakefulness
• What made him decide to become a sleep coach

Join this conversation with Richard as we dive into the interesting and enlightening story of his battle with insomnia and the valuable lessons he's learned along the way.

Subscribe to The Mind. Body. Sleep.™ Podcast:
Apple | Spotify | Google

Work with Beth:
👉 Learn About the Mind. Body. Sleep. Mentorship
👉 Start the Free Insomnia Course

Full Show Notes & Transcription HERE.

🧡 Please rate and review the podcast on your favorite platform!!

© 2023 - 2026 Beth Kendall

DISCLAIMER: The podcasts available on this website have been produced for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. The contents of this podcast do not constitute medical or professional advice. No person listening to and/or viewing any podcast from this website should act or refrain from acting on the basis of the content of a podcast without first seeking appropriate professional advice and/or counseling, nor shall the information be used as a substitute for professional advice and/or counseling. The Mind. Body. Sleep. Podcast expressly disclaims any and all liability relating to any actions taken or not taken based on any or all contents of this site as there are no assurances as to any particular outcome.

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_02: 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 and welcome everyone to this very special episode. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I have brought another sleep coach into the Mind Body Sleep Mentorship to co-moderate the community with me. And I am super excited that he is here with us today. So welcome, Richard Wills.

SPEAKER_00: 0:41

Well, thank you so much, Beth. It's really a pleasure to be here. We've been working together now for a month and I've just enjoyed every day of it. So this is great. Glad to sit down and kind of tell my story.

SPEAKER_02: 0:53

Yes, I am looking so forward to this. And just, you know, just to give the listeners an idea of how we've been working together the last few weeks, the Mind Body Sleep podcast also offers the Mind Body Sleep Mentorship. And the mentorship is a three-month program for people with insomnia. And one of the major components of the mentorship, along with a wonderful curriculum, is the community forum, which we host on Slack. And in that forum, you can ask questions whenever you want, Monday through Friday. And Richard and I are in there helping and coaching. And I have heard from so many of the students how helpful this has been because some people use the community daily. Some people only check in when they want a little bit of support. And there's really no right or wrong way to use it. But it is so helpful to know when you're going through this that there is somewhere you can go where people understand and we have been through it ourselves, and you can get help right away. So, Richard, it has been just so lovely having your presence in there because I learn a lot from you, as I do from all the students, but it's just been such a nice vibe.

SPEAKER_00: 2:03

It's really been great, Beth. I've I've enjoyed it so much. And I'm I'm glad we're such a great fit for this.

SPEAKER_02: 2:08

Yes, 100%. I was telling, I was saying a couple of weeks ago on the podcast that this is like is an extremely short list of people that I feel like could just come in and help right away from the philosophy that we share. So I have heard bits of your story or parts of your story, but I have not heard your full story. So my goal today is to talk as little as possible and soak up the wisdom of your journey. So tell us how did insomnia start for you?

SPEAKER_00: 2:38

Well, Beth, I was always a good sleeper as a kid, as an adolescent, uh, in college. I slept well, I didn't give it a second thought. You know, I had some tendency for anxiety and overthinking as a kid, as an adolescent, but this never really impacted my sleep. And then I went to medical school, and that's when the problem started. So I I've I've had insomnia now. Well, I had insomnia for about 40 years. So it started toward the end of med school when I was on call at night, uh, when I was doing clinical rotations and it wasn't just book learning, but actually seeing patients. At first it was exciting. Oh boy, I'm on a call and get to save lives and help people. And that went fine initially. You know, I was taking call, I was in the hospital, and I was taking a call, I'd see the patient. And I realized, you know, I could, I could, I was learning medicine, I could do this. Uh, but then I became worried. Okay, well, I've just had a call, I just got up, back in bed. When's the next call going to be? And it became kind of I started becoming worried about my sleep. One of the things about medical training, this is both in med school and in residency following med school, is it's it it at least back then, it was kind of a macho thing. You know, talk to the other student or resident and say, Well, I only got three hours of sleep last night. Well, I only got two. Well, obviously, he's better than I am. He's more macho than I am because he's he's more exhausted. We had, of course, had to work the whole next day. Anyway, it it became this thing where I was worried about my sleep. And initially it only happened when on the nights when I was on call, but then it started spreading to the nights I wasn't on call. I just started worrying more about sleep, and then I started taking sleeping pills. Now, sleeping pills were very easy to obtain at that time, they worked great until they didn't. So you know, so I I became kind of wetted, you know. Here I was in medical school and residency, and I was wedded to the medical model, you know, I was broken, I thought. I needed a pill to take care of myself. So then when I finished my finished med school and finished my residency training, this is in internal medicine, I was in practice, I was in a medical practice, and call continued when I was in my practice. The thing is, it was actually worse because when I was a student and in training, I was on call in the hospital. So if I had to see a patient, I'd walk down the hall, see the patient, go back to the on-call room, go back to sleep. Now I was at home, and if I got a call, probably 80% of the calls were just handle it over the phone, but about 20%, I have to actually go into the hospital. And that was hell for me. I just hated that. And I would almost never get back to sleep after I got back home. So this continued for about 20 years with that kind of call situation. At that point, I had a different practice, a different job where I almost never had to was, I was occasionally called at night and I almost never had to go into the hospital. But the the kind of uh the problem was set and I continued having insomnia. Sometimes it was initial insomnia where I'd have trouble falling asleep, other times it was maintenance insomnia where I'd wake up early and couldn't get back to sleep. The way it evolved was uh more in the direction of maintenance insomnia. So I was able to get to sleep okay, but then I'd wake up at three, four o'clock in the morning and often uh wasn't able to get back to sleep. So I tried to get off sleeping pills. Um, I kind of went on and off them for a while. And then I, of course, went on the internet and Googled all this stuff and tried various sleep efforts. I was on different pills and potions and books and read books and articles and had blackout curtains and controls and beer plugs and lockdown rituals and sleep diaries and sleep trackers and gizmos and relaxation recordings, exercise, just the whole bit of things. I went to some got some psychotherapy for insomnia, but these the therapists unfortunately really didn't have a clue. Now, I also tried meditation that that seemed to help marginally. It kind of calmed down the the worry and anxiety I had about sleep. But unfortunately, I kind of used it as a sleep tool. Okay, this is gonna be my you know more touchy-feely, healthy version of a sleeping pill. So rather than doing it because of something I enjoyed that that helped me have a better life, I viewed it as a as a sleep effort. So basically, nothing worked because these were all sleep efforts. They are all attempts to monitor and control my sleep. And this is always counterproductive. This never works. Yeah. So going along about 12 years ago, I was diagnosed with mild to moderate sleep apnea. I'd been told, and so I tried CPAP. I hated it. I tried it for like three nights, I couldn't stand it. So I got a dental appliance. I I had a very nice um dental uh sleep specialist made a dental appliance for me, and that really helped with my sleep apnea. The sleep apnea wasn't all that severe, but I found when I had the appliance, I slept probably about 10% better because my sleep quality was better. I had high hopes that this would cure my sleep problems.

SPEAKER_01: 8:15

It fit well.

SPEAKER_00: 8:18

Yeah, and looking back, Beth, I'm thinking that even though sleep apnea, you know, your your airway is blocked, you snore, your tongue falls to the back of your throat, and it's a it's a form of sleep disruption. So as as we know, as we teach, sleep disruption is not the same as insomnia. Sleep disruption, it can be from pain, it can be from a crying baby, from whatever. So it disrupts your sleep, but when this disruption goes away, the sleep gets better. But I think in my case, this disruption kind of fueled my insomnia because I didn't know before I was diagnosed why I wasn't getting the good quality sleep. And so I tried all these things and had all these sleep efforts, and so I think disruption kind of led into fueling my insomnia. Yeah. So I did, you know, along all this time, I did a lot of research and reading and so forth. And most of the solutions I found online and in books really focused on sleep hygiene. And this just never worked for me. So then I discovered uh CBTI, cognitive behavioral treatment of insomnia. And this is so hyped and touted by mainstream medicine and mainstream psychotherapy that I thought, well, this has got to be the answer.

SPEAKER_01: 9:36

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 9:37

And I thought, you know, there was nothing else that it was it said, well, this is just as good as sleeping pills. So I tried, I think it was three different CBTI programs. These are all online. One was was with Greg Jacobs, uh, another was a program called Shut Eye, another was with Martin Reed. And I tried all of them, maybe a little marginal improvement initially. I think probably because I thought, well, this is gonna this is gonna help. I don't have to worry about sleep. I'm I can let go of efforts because these procedures, uh, sleep restriction and so forth are gonna take care of it. Well, they didn't really didn't work in the long run. And in fact, I'm thinking they kind of made my sleep worse because it made me more focused on it. I had sleep diaries and was just more focused on it. Martin was more helpful than the others, I think, but um it didn't do it for me. So you know, here I was. I felt at this point I felt like a real failure. I tried the gold standard three times and it didn't work for me. My God. So anyway, so that's that's kind of everything I did up until the point where I found something that did start to make a difference.

SPEAKER_01: 10:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 10:57

I started to get on the better path to recovery. And this is when I discovered Daniel Erickson at the sleep coach school. This is really the first thing that helped. And I really had kind of a breakthrough uh with uh Daniel uh a couple of years ago, two two or three years ago. I did his bedtime program. This is a text-based uh program that he has online where I would write in with questions and concerns and he would he would write back. So it was text-based. Yeah. And Daniel has, as you know, Beth, has this approach called NATO, not attached to the outset, to the um outcome mindset. And you know, I you know, I watched a lot of videos that Daniel had, and I kind of got it, but finally, at some point during this uh program I was doing, the bedtime program, I finally kind of got it. I I I found that I could let go of this this worry simply by saying, oh well, or whatever, and giving a little shrug and a little smile. And it's like such a simple thing, but finally I I kind of got it. It was really a mindset shift.

SPEAKER_02: 12:10

Yes, yes, so much. And just to give the listeners too, this is how Richard and I actually met was in Daniel Erickson's community. We both went through his sleep coach certification, which was amazing. And that's how that's how our paths crossed. And, you know, I'm just so interested. It's just so interesting to hear your thoughts on this, Richard, for a couple of reasons. I mean, first of all, just that our paths were very similar in that you going through your residency was a bit like me being on call as a flight attendant for so many years. And just that, you know, if there's just this, the hypervigilance that starts to develop when you're just you're always kind of waiting. What, you know, when am I going to get called? And then, you know, having to sort of sleep at odd times and then wind down after for you, it was like having to get up and you know, not not work with that just through a phone call or whatever. I could so relate to that. And what, you know, what what I think is also so interesting is that you now are sort of kind of straddling these two worlds, these two paradigms, the medical, the medical world, because I know you're, you know, you're semi-retired right now, and and also this emerging paradigm on how to view insomnia. And I just think that is so fascinating. And also just your journey through CBTI and and and the gold standard and and the all of the emotions and feelings that come with that, like, oh, you know, I'm doing this and it's it's it's it's just got you know all this this clinical research behind it, and then but it's not working and what's wrong with me and all that. And and then you found Daniel and the NATO and not attaching to the outcome in this, you know, you got it. So tell us more about this path of you got it, you understood in responding with that indifference. I'd love to hear more about that.

SPEAKER_00: 13:58

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's it's funny. One of the things I did when I was realizing just this kind of what you call is kind of uh cultivating indifference by saying whatever. Yeah. And finally getting that. And but I would then kind of forget, oh gee, it's been a week and I forget this little shrug, this kind of little indifference. What can I do to remember it? So I'd put up a little sticky and so forth, but that didn't help. So I looked at my bookcase. I had the book, the novel. You perhaps heard of it, Atlas Shrugged. Uh-huh. I took a novel out and I took a sticky and I wrote my name on it, and I put the sticky over the word Atlas. So then it said, Richard Shrugged. So that was on my my night table for about a month. So always reminded of this. Okay, remember Richard to shrug. So that really just kind of helped me, and then I put it away. And then every now and then I would just kind of get it out to remind myself for a few days if I'd forget. But this this shrugging was so helpful. In fact, Daniel uh he hasn't interviewed me yet. He's he's going to on his channel, but he um discussed um an email I sent him, had a had a um an episode in my email in which I talked about this, and I found this uh really so helpful.

SPEAKER_02: 15:15

Oh, yeah. I think you just kind of got to do, you know, find what resonates for you. And for you, you know, it's like getting the Atlas Schrug book and covering up, you know, Atlas. And um, I love that. You know, you always have these wonderful analogies, um, which are so amazing. And you know, when you were going through bedtime, was Daniel your coach or yeah, yeah. I I was coaching in the app for a while.

SPEAKER_00: 15:38

And this was early on when Daniel was the only coach for bedtime.

SPEAKER_02: 15:43

Okay, yeah. Yeah. So yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00: 15:48

Yeah, so so Beth, that was a that was a real turnaround for me. Uh I was I was definitely better at that point. So it was helpful, but I was still struggling. I was off meds by then, about a year and a half ago, and it felt really good to get off meds. And the the cool thing about being off meds was I realized, oh, I can sleep without meds. My God. And that was just such an experiential revelation that yeah, I kind of knew in principle that we don't need medication to sleep, but I knew it experientially in my own body. Then my next step was that I started doing coaching with Michelle at the sleepcoach school. So Michelle is you you interviewed her, and uh, Michelle is uh associated with Daniel, and I just felt, well, okay, I'm getting there, but I kind of need more. So I did coaching with Michelle, and she was wonderful. Now the difference was with Daniel, uh, number one, Daniel has not had problems with insomnia, and number two, it was text-based. So Michelle, it was live in person, Zoom was somebody who had the same knowledge base as Daniel, but she's been there before. Yeah, so I had an in-person, really compassionate, really skilled sleep coach who'd been there herself, and that made all the difference. Michelle was just great. I had several sessions with her, and she helped me in a couple of respects. Number one, she really emphasized the importance of accepting my feelings. So if I wake up in the middle of the night, uh, I'm awake, what a bummer. Oh, I have this, you know, worry and anxiety, and I'd push them away. And this, you know, I kind of knew this in theory that I shouldn't do this, but this was such a long-standing, ingrained habit that it really took somebody kind of recognizing this and reminding myself that I was doing this. So that was major, that I was able to stop pushing feelings away. Another thing that really I I finally got the knack of was befriending wakefulness. So the way I had tried to befriend wakefulness before was okay, I'm awake. Oh, that's fine. That's that's wonderful, it doesn't bother me at all. But it was kind of just words, and I wasn't really actually doing something to enjoy myself when I was awake at night. So with Michelle, I you know, I did got the accepting piece, so I would be with the feelings maybe for five or ten minutes when I'd wake up and not be feeling great. But then to befriend the wakefulness, my answer was Seinfeld. I would get up and watch Seinfeld, and that would make such a difference because you can't watch Seinfeld without laughing.

SPEAKER_02: 18:41

And so you and Michelle have Seinfeld in common because we did yeah, right, because in our for the listeners, there's a wonderful interview I did with Michelle. It's called The Lighter Side of Insomnia. I can't remember what what number it is, but it's she talks about Seinfeld as well. So you guys have that in common.

SPEAKER_00: 18:59

We do, definitely, yeah. And the key thing, the way I kind of processed this was I'm not using Seinfeld as a sleeping pill replacement. I'm not using it as a way to get back to sleep, I'm using it because I enjoy it.

SPEAKER_01: 19:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 19:16

And that that made all the difference. But, you know, after a while, you know, I did get back to sleep much more easily. And it just, and then I didn't have to use Seinfeld, but I had kind of reprogrammed my brain to befriend wakefulness. And uh that that made such a big difference.

SPEAKER_02: 19:36

Yeah, and you know, this is a huge concept, I think, in the recovery process. And in that process for you, tell us more about that because I think this is where it can it can feel a little bit like, well, how do you do that? You know, and for you, it's like, well, I'm gonna watch Seinfeld and and give this a try. And that ended up like sort of being lighter, and you notice like you did feel. Different and there was a different relationship with wakefulness happening. But did it take a little bit of working into that, or how was that process for you and your mind of befriending wakefulness?

SPEAKER_00: 20:12

Well, I think because I was already kind of along that path of improving my sleep before I did coaching with Michelle, I was I was already part way there. So so that helped, but I did other things as well. For example, I would get up sometimes at night. I I live in a suburb of Denver, so I'd kind of get up if I'd wake up at night, go out and just kind of go out on my driveway, just with my bathrobe on, look up at the sky and look and think, okay. So my insomnia is just this little, I'd make a little circle with my thumb and index finger and look at a couple stars. That's where my insomnia lives, right up there. The rest of the sky is just wide open. This is life. This is this is my life. Insomnia is just a little part of it. So that's one of the ways I befriended wakefulness. Another thing that I did was I would listen to music sometimes. I I happened to listen to The Lion Sleeps Tonight, and then I would go out and I would be reminded of that song. And I would think, yeah, that's really the way it is. The lion sleeps tonight. Well, the lion, that's the threat, that's the danger.

SPEAKER_02: 21:29

Ah, yes.

SPEAKER_00: 21:31

This is the perceived threat of wakefulness. But the lion's asleep, he's not a danger anymore. So I would just kind of sometimes they'd even sing it out loud. So it's just the kind of these different kind of fun hacks that I came up with to help me befriend wakefulness and kind of get out of this insomnia.

SPEAKER_02: 21:55

Battle, right? The battle, the lion.

SPEAKER_00: 21:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 21:59

Yes, yes. I think it's just so interesting. It's a it's a it's a a shift in the whole relationship with wakefulness.

SPEAKER_00: 22:07

Definitely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 22:09

Yeah. And I think sometimes these shifts come incrementally. I mean, everyone is different. Sometimes people have like, oh, you know, and they they're able to make that leap. And sometimes it's very incremental. Um, and either way is just fine. Yeah. So, okay, so this is such a wonderful story. And and what made you decide to want to become a sleep coach yourself?

SPEAKER_00: 22:31

Yeah. Well, uh, let me just back up a little bit a little bit more about the kind of the recovery process.

SPEAKER_01: 22:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 22:38

But so what I started experiencing was experiencing with Michelle was I was having more of these magical moments, which is times where I sleep well and I feel experientially I can do this. And I felt like I was kind of rejoining the human race. Yeah. What happened then? Uh, this is a year ago. A year ago, I got a kidney stone, and the kidney stone didn't pass on its own, required three surgeries over four months. So this was a major sleep disruption for me. After that, I got back on the recovery track. And that's when that's when sleep really became much, much better. And that's when I started, you know, I would still have some, I still have some slips where I'm not sleeping quite as well. I still have some sleep disruptions at time, but overall it's so much better. And at that time, um uh Daniel uh mentioned that he was uh taking uh students for his sleep coach training. And Daniel and um and Michelle both uh both teach in this, and I decided last February, well, I would do this. So this just felt like a really good fit because I like both Daniel and Michelle, and I like their philosophy and so forth, and so I did the three-month training here. The reason I wanted to be a sleep coach is I wanted to share this journey with other people. I I had taken this journey, I thought that I was never gonna sleep well, and I found that I I could actually. And so I just wanted to share this with other people. I love the training. I especially love the tons of practical experience I got because we had Zoom sessions, we had the Slack channel, text-based, and I did a ton of uh coaching as a coach and training, and that was just so great because it wasn't just oh, knowing theoretically how to coach, but it was just hands-on experience. And I'm so glad that they they offered that. And so that was just great. And then when I finished that, I knew, well, you know, I really want to do this, and I started creating a website and so forth. And, you know, as as you mentioned, you know, you and I had met online last spring, and then you contacted me a couple of months ago asking me to join you. I thought, well, this would be another perfect fit. Same view of of insomnia, what causes it, how to how to put it behind us. When you uh showed me your online course, I just I was just flabbergasted because you just have a fabulous online course, and this is such a benefit for your for our our clients. So I've really loved working with you, and this is just working out great.

SPEAKER_02: 25:24

Yes. Oh, thank you so much for that. That means a lot coming from you. And it is, it is, it's it's it's been you know, you mentioned yesterday we were talking a bit on Slack, and you said, and I thought this was so powerful that recovering from insomnia was almost like a spiritual experience for you. And I would love to hear, you know, what some of the silver linings that have been that have come with insomnia, if you care to share.

SPEAKER_00: 25:56

Sure. Well, so I think the first thing is learning how to deal with emotions in other areas of my life.

SPEAKER_01: 26:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 26:02

If I'm feeling, you know, some anxiety or worry or doing rumination, uh, just learning how to feel my feelings and then shrug them off and say, you know, oh, whatever. Okay. It's this cultivation of indifference and not being caught up in these feelings and and struggling with them. So this just has so much wider application than just sleep.

SPEAKER_01: 26:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 26:30

Um, I would never have known this if I hadn't done the insomnia recovery journey. The other thing is that uh I really enjoy this kind of coaching. And I I don't know if I ever would have come to this or enjoyed it so much if I hadn't had problems with insomnia myself. So yeah, I mean this is as I said in the in the text to you yesterday. I mean, this is really deeply meaningful for me. It's not just a way of making a living, it's really a way of helping people heal and get their lives back. And uh that's it's just it's just been great.

SPEAKER_02: 27:07

Yeah, yeah. I I just get the goosebumps uh on this because I feel so similarly. It's it insomnia just becomes the catalyst for something so much bigger than recovering from insomnia. It and it it's it is uh a pivotal moment in life. And it and it's it's hard to believe when you're really in it and you're in the thick of it that there could be anything that you would be like, you would have gratitude almost for having gone through it. And I, you know, but when you when you get to the other side, you do you kind of let go of all the pain and hold on to the learnings of it. And it is significant, you know, it's very significant.

SPEAKER_00: 27:53

Definitely, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 27:55

Yeah. Yeah. Well, this was just so wonderful, Richard, and everything you said just so beautifully. And I can't thank you enough for being here. And for anyone out there, you know, going through insomnia right now, we invite you to join us in the mentorship because I really think that if the two of us with 40 years eat both of us after that long with insomnia, I think anyone can get beyond insomnia.

SPEAKER_00: 28:24

Right. If we can do it, Beth, anyone can.

SPEAKER_02: 28:26

Absolutely. Absolutely. So this is the Mind Body Sleep Podcast. Thank you so much for being here, and we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_00: 28:34

Thanks, Beth. See you later.

SPEAKER_02: 28:36

Bye.

SPEAKER_00: 28:37

Bye.

SPEAKER_02: 28:41

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 bethkendle.com for more details. I'll see you next time.