Hyperarousal: the Key to Understanding Insomnia
What is Hyperarousal?
Ever find yourself lying awake, heart racing, mind spinning, feeling wired but desperate for sleep? If so then you have experienced a powerful force known as hyperarousal. Hyperarousal, a heightened state of alertness that sends the body into fight or flight, goes hand in hand with insomnia. It can show up as:
Anxiety and Racing Thoughts: my clients often share how their thoughts and emotions spiral when they’re in fight or flight mode.
Difficulty Concentrating: Trouble focusing or thinking clearly - this can make it a lot harder to have a more grounded perspective.
Physiological Symptoms: Body twitching or spasms, tightness in muscles, jaw clenching, rapid heart rate, and even needing to urinate more frequently can be signs of hyperarousal.
The Connection Between Hyperarousal and Trauma
I first learned about hyperarousal when I was in training 4 years ago for a trauma-based approach to therapy: somatic therapy. This is a body-based approach for supporting folks to process trauma, regulate their nervous systems, and learn to feel safer in their body. Years later, I would learn how fundamental understanding hyperarousal is for healing insomnia..
The purpose of hyperarousal makes sense with trauma, because being in a hypervigilant state will keep the nervous system alert and thus able to scan for threats. So, it can be life-saving. With trauma though, this incredible survival system built into our bodies can backfire. If you imagine someone who has been in a traumatic car accident, they might develop a fear driving. Even the thought of being in a car might send their nervous system into a state of hyperarousal. This is typical for folks who have PTSD - their nervous systems want to keep them in a state of hyperarousal so they are constantly on alert for threats to safety, but that in turn can impair their everyday life.
How Hyperarousal Affects Sleep
You might be wondering, "What does hyperarousal have to do with insomnia?" It is what makes sleep issues persistent.
For those without insomnia, experiencing a few nights, or even a couple weeks of sleep disruption won’t evoke a chronic fight or flight state. With insomnia though, your body remembers all those nights awake. In this way, insomnia can be similar to trauma. With a traumatic car accident, something that was previously neutral (being in a car) gets associated with fear. With insomnia, being awake at night gets associated with fear. This can then trigger a cascade of worries. Maybe you've worried you’ll never sleep again or that your body is broken - I certainly did before I got a handle on my struggles.
Once that fear association has been strengthened by many previous experiences, then any small signs of sleep disruption will send the nervous system into a state of hyperarousal because the brain is already going to be on alert. When my insomnia was really bad, it felt like a force took over and was constantly scanning (both day and night) for any possible ways my sleep might be disrupted. My fears were vast and varied - one night I convinced myself that drinking a kombucha with negligible amounts of caffeine would keep me awake all night. Sure enough, I did lie awake, but not due to a minuscule amount of caffeine. Rather, the idea that the caffeine might keep me awake triggered my fears, which then kept me in a state of hyperarousal.
Addressing Hyperarousal in Insomnia
There is good news - once you understand how hyperarousal prevents sleep, you can learn how to recover. As Daniel Erichsen explains in his book Set It and Forget It, there are two main factors that influence sleep:
Sleep drive : This is essentially hunger for sleep. The longer you go without eating, usually the hungrier you get. Similarly, the longer you stay awake, the more sleep drive you have. Insomniacs generally do not lack sleep drive.
Hyperarousal: This is where insomniacs struggle. Often fueeled by fear, hyperarousal keeps the body and mind alert, which blocks sleep.
So, in order to recover, the fear of not sleeping has to be addressed, because it perpetuates hyperarousal, which keeps insomnia alive.
Moving Beyond Techniques
When clients first learn about hyperarousal, their minds often go to: ‘What tools can I use to calm my nervous system so I can sleep?’
While this is a reasonable conclusion to come to, it is misguided. While coping tools like guided meditation, sleep podcasts, body scans, and breathing techniques can be helpful, they don’t address the root fears. You might feel more relaxed temporarily, but if the fear remains, hyperarousal will persist.
Many people with insomnia go through this cycle: you try technique after technique, hoping one will resolve your sleep issues. But, when they don’t consistently lead to sleep, your fear and frustration only grow. This intensifies hyperarousal and creates a vicious, self-fulfilling prophecy.
Finding Relief Through a New Relationship with Sleep
Sleep is a passive process, not something that can be forced. Incorporating practices like guided meditations or relaxation exercises can support overall well-being, but shouldn’t be viewed as cures for insomnia.
When I explain this to clients, I like to use the idea of 5-10% solutions from Janina Fisher’s Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma. Any techniques aimed at regulating the nervous system might support you to relax 5-10%, but they won’t be a complete solution. While Janina Fisher is a trauma expert, I think this principle applies perfectly to insomnia as well.
When we look deeper into the issue, the way to reduce hyperarousal due to insomnia long-term is to learn to have a different relationship with sleep. Paradoxically, once you truly understand there is nothing you can do to 100% guarantee sleep to happen every night and are equipped with the right tools to work through the fears, then it it can be relieving to relinquish control.
The relief comes as a result of:
Feeling empowered by learning the right psychoeducation to understand insomnia
Learning how to address your fears head on rather than avoid them
Stopping behaviours that perpetuate your fears
Meeting yourself with self-compassion as you navigate insomnia recovery.
References
Fisher, J. (2021). Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma.
Erichsen, D. (2020). Set It and Forget It.
If you’re struggling with insomnia and want personalized guidance, feel free to reach out or check out my free insomnia course below