Why You Have Insomnia (and How to Heal It)
Insomnia can feel like its own breed of suffering, leaving you feeling trapped and restless. It can send your mind whirling, searching for answers: Did I drink too much coffee? Was that too much screen time before bed? Did I mess up my sleep hygiene routine?
The truth is, none of these are why you have insomnia. For years, I obsessively tried to identify every variable impacting sleep, unaware that fuelling my need to fix it all along. (I seem to be a slow learner when it comes to insomnia).
The Two Arrows of Insomnia
A buddhist teaching of the two arrows beautifully explains insomnia, and many other forms of suffering. The first arrow represents pain, an unavoidable part of life, such as fear or grief. The second arrow is our reaction to that pain, which often creates suffering.
With insomnia, the first arrow is often fear or anxiety around not sleeping. A natural tendency for many is to react to this fear by getting caught up in it and letting it take over. As Carl Jung famously famously wrote though, ‘‘What we resist, persists.’ This is what leads to the second arrow.
The second arrow is the cascade of stories that arise in response to anxiety, which often send insomnia sufferers spiraling:
What’s gonna happen if this gets worse?
What if I can’t function tomorrow? What if I have to miss work? What if I lose my job?
What if my health deteriorates? What if I get a stroke? What if I have to go to the hospital because I can’t breathe?
What if I never get my life back?
What if I become so miserable to be around that my partner leaves me?
As you can tell, that escalated quickly. This is not a dramatization either - it is pretty common for the mind to get caught in an insomnia fear vortex.
Why Insomnia Feels Like a Threat to Survival
This makes sense! If you are not familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the theory proposes that human needs are hierarchical, with the most basic needs at the bottom. Sleep is listed at the bottom, along with food, shelter, water, warmth and clean air. It’s no wonder then that our brain and nervous system go berserk when we develop insomnia - it can feel like a genuine threat to our survival!
Unlike other basic needs like food or water though, sleep doesn’t come from the outside—it’s an inside job. This means that no matter how much we seek external fixes, our body ultimately holds the key to sleep. We can’t go searching for it like we can search for water or food. Even if you are taking medication to help you sleep, your body has to do some of the work. This is why when anxiety is at its peak and insomnia is at its worst, sleeping pills don’t quite work. During the worst of my insomnia, a heavy hitting hypnotic sleeping pill barely moved the needle.
So, the brain is understandably going haywire, sending the nervous system into survival mode, otherwise known as fight or flight mode. Fight or flight would make sense if we needed to catch some prey for food or flee to the nearest shelter during a violent snowstorm. But, since sleep is an inside job, it doesn’t quite work that way. The object of fear is not a bear, it is nighttime wakefulness.
Ok, so I can’t run away from insomnia the way I would a bear - now what?
We have to teach our brain and nervous system that it is actually OK and safe when we’re awake at night. To bring it back to the second arrow teaching, as the buddha says, ‘‘In life, we cannot always control the first arrow; however, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. The second arrow is optional.”
It might not seem that simple or tangible, but the good news is there is a process to prevent the second arrow from causing you further grief, and to get out of the insomnia cycle. I have outlined the most important part of the process below.
Befriending Wakefulness: The Key to Breaking Free from Insomnia
Rumi, the prolific 13th century persian wrote:
‘A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all.’
I first learned the term ‘befriending wakefulness’ from physician turned sleep coach, Daniel Erichsen, and I think it’s one of the most important concepts to understand and practice for longterm insomnia recovery, because it gets at the root of the issue. As Rumi suggests, it is about letting in versus shutting out. If you can recall to a time before you had insomnia, a restless night likely didn’t elicit an onslaught of anxiety. Rather, it might have induced annoyance, but you probably responded to it with more neutrality. That is, you didn’t get hit hard with that second arrow.
Your brain and nervous system need new data that you can indeed survive a night awake (or a few hours), and actually feel safe. You may even be able to find little moments of comfort or enjoyment along the way.
This is befriending wakefulness. It is doing the opposite of the instinct to get caught up in reactions and try everything you can to induce sleep. Sleep cannot be forced - is a passive process. Instead of grasping for it, this is about changing your relationship with being awake at night, and by extension, changing your relationship with sleep.
Focus on Choice & Comfort
Paradoxically, when insomnia takes over, we tend to do things that we don’t enjoy at night, find boring, or actually hate in an effort to get us to sleep. Instead of that, focus on any activity (this can include laying in bed doing nothing), that brings you just a little bit more comfort, enjoyment, or relaxation. Even when you’re not enjoying the moment, finding a way to ease your nervous system, even a little, is progress. Befriending wakefulness means no longer ‘trying to sleep’ but rather giving yourself permission to choose how to spend the time, whether you sleep or not.
Can I watch TV? Yes! If you’re concerned about the blue light you can download a blue light blocking app like f.lux. I spent some of my insomnia recovery nights watching TV because that is genuinely what I wanted to do in that moment, and it helped take the pressure off. Some of my clients don’t enjoy this, so it comes down to personal choice.
What if I am in agony and am not enjoying anything? Those nights can be rough. You don’t have to be enjoying yourself. I invite my clients to think of it less in a black and white way, and more as a matter of degree. Did your nervous system chill out 5%? Then you’re doing something right. This can be colouring, watching TV, reading, having tea, journaling, listening to music or a podcast, or simply lying in bed and resting. Remember, your brain is in survival mode, so it can take some practice to notice a shift.
Listen to your Needs
Do I have to get out of my bed if I can’t sleep? No. Some forms of insomnia therapy suggest that the bed should only be used for sleep and sex - this is a common rule for sleep hygiene as well. I find that this only increased my anxiety when I had insomnia, and I have seen it do the same for others. You do not have to play hot potato with your bed, so if you enjoy the comfort of being in bed, that is perfect.
What I have found personally is that if I was laying in bed awake and noticed my anxiety increase, sometimes getting out of my bed and changing my environment helped me reset. For instance, if I got out of bed and had a snack, tea, or watched something - this was sometimes more helpful when I was feeling very anxious. Once my brain and nervous system began to feel safer being awake at night, simply lying in bed resting, even if I couldn’t sleep, was often preferred.
Treat it Like an Experiment
Treat it like an experiment and opportunity. Every hour spent awake at night that you were not intending to is a chance to teach your brain and nervous system that you are safe and OK. This is the exact information your brain needs to stop kicking into high gear survival mode. Once this happens, your body won’t be pumping adrenaline, cortisol and norepinephrine into your system as much, because it will understand that you are not in danger. Then, the natural and inevitable by product is sleep.
Insomnia doesn’t have to keep you in an endless state of suffering. While the fear often doesn’t dissolve all at once instantly when my clients learn about befriending wakefulness, I find it is the key to peeling the layers of the fear onion. Once this begins to happen, you’re already on your way to sleeping well again.
If you want to further shift your relationship with sleep, you can check out my free 5-day insomnia course below, or reach out for personalized support.