My 6 principles for overcoming insomnia
People experience insomnia for a variety of reasons, each shaped by their unique circumstances. This means that no single approach to improving sleep will work for everyone. However, the following principles are generally helpful for most people struggling with sleep. They aren’t strict rules to follow, but rather guidelines designed to help those dealing with insomnia.
These principles focus on what can be done moving forward to manage insomnia, rather than trying to understand why it began. You might wonder, isn’t understanding the cause the most important part? While it may seem so, many people have likely spent considerable time ruminating about the past with little success. So instead it might be worth concentrating on what you can do in the present and near future.
These “six principles” are not sequential steps, and there’s no need to follow them in any specific order. Different principles will resonate differently with each person. However, the intention is that all six principles are applied in conjunction with one another, to help as much as possible.
Dealing with insomnia can feel confusing, stressful, and often hopeless. Many people try numerous strategies to improve their sleep, often with little success. Others may suffer in silence, feeling resigned to the idea that their sleep will never improve.
It’s normal for your mind to question these principles and doubt their relevance to your situation. You might feel tempted to give up on them quickly. If you do, that’s a natural human response – our minds are wired to judge and label things as good or bad, helpful or unhelpful. You might think, “This won’t work for me,” or “This is too complicated.”
Despite any doubts or reservations, I encourage you to be open-minded and explore these principles further. See if you can be willing to persevere and experiment with them. If other strategies haven’t worked for you, what do you have to lose by giving these a try?
We live in a society that promotes quick fixes, offering promises of instant relief from our distress, including sleep issues. It’s natural to crave a certain and immediate solution, but you’ve probably already tried quick fixes for your sleep and how have they worked out?
It’s important to understand that applying these principles takes time and effort. They are not a quick fix, and there’s no guarantee they’ll bring the perfect sleep you desire. However, as you learn more about them, you may come to appreciate the value of embracing uncertainty instead of trying to escape it. You might also find that learning about these principles in a group setting, such as in a group support meeting, is more effective than simply reading about them on your own.
Principle 1
Being mindful towards the thoughts and feelings keeping you awake at night
Often the primary complaint of someone struggling with insomnia is that they can’t sleep due to the anxiety, worry, and stress they experience at night. Sometimes, this is linked to life circumstances like work, family, or relationship issues. However, often, the lack of sleep itself becomes a source of stress, panic, and fear. In both cases, learning to manage difficult thoughts, feelings, and emotions at night in a way that reduces their negative impact on sleep is crucial for addressing insomnia.
Whether it’s a racing mind trying to solve problems or feelings of anxiety and worry, people with insomnia often find it impossible to escape these experiences. They desperately want to relax at night to improve their sleep, and they typically try various strategies, such as meditation, breathing exercises, or listening to calming sounds. Some even resort to alcohol, drugs, or medication to force a relaxed state.
The problem arises when they realise they can’t force themselves to relax (excluding through artificial means such as alcohol). While relaxation techniques might offer short-term relief, this often doesn’t last. No amount of effort will permanently eliminate the negative thoughts and emotions that trouble them at night. The difficult thoughts and feelings usually return, sometimes even more intensely than before.
So what if the answer lies in doing the opposite of what we naturally try? What if, instead of trying to escape or get rid of unwanted thoughts and feelings, we stopped trying to relax? Could we instead be more open and willing to experience these difficulties at night, gradually becoming more comfortable with them? Could we relate to them differently in a way that lessens their impact on our sleep?
Mindfulness is a skill that can help us do this. It enables us to become more aware, purposefully and non-judgmentally, of the thoughts and feelings we’re experiencing in the present moment. In simpler terms, mindfulness helps us create some distance between ourselves and the difficult thoughts and feelings we experience at night, so we don’t get so caught up in them and let them dictate our actions.
The word “mindfulness” might carry negative connotations for some, perhaps seeming “alternative” or “soft,” and some may have tried it before and found it unhelpful. To clarify, mindfulness doesn’t necessarily mean meditation and can be applied in many different ways. Despite any judgments you might have about it or past experiences of it, try to approach it with an open mind and consider trying something different for your sleep.
Understanding mindfulness intellectually can be challenging, and it’s something best understood through practising it. However, here’s a metaphor that might help:
Mindfulness helps us see thoughts and feelings for what they are – sensations, urges, images, stories, and words that pass through our minds and bodies like clouds moving through the sky. Importantly, thoughts and feelings are not all that we are; there’s always a part of us that can observe what we’re thinking and feeling. Just as the sky isn’t entirely made up of clouds, there’s always the blue sky that observes the clouds floating by. On the cloudiest days, we might forget that the blue sky is still there, but it never goes away, just like our ability to step back and observe our thoughts and feelings is always present.
Given that this is just a brief introduction to mindfulness, it’s understandable if you’re not yet convinced that it will help with your sleep. Perhaps your mind has already labelled it as something not for you or too difficult. If so, you’re not alone. I’ve been practising mindfulness for quite a while now (without meditating) and still regularly experience these doubts. But that’s the point of mindfulness – it helps you to have these unwanted thoughts without being so affected by them.
Principle 2
Accepting sleep cannot be forced and instead being open to wakefulness and valuing resting
We naturally associate nighttime and our beds with sleep. Beds are designed for sleeping, and nighttime is when humans are biologically programmed to rest. So when sleep becomes difficult, it’s natural to put pressure on ourselves to force sleep, especially when we crave it the most. Thoughts like “I need to sleep now because tomorrow I have to…” or “If I don’t fall asleep soon, something bad will happen tomorrow” start to pop up.
When we become desperate for sleep, our instinct is to try to force it. We might do this by adopting new rules and routines around bedtime, using substances to promote sleep, or trying to suppress or distract ourselves from unwanted thoughts and feelings related to sleep.
Since we can control so many aspects of our external lives, without realising it, we can easily fall into the trap of believing we can control our sleep too. However, sleep is a natural biological process that we cannot consciously force – we fall into sleep, we don’t force it to happen.
Trying to force sleep is like trying to hold a beach ball underwater for a long time. It requires a lot of effort, isn’t enjoyable, and doesn’t work in the long run. Some people realise that in their attempts to force sleep, they’ve either missed out on more important aspects of life due to the time and effort spent focusing on sleep, or that sleep has become a chore or obstacle to overcome each night. This struggle with sleep is something we can begin to let go of, much like letting a beach ball float up from under the water.
So, if we can’t force sleep and our efforts to do so are mostly futile and can come with costs to our livelihoods, what’s the alternative? Instead, we could choose to do nothing. For many with insomnia, the fear of lying awake at night and how it might affect them is daunting. But rather than trying to eliminate this fear, there’s the option to be open to experiencing wakefulness at night without trying to stop it.
The fear of lying awake all night is particularly unpleasant, but often the fear is worse than the reality. There’s nothing inherently wrong with lying awake in bed – everyone does it to some extent every night. It only becomes a problem when our minds label it as one.
By surrendering to the experience of resting in bed at night, much like napping, we can start to appreciate the comfort of our bed, duvet, and pillows. We have a choice: we can struggle to force sleep, or we can lean into the experience of wakefulness and any difficult emotions that come with it, accepting them as part of the process.
Principle 3
Committing to pursuing what’s important to you in life despite poor sleep
Insomnia can profoundly disrupt our wellbeing, making it difficult to engage in the activities and relationships that matter most. A lack of sleep can make it challenging to be a productive and effective colleague, a caring and supportive parent, a fun and reliable friend, or a high-performing individual.
The tiredness, anxiety, stress, and worry that insomnia brings can vary in intensity. Sometimes, these effects are mild and don’t drastically affect quality of life, but at other times, they can feel completely debilitating. While the impact of insomnia is different for everyone, often it can prevent people from living the life they want and truly being the person they aspire to be.
There are days when, due to lack of sleep, you may feel too exhausted or distressed to accomplish what you originally planned or needed to do. In these moments, it’s important to be kind to ourselves, as it’s all too easy to be overly critical of our perceived shortcomings. But if you were to imagine yourself in the future, looking back on this period of struggling with sleep, how would you want to have handled it? How would you have wanted to act in your work, family, and social life?
We can’t always live perfectly in alignment with our deepest values, but we can commit to trying our best. Think of a darts player – they won’t always hit the bullseye, but they keep aiming for it, and by doing so they get closer to their target. The same applies when we’re dealing with a lack of sleep. We can aim to live our daily lives as if the sleep issue isn’t holding us back. Even when we’re tired, anxious, or stressed, these feelings don’t have to prevent us from being the kind of partner, colleague, friend, or parent we want to be. For example, we can still commit to our daily or evening plans, even when insomnia symptoms are weighing us down.
It might not be easy, but deep down, we would likely prefer to follow through with what’s important to us rather than hold back. The more we focus our attention on pursuing the things that truly matter in life – things beyond sleep – the more sleep tends to improve, often in unexpected ways. But even if sleep doesn’t get better, we’re still living in alignment with our values, which is ultimately what brings fulfilment and meaning to our lives.
Living a rich and meaningful life is like stringing a necklace of pearls. Each day begins with an empty thread. Every time you do something important and valuable, you add a pearl to the string. However, each pearl often comes with a bit of dirt. In other words, whenever you pursue something meaningful, it often involves experiencing some difficult emotions too. You can’t always experience the good without the bad, and you usually have to endure some unwanted, tricky thoughts and feelings to do what’s important and thread that pearl onto your string.
Principle 4
Cultivating compassion for your struggles with sleep
When we face difficulty sleeping, our natural response is to try to make sense of it and label a cause. We may find ourselves ruminating over what or who is responsible for our sleep troubles. This can sometimes turn into blame – directed either at ourselves or others. However, this rumination and blame rarely lead to any improvement in our sleep and can often make it worse.
Alternatively we can adopt a more compassionate approach, where we stop focusing on who is at fault or what went wrong. Instead, we focus on the present and how we can be more nurturing and self caring towards ourselves as we navigate our current difficulty.
If we find ourselves getting stuck on why our sleep problems happen, we always have the option to shift our focus towards taking care of ourselves. We can ask ourselves what we need at the moment, aside from a good night’s sleep. Do we need more time with loved ones, more time outside in nature, or perhaps to engage in a difficult work task?
We often question why we experience sleep problems while others don’t, which can lead to feelings of confusion and shame, making us feel as though something is wrong with us. For many these feelings of ‘something is wrong about me’ can be the driving force behind the insomnia. However, we do have the alternative of considering the following:
From an evolutionary standpoint humans have evolved with minds and bodies that naturally experience emotions and feelings of anxiety, worry, panic, fear and stress in all manner of contexts. These emotions are a fundamental part of our biology and serve a purpose. When we experience them, we are essentially engaging our fight, flight, or freeze response, which is designed to keep us safe by making us highly alert, cautious, and tense in the face of threats.
Imagine encountering a bear in the forest; your hardwired fight-or-flight response would immediately kick in, beyond your conscious control. When you’re in fight-or-flight mode, sleep becomes much less likely – after all, if you were to fall asleep, the bear could pose a fatal threat.
When we experience insomnia, the same primal mechanisms are at work. Our brains and bodies are in a state of stress, even though there is no bear or physical threat in front of us. Our primal brains, however, cannot distinguish between a real threat to our safety and the distress associated with sleepless nights, so during a bout of insomnia they put us on high alert and prevent us from sleeping.
Our brains may start to associate bedtime with sleepless nights and the problems that come with them, triggering our threat response. This response can manifest as problem-solving, anxiety, stress, and rumination. In essence, difficulty sleeping and the accompanying emotions are a normal response, considering a person’s life context and potentially stressful state.
Recognising this allows us to be more understanding of our situation rather than endlessly rehashing it or thinking that it’s abnormal. We can acknowledge that dealing with insomnia is challenging, a common experience for many people, and something we can approach with kindness toward ourselves. Insomnia is not something we need to battle with, but rather something we can approach more gently by dropping the pressure we place on sleep and letting go of any blame directed at ourselves or others.
Instead of asking, “Why is this happening to me?” We can ask, “What do I need to care for myself right now?” or “What do I need to do today that’s really important to me?”
Being hard on ourselves and engaging with our inner critic can seem to be helpful for us in many different contexts of life, such as when the inner critic motivates us when exercising or at work. However, engaging with self-critical thinking is unlikely to be helpful with sleep problems.
Principle 5
Learning to drop the struggle and let go of the striving to find a cure
If you suddenly developed a bright red, itchy rash on your skin, your natural response would likely include a few key reactions: you’d feel the discomfort and worry about it, and you’d be eager to seek medical help to determine the cause and find a cure.
These reactions are completely normal and expected – they serve a vital purpose in helping us care for ourselves and address the problem. If you didn’t feel concerned about the rash and seek medical assistance, the condition might worsen or take longer to heal. In this scenario, your worry and proactive approach would be beneficial in keeping you healthy.
As human beings, it’s in our nature to be concerned about our health and well-being. When something goes wrong with our health, stress, worry, and anxiety are natural emotional responses.
When sleep becomes an issue, it affects our well-being and can trigger a similar problem-solving approach. A lack of sleep can make us feel stressed, tired, and worried, prompting us to try to fix the problem and alleviate these difficult emotions. Our brains instinctively switch to problem-solving mode, as they would with any other issue, to find a solution. Therefore we naturally try to identify the cause of the issue and try different strategies to resolve it.
Suffering from sleep issues often leads people to try various quick fixes to make sleep happen and the bad feelings go away. They might resort to alcohol, sleeping pills, relaxation techniques, supplements, sleep hygiene tips, and more. Unfortunately, these efforts rarely lead to long-term solutions.
However, all of this struggle someone goes through trying to improve their sleep can consume energy, money, and time, diverting focus from other important areas of their life. Even though we may have the best intentions when trying to solve our sleep issues, this struggle can often backfire and create even more difficulties.
It’s as if there’s a “struggle switch” in our minds that is usually turned off, but flips on when a problem arises. Once it’s on, we invest a great deal of attention and energy into trying to solve the problem, which only increases stress when our efforts don’t seem to work.
If striving to solve the issue isn’t yielding results for you, what’s an alternative approach? One option might be to stop actively trying to solve the problem and give up the struggle with sleep – simply go to bed at a normal time and do nothing more. This can free up time and energy to focus on the truly important aspects of your life, such as relationships, family, leisure, and work.
Imagine trying to escape quicksand: the more you struggle and try to climb out, the deeper you sink. Paradoxically, the way to stop sinking is to lie back, remain still and do nothing. This is similar to constantly trying to struggle with and force sleep. When we let sleep be what it will be and allow ourselves to experience any discomfort that arises, we become much freer to focus on other things in our lives.
Principle 6
Appreciating the vitality that you still have despite difficulty sleeping.
Striving to be the best version of yourself in daily life is incredibly challenging when you’re dealing with a significant lack of sleep. The fatigue and difficult emotions it brings, such as anxiety, worry, and stress, can make it much harder to function effectively. This can affect your ability to cope with day-to-day challenges, making it difficult to perform at your best at work and engage positively with friends and family.
Insomnia can lead to someone having doubtful feelings about their ability to accomplish what they want to each day. But do these feelings have to prevent you from living the life you want? While insomnia can negatively affect you in many ways, does it have to stop you from living a meaningful and fulfilling life? Can it truly rob you of experiencing joy and purpose in your day?
These questions aren’t meant to suggest that you should simply “get over” sleep deprivation, “suck it up” or “just get on with it”. Insomnia symptoms aren’t pleasant and can make living a happy life significantly harder. But the alternative is to surrender your life to being controlled by how sleep makes you feel. Instead, we can recognise that there are things we can still do every day to live our lives in the way we want to, even when we’re feeling tired, anxious, or stressed about sleep.
Poor sleep doesn’t always have to stop you from having fun with loved ones, going about your day with purpose, enjoying time with friends, or completing work tasks. Even in the worst cases of insomnia, it doesn’t have to stop someone from doing the small things, such as making the effort to smile at someone, sharing a laugh, doing something meaningful for others, or trying to take care of themselves.
We may not always have control over how much sleep we get or how it makes us feel, but we always have a choice in how we respond to those circumstances.
Struggling with sleep? I can help
Let me help you to identify the root cause of your difficulty sleeping and help you to resolve the issue using Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT).
ACT is an approach that is:
✔︎ Drug and gimmick free
✔︎ Clinically proven and endorsed by NICE
✔︎ Mindfulness-based
✔︎ Tailored to your sleep issue
✔︎ Simple and gives quick results
Complete my free online course as a starting point to see how I can help you through ACT.
