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- March 19, 2021
Part 1 of Our Science Series | Learn about why sleep matters and how poor sleep can affect your physical health, mental health, and productivity. Learn the causes behind insomnia.
Instead of worrying if a relapse will happen, expect that one will happen and then plan for it so you don’t spiral when it does.
If you’ve ever found yourself wide awake in the middle of the night, wondering why sleep doesn’t come easily like it used to, you’re not alone. For many people, insomnia builds gradually, often without you even realizing it, until it becomes a cycle that feels impossible to escape.
There are other potential causes of insomnia, like genetics, medical conditions, and medications, and this post explores how insomnia develops when a person experiences psychological triggers, anxiety, or stressors. We’ll walk through how that cycle develops, why it’s so hard to break, and what it really takes to help your brain reset and remember how to sleep again.
How The Insomnia Cycle Develops
Sleep troubles rarely begin with a full-blown case of insomnia. More often, it starts with something simple, maybe a stressful event, a stretch of anxiety, or a few nights of tossing and turning. On their own, these aren’t cause for concern. But what happens next is what keeps people stuck.
We’re going to look at the steps that turn a few bad nights into a long-term sleep pattern. These habits can feel automatic, but once you see how they form, you can start replacing them with routines that help your brain feel safe sleeping again.
#1. It Usually Starts With A Trigger Event
Most people can point to a moment when their sleep began to shift. Maybe it was a stressful breakup, a demanding job, or an illness. For others, it might have been related to anxiety, depression, pain, or hormonal changes like perimenopause.
Whatever the cause, the result is the same. Your mind becomes more alert, your body tenses up, and suddenly, sleep stops feeling automatic. You might have had a few rough nights and brushed it off at first, expecting it to pass. But instead of returning to normal, your sleep stays disrupted.
The good news is that your body still remembers how to sleep. It’s just responding to stress in the short term, but this is usually where the cycle starts to take hold.
#2. Then Come The Short-Term Fixes That Actually Backfire
When sleep starts slipping, it’s natural to want to fix it fast. You might try going to bed earlier to catch up or squeeze in a nap during the afternoon. You may even scroll through articles and videos looking for tips, hoping one of them holds the answer.
These steps feel like the right thing to do, but they often backfire.
The longer you stay in bed awake, the more your brain starts to expect that outcome. Over time, your bed becomes linked with tossing and turning instead of rest. You might also begin rearranging your day based on how tired you feel, which throws off your natural rhythm even more.
Instead of feeling more rested, you begin to feel even more out of sync. And as the frustration builds, sleep starts feeling like something you have to chase.
#3. This Results In Thoughts That Build Toward Anxiety Over Sleep
As nights drag on and sleep continues to slip away, your thoughts start to shift. What once felt like a short-term issue starts to feel like a long-term problem. You may catch yourself thinking:
These thought loops are known as cognitive distortions. They seem believable in the moment, but these unhelpful thoughts only raise your stress levels. Once your brain starts treating sleep like a challenge, your body picks up on that tension, making it even harder to rest.
The result is a loop. The worse your sleep gets, the more anxious you become. And the more anxious you become, the worse your sleep gets and you find it harder to stop the racing thoughts.
#4. Sleep Turns Into Something You Dread
Eventually, your bedroom starts to feel less like a place of rest and more like a source of stress. You might feel fine during the day, but once bedtime rolls around, you start to feel uneasy.
You lie down and immediately feel your heart race. You check the clock every 20 minutes. You try every relaxation trick you can think of, but nothing works. And even when you do sleep, it feels light and not rejuvenating.
This is what psychologists call conditioned arousal. Your brain has started linking the bed with being awake. Over time, the place where you are supposed to relax becomes a trigger for stress. This is the core of the insomnia cycle.
Breaking The Insomnia Cycle
Getting stuck in the insomnia cycle can feel frustrating and overwhelming. You’re exhausted but unsure what to try next, and the harder you chase sleep, the further away it feels. That’s part of what makes this cycle so difficult to break.
When you’re running on little sleep, it’s tough to focus, make good decisions, or follow through with anything that takes effort. Exhaustion clouds your thinking and makes it harder to stick with even the simplest plan.
Then there’s the fact that many of the things that actually help can feel counterintuitive. Getting out of bed when you cannot sleep, reducing your time in bed, or avoiding naps might seem like the opposite of what you should do. But these changes are what help retrain your brain to sleep again.
Most importantly, insomnia is rarely just about sleep itself. It often stems from a deeper place, such as stress, anxiety, life changes, thought patterns, genetics, or health issues that quietly reinforce the problem night after night.
There is no “quick fix” to overcome insomnia. To break the cycle, you have to address both the original stress that disrupted your sleep and the habits that have developed in response. When you tackle both pieces, your brain begins to reset. Sleep becomes something your body remembers how to do instead of something you have to force.
How To Break The Insomnia Cycle
There’s no single fix that works for everyone, but there is a way forward. It starts by recognizing that your sleep struggle is something your brain picked up over time, and with the right approach, it can start to let go of it.
Here are some of the key steps that help people reset their sleep:
Sleep Is Something Your Body Remembers How To Do
Ultimately, the most important thing to know is that your body still remembers how to sleep. Even after weeks, months, or years of struggling, that ability has not gone away. It’s just been covered up by stress, anxiety, and patterns that no longer serve you.
When you give your brain the right cues, such as consistent timing, less time in bed awake, and fewer anxious thoughts, it starts to respond. Over time, the cycle begins to loosen, and sleep starts to feel easier again. And the more consistent you are, the stronger that pattern becomes.
Sources
How to recognize and tame your cognitive distortions (Harvard Medical School)
Dr. Geralyn Dexter is a licensed mental health counselor with 15 years of experience providing clinical care. She currently serves as a faculty lead and psychology instructor at Southern New Hampshire University and works as an assistant professor of psychology at Colorado Technical University. Additionally, Dr. Dexter sits on the Medical Expert Board for Verywell Health. Her work has been featured in national media outlets and publications, including Mental Health America, GoodRx, Verywell Health, Sage Publications, and more.
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