Can't Sleep Even Though You Aren't Anxious?

Are you struggling to sleep even though you feel calm at night?

If so, you aren’t alone. This can be quite common, especially when you have gone through an insomnia program and are feeling much better, yet you still aren’t sleeping.

I want to clear up this mystery for you and help you continue to move toward better sleep. 

So maybe you feel calm, feel like you have gotten to the point of accepting that insomnia is your reality at this time and that you can’t change the situation at this moment. You aren’t feeling anxious, and yet you aren’t sleeping any better.

This can either happen when you have insomnia and haven’t gone through a program yet or once you have gone through a program and starting to feel much better.

I’m going to explain what could be happening in both scenarios, but in either case, reading both can be helpful for you to understand.

Before I even go into these two scenarios, I want to talk about disrupted sleep vs. insomnia. Thousands of things can cause disrupted sleep—medication side effects, hormones, medical conditions, menopause, stress, trauma, and tons more.

This is normal. In most cases, if we realize this is normal, shrug it off, and not worry about anything serious, then they resolve themself with time.

Think about someone who may have lost a loved one. They will likely not be sleeping well for a few days, but sleep will return with time.

However, when we react to disrupted sleep with fear and worry, this is when we can enter the insomnia cycle. As you fear losing sleep each night, it starts to trick the brain into believing that you are in danger.

The brain doesn’t know the difference between an actual physical threat and a perceived one. All it knows is you are fearing something and trying to escape it.

I don’t want to go into too much detail here, but basically, every night, your brain is activating the fight or flight system, and this system gets amplified more and more with time, which causes you to lose more and more sleep.

I wanted to share the difference between these two so that you can better understand if you might be experiencing disrupted sleep or if you are stuck in the insomnia cycle.

So, let’s shift over to those two scenarios that you might be in.

SCENARIO #1: HAVEN’T DONE A PROGRAM

I would first start out figuring out if you believe you have disrupted sleep or insomnia. If you have disrupted sleep, then you could always look at the cause of what’s causing the sleep disruption.

Hormone issues? You can check in with your doctor to see if you need hormone replacement. Medication side effects? Maybe your doctor can prescribe an alternative. You get the idea.

Of course, things like losing a loved one and other things we have no control over, the best thing you can do is practice self-care and know that sleep will return in its own time.

Also, it can be really helpful to visit your doctor to see if there is anything else going on.

If you believe you have insomnia, then the next scenario can be helpful even if you haven’t gone through a program yet.

SCENARIO #1: YOU HAVE GONE THROUGH A PROGRAM BUT STILL NOT SLEEPING OR INSOMNIA RETURNED.

This one can be scary and frustrating because you feel like you should be sleeping better yet you aren’t. Or you were sleeping better and yet your insomnia returned despite feeling calm and not anxious at night. Here are some things that could be going on.

• It takes time to teach the brain that you are safe. Usually, a lot longer than expected. It can also feel like you are doing well for a long time and boom you feel like you are back to square one.

           Nobody really knows why the brain does this. But the best thing you can do is keep practicing what you learned and show the brain that you are safe. The more you react with fear and worry about these speed bumps, the more you are showing the brain that there is danger.

• Even if it doesn’t feel like you have anxiety, you can have a low-level anxiety that is still preventing you from sleeping. This often comes from wondering why you aren’t sleeping, curiosity about what is going on, focus on the fact that you aren’t sleeping yet, and you believe you should be. 

         There is still an underlying fear and worry going on that keeps the hyperarousal levels up which prevents sleep.

• When you are in bed and notice you aren’t sleeping well, do you start to stress out even just a little bit? Then can keep reinforcing that there is “danger” out there to the brain.
• You could be adding pressure on yourself, which keeps hyperarousal levels up. If you have an expectation that you should be sleeping better now, and this shouldn’t be happening anymore, then you are adding pressure on yourself to be sleeping already.

          The less pressure we place on ourselves, the more sleep we get.

• The expectations about how and when things should happen are also attempts at trying to control sleep when in reality, we can’t control sleep. This leads to frustration and higher hyperarousal levels.

There are a ton of reasons you might feel stuck and still struggling with sleep. Hopefully, this list will help you figure out why you might be stuck.

It’s a lot to think about, but know that the more you can let go of control, remove pressure, and trust in the process, the quicker you will recover.

The whole process is a marathon and not a sprint. I went through the same things, and I made it to the other end. Hang in there, and you will get there too.

Here is a blog post that you might find helpful about the topic of when your sleep will return. https://www.katelingates.com/blog/are-you-wondering-when-you-will-start-to-sleep-better-again