Do You Know the Root Cause of Your Insomnia?

Do you know the root cause of your insomnia?

Do you know the root cause of your insomnia? 

There is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about it. This is why I want to clear things up so that you know the direction you need to take to start overcoming your insomnia.

How your disrupted sleep started is unique, but the root cause of your insomnia is not. You may have experienced something stressful or traumatic in your life. Or you experienced medication side effects that affected your sleep. There are many ways you can experience disrupted sleep, and this isn’t insomnia.

Insomnia happens because of our fear-based reactions to disrupted sleep. Everyone experienced disrupted sleep occasionally. Usually, if we realize that this is to be expected and we don’t worry too much about it, our sleep will improve in a few days. 

However, when we react emotionally to disrupted sleep, things become tricky. Our fear-based reactions actually start with our thoughts, and our thoughts create our emotional reactions. 

We don’t have much control over our initial thoughts at the moment, so we may initially think that this disrupted sleep isn’t normal or shouldn’t be happening. These are fear-based thoughts, and your brain is trying to keep you safe (even though you aren’t really in danger).

 When we become aware of these thoughts, we can gently thank our brain for trying to keep us safe and ask ourselves if this disruption is abnormal. Isn’t it normal to experience disrupted sleep for a few days after something stressful or traumatic? Isn’t experiencing disrupted sleep from a new medication normal?

When we realize that disrupted sleep is a normal experience, we can move on, and things will correct themselves. If we instead stick with the fear-based thoughts that we shouldn’t be experiencing disrupted sleep and that we need to try and fix it, we can enter into the insomnia cycle.

The root cause of insomnia is the fear of sleeplessness and trying to escape it. This fear and the attempts to escape sleeplessness trick the brain into believing there is a threat out there. Your brain is confused, but all it knows is you are reacting with fear and trying to escape and fight something.

Your brain reacts by activating the fight or flight system and creates a high state of hyperarousal.

It’s the hyperarousal that prevents you from falling asleep at night. An official definition of hyperarousal is “a state of heightened physiological and psychological stress, which may result in anxiety, fatigue, and reduced tolerance to pain.” 

Hyperarousal can appear in many ways, such as fear, worry, frustration, anxiousness, and excitement. Everyone experiences hyperarousal at different times in their life. 

Think about children the night before Christmas when they know they will be opening up presents in the morning. They are excited and can’t wait, and they will likely be awake longer than usual from all the excitement.

Or perhaps before you go on stage to speak publicly. You may get palpitations, an increased heart rate, your breathing rate may increase, and you may even experience anxiety and panic attacks.

Your hyperarousal can also come in all intensity levels, from mild to super intense.  When your hyperarousal levels are mild, you might feel slightly on edge and may not even notice it. Hyperarousal levels can also be as intense as full-blown panic attacks.

When you have insomnia and keep trying to control your sleep with supplements, medications, and whatever else, and they keep failing (because you can’t control or force sleep to happen), this leads to more and more frustration and higher hyperarousal levels.

Not to mention that this also tricks the brain into believing that the threat is even bigger than it initially thought and then strengthens the fight or flight system.

Some other ways hyperarousal can manifest are twitches, awareness of falling asleep, a sudden surge of energy, and sudden jolts that wake you up. You may notice that you have lots of energy during the day despite little sleep, and that’s because your hyperarousal levels are masking your sleepiness. 

You may experience racing thoughts or a state of half-wakefulness at night. Hyperarousal can also show up as vivid dreams and having to pee multiple times a night.

And as I mentioned earlier, you may not feel the hyperarousal or even realize that you are worried or fearing sleeplessness. You can still be experiencing a low-level hyperarousal, and you just don’t feel it.

The best thing to do is not to try to do anything about the hyperarousal. I know it is probably not the answer you would like, but it is the best way to reduce it.

If you try to reduce your hyperarousal levels with meditations or whatever else to try and force it to lower, the stronger it will get.

If you allow the hyperarousal to happen and just be with the symptoms, they will decrease with time. These are all messages from your brain, and if you try to ignore them, your brain will strengthen them to try to get you to hear them.

Just be with the symptoms and allow them to happen. You are safe, and the symptoms can’t hurt you, even panic attacks. These symptoms will fade away with time.

If you found this post helpful, check out my blog post, “The real reason you have insomnia.” for an even deeper understanding.