Worry About Sleep During the Day and Sleep Anxiety.

Worry about Sleep During the Day and Sleep Anxiety

Someone asked me in one of my posts this week if I could talk about sleep anxiety. 

What a perfect topic to write about because if you have insomnia, you experience some level of sleep anxiety, and you are not alone with this one.

So why not write a blog post about sleep anxiety so that it can help everyone? Plus, I want to add the topic of worrying about sleep at night during the day.

What you are experiencing is a lot of fear about sleeplessness …duh! 🤪

You are likely having many persistent thoughts throughout the day about worrying whether you will sleep at night or how much sleep you will get.

Your hyperarousal levels are up,  and you experience sleep anxiety and all the symptoms that go with it.

The best way I can explain everything here is with the trouble and desire model, which is taught in depth inside my Sleep Makeover program.

Here’s a basic overview because I would need a whole blog post alone for just the trouble and desire model.

Basically, the more you desire and feel desperate for sleep, the more you will try to control and force sleep to happen (which is impossible, by the way). You will keep trying more and more things to try and find the one magical thing that works for you. I did that!

Remember, we can’t control or force sleep to happen, so all these attempts lead to more and more failure and more and more frustration. We end up losing a lot of sleep.

As your frustration levels increase more and more, you develop sleep anxiety.

The more desperately you want sleep to happen now, the more you will attempt to try to fix your sleep and then end up sleeping less.

Every time you go through a cycle of desperate attempts to control sleep, which leads to failure and frustration, you are strengthening the fight or flight system. Your brain is confused and thinks there is a threat out there, and this is because of all your fear and attempts to escape sleeplessness.

You need only two things to be able to sleep and overcome your insomnia; a high sleep drive and no hyperarousal levels.

Sleep drive is basically how sleepy you are. The longer you are awake, the sleepier you are. Don’t get confused when you feel wide awake from all the stress, anxiety, and frustration with sleep. The sleepiness is there, but it is being masked.

Insomnia is rarely a sleep drive issue unless you nap a lot during the day, which reduces your sleep drive.

The other thing that you need is not to have any hyperarousal levels. Hyperarousal is that heightened state of alertness you feel from stress, worry, puzzlement, and just all the different emotions and thoughts that show up when you have insomnia.

Another issue you might be experiencing is having thoughts all day like “Am I going to sleep tonight?”, “What if I don’t sleep?”, “How will I get through the next day if I don’t sleep?” “How am I going to take care of the kids on so little sleep” “When will I finally overcome insomnia?” 

These thoughts are normal when you have insomnia. Insomnia can affect your entire day if you let it. Your brain is trying to keep you safe by problem-solving and trying to fix your insomnia.

This all starts from the fear of sleeplessness. The fear is what we need to reduce and get over. Otherwise, our brain will continue to believe there is a threat out there, and the insomnia cycle will continue.

The more we fear sleeplessness, the more we will keep reinforcing to the brain that there is a threat out there even though there isn’t.

When we can overcome that fear, we teach the brain that there isn’t a threat out there. 

You can do this by allowing wakefulness to happen and turning it into a joyful experience. Since you can’t force sleep to happen, you might as well enjoy it. This is the way to overcome insomnia.

Instead of trying to escape sleeplessness (since it is impossible) and trying to fight it, just be ok with it. It is your reality at the moment that you can’t change, and remember that it is only temporary.

One way to help reduce your fear is by proving to yourself that you can make it through the day with little to no sleep. You have already done it many times successfully. I’m sure you didn’t feel 100%, but you did it. You didn’t lose your job. You successfully took care of your kids and survived.

Knowing that you will get through the day and have done it successfully every time so far takes away some of the pressure and fear.

Obviously, you don’t want to be like that forever, but you know that for now, you can do this.

This is going to help you just to be okay with where you are at for now. 

This is not giving up on sleeping well ever again; it is quite the opposite. It is a way to teach your brain that you are safe so that you will eventually start to sleep more again. 

It also helps to remove that pressure to sleep. All the pressure we put on ourselves to sleep will only increase our hyperarousal levels and make it so we can’t sleep, and that’s exactly what we don’t want.

The best thing to do is just let go of that control. We can't control sleep.

All the different products and things out there for sleep trick us into believing that you can control sleep when it is impossible. 

We just need to get out of the way of our own sleep system .

You are already doing this by reading this blog post and learning about insomnia, the insomnia cycle, and how to overcome it. You are doing awesome, and I just want you to know that you are already well ahead of most insomniacs.

Don’t forget to give yourself lots of self-kindness and compassion.

There is a lot of misinformation out there, and it takes time, but you will get there, I promise you. 

So that’s it. Let me know if you have any questions.

If you want to learn more about the real reason you have insomnia, I recommend my blog post, “The REAL Reason You Have Insomnia.”