Why fighting wakefulness doesn’t fix insomnia

When we begin struggling with insomnia, our usual go-to reaction is to try and get things under control as soon as possible. We begin to add more pressure and effort – which often exacerbates fear and creates more difficulty sleeping.

And usually, in that state of desperately looking for answers, the idea of stopping trying so hard to sleep and letting go of fixing things may sound nonsensical and almost reckless.

“How can I not be afraid of this horrible experience? Why should I stop fighting it? I need to fight it. I have no option.”

I deeply understand this perspective, as I used to feel that way as well. This is why I don’t expect anyone who’s new to the recovery process to instantly abandon that perspective.

But I’d like to begin to challenge the idea that fighting wakefulness is necessary to sleep better and make the case that, while completely understandable, this approach isn’t giving us what we want.

Wanting to get better is normal

Of course you want to try your best to get better – who wouldn’t? I certainly would!

But this is what often happens: we go through many, many solutions. Some of them don’t work right away, while others may work until they stop working. That’s the sad reality of problem-solving sleep.

Your desire to get sleep under control isn’t unreasonable, but the effort to control it is hardly effective. And here’s why.

Sleep doesn’t come through effort

Wanting to sleep is normal, but trying to produce sleep through force and effort is where we hit a wall. No matter what we do or how much we want it, sleep isn’t something we directly control. It’s an autonomous process performed by our body.

Even people without insomnia don’t control their sleep mechanism – sleep happens on its own.

When we begin to struggle with insomnia, that’s one of the hardest things to truly accept. I remember intellectually getting the premise, but there was always this nagging idea that maybe there was something I could do to make sleep happen. I wanted to keep trying more strategies, tinkering with the outcome – I didn’t want to suffer…

What we can change

I want to clarify the idea of having no control. There are some things we can do that may influence how our night goes. We can create adequate and reasonable conditions that are more sleep-friendly, but we can’t control the outcome itself.

We can probably all agree that sleeping with the lights off is more comfortable than with the lights on. Or that a quieter environment is less likely to disturb us than a noisy one.

So we can take reasonable steps to make our sleep conditions more comfortable, but we can’t command when sleep comes, how long it stays or how deep it is. That’s our body’s job to figure out. And it appears that our body already knows how to do that.

But when we begin fighting with sleep and wakefulness, things become more complicated.

How fighting sleeplessness interferes with sleep

When we treat sleep disruption as a threat that needs to be eliminated urgently, our nervous system becomes activated and we become hyperaroused.

Our brain acts as if there is a threat to deal with and prioritizes safety over rest – which is ironic considering that we are trying to sleep.

So we begin to closely monitor the passive process of sleep, which naturally isn’t meant to be closely observed: Am I sleepy yet? Is this working? Why am I still awake? How long has it been?

When we realize that despite our focused attempts to make sleep happen, sleep feels even more elusive, we start worrying and trying even harder. That activates us further, creating even more pressure around sleep.

That’s how we can get locked in a worry cycle:

Wakefulness → “threat” label → effort and monitoring → more arousal → more wakefulness → more fear and effort

And it doesn’t matter what caused the original sleep disruption – the fact that we are fighting it can become a stand-alone problem.

“But sleep is important. Shouldn’t I fight for it?”

Sometimes a person isn’t convinced that insomnia can be maintained “simply” by fearing sleeplessness. Or they may firmly believe that insomnia isn’t just a perceived threat and will inevitably lead to some catastrophic future, which is why they feel they have to keep fighting it.

I addressed some of these concerns in a different article, but for the sake of this argument, let’s grant the premise completely: suppose all of that were true.

Now what?

Does believing that sleeplessness is unacceptable help us sleep? Does holding on to the fight against sleeplessness make sleep more likely? And no matter what we believe about insomnia, does adding more fear and pressure actually make things easier?

We can care deeply about sleep without fighting with wakefulness. In fact, if fighting means more monitoring, pressure, frustration and hyperarousal, then wouldn’t it be a self-defeating strategy anyway?

That was something I eventually had to recognize in my own recovery. I could continue wrestling with wakefulness and actively hating insomnia because I desperately wanted to sleep, but the wrestling wasn’t getting me where I wanted to be.

And even if acceptance doesn’t miraculously fix our sleep – and it makes no such promise – reducing the fight at least means we stop adding more pressure to an already challenging situation.

Reducing the fight with wakefulness is simply withdrawing from a clearly ineffective and unsustainable strategy, but it isn’t giving up on ourselves or our sleep.