[Anniem4]

Hi, does anyone have an experience or an advice to offer on how to deal with hyperarousal and hypnic awareness when trying to fall asleep? I have been dealing with this for a month already, but I had a couple of weeks there when I slept completely fine. But this past week it’s been getting out of hand. Whenever I feel like I’m starting to drift off, my brain registers it and sends a huge surge of adrenaline which keeps me awake. As a result, I’ve been sleeping only around 3-4 hours a night this past week and it’s starting to really wear on me as I need to function through the day. I was just trying to ignore it at the beginning and didn’t feel much nervous, but now I’m starting to grow really frustrated by the idea of another sleepless night. Any advice or even words of consolation would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Chee2308]

Hello and welcome.

So what are you worried about? Isn’t falling asleep what you want?So why does an adrenaline rush happen when you’re trying to make that happen anyways? Does that make any sense?

I think you really need to engage more deeply with yourself on the matter. Find out what you are truly afraid of. What’s the worst that can happen if you can’t fall asleep anyways? Entertain that outcome. Don’t push it away or try to avoid it. Avoiding doesn’t help you overcome your fears. It just makes them worse.

Once the fear of not sleeping well and/or its consequences are taken care of, then perhaps sleep will happen more easily. Sleep is only more likely to happen in a calm and relaxed state of mind and body. Worry and fear won’t help in any way, but they only make it worse so it’s neither productive nor reasonable to live in a constant state of panic and fear all the time without addressing them proactively and adequately.

Best wishes to you and I hope you find your calm and peace soon.

[Anniem4]

Thank you so much for your reply! I wish I could answer those questions, the illogicality of it is what in part makes it so frustrating. It’s as if my brain was so focused on the sleep happening that when it, in fact, starts to happen, it says to me “here we come, it’s finally here, we’re starting to fall asleep” and that wakes me up again. I completely agree with the rest of what you said, but my subconsciousness hasn’t yet come to the same conclusion. But hopefully it will get there at some point.

[Chee2308]

In my experience, the trick is tricking the brain into thinking insomnia is not a problem. Not sleeping well temporarily isn’t a problem. Everyone has insomnia. You too must have had insomnia countless times when you were young as a child. But you never thought there was a problem then. So how come has your mind suddenly thought there’s a problem now? So what changed? And what didn’t change? You have to find out the answers yourself. This is battle often fought alone. We can only provide some advice and guidance here but ultimately, it will be up to you how you approach the issue.

Trying to fix insomnia will never fix it, you only get stuck in a endless battle ending with perpetual dissatisfaction over it. You have to not fix it because trying to fix the problem actually becomes the problem itself. Leave insomnia alone until it leaves you alone. Essentially, what insomnia actually is losing some sleep over sleep. So how to stop this? Well, don’t worry about sleep. That’s when everything starts calming down and things start getting better.

Good luck.

[Anniem4]

Yeah, I’m going to try working on my attitude towards not sleeping, hopefully it’ll help. Thank you for your time and answers!

[ccummins]

“Leave insomnia alone until it leaves you alone” – you have put it so succinctly Chee, thank you!

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