[anxious-drift]

Hi,

Important preface: I am asking particularly about sleep deprivation **caused by anxiety alone** and nothing else. I’m assuming all the other factors are in place: good sleep hygiene, exercise, diet, etc. but it’s just the anxiety of insomnia that is causing sleep deprivation.

How long can *anxiety alone* keep you from falling asleep? Can you reach a point where you develop hallucinations from not being able to sleep due to anxiety? Or does the body just decide to drift away into sleep at some point however anxious you might have been?

I keep reading articles on the web about how not sleeping 48 hours could cause hallucinations and loss of cognitive abilities. But they never state the cause of sleep deprivation. Was it self induced with coffee or other drugs? Was the victim willingly choosing to not fall asleep? Can the body really choose to not sleep (even when given sufficient chances) until the point of psychosis? Also if you have any sources for this please share it (my anxious brain will thank you for it!)

Thank you

[Martin Reed]

I am yet to meet someone with chronic insomnia who doesn’t identify anxiety as something that is making things more difficult.

Anxiety can definitely make sleep more difficult but it cannot prevent sleep from happening indefinitely because sleep always happens once we’ve been awake for long enough.

What often makes things more difficult are all our understandable attempts to fight or avoid anxiety — because then we are engaged in a war with our minds (a war our mind will always win) and conditions for sleep are probably less favorable if our mind thinks we are currently engaged in a battle.

One thing to be mindful of is that sleep deprivation is not the same as chronic insomnia — and no studies have found chronic insomnia causes any health problem whatsoever.

I hope there’s something useful here.

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[anxious-drift]

That video hit the nail on the head. This is exactly what I have been looking for. Thank you Martin!

[Author]

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