Sleep Performance Anxiety: When Trying to Sleep Keeps You Awake
Sleep performance anxiety is perhaps the most paradoxical form of sleep difficulty: the harder you try to fall asleep the more awake you become. This occurs because sleep is an involuntary process tha...
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Sleep performance anxiety is perhaps the most paradoxical form of sleep difficulty: the harder you try to fall asleep the more awake you become. This occurs because sleep is an involuntary process that cannot be achieved through effort. When you try to force sleep you activate the exact cognitive and physiological systems that need to deactivate for sleep to occur. Your monitoring system scans for signs of drowsiness, your analytical mind evaluates whether you are relaxed enough, and the resulting mental activity maintains the cortical arousal that prevents sleep onset. Sleep performance anxiety is particularly common in people who have experienced a period of insomnia and developed a belief that falling asleep requires special effort or technique. The irony is that the techniques and tools they adopt become yet more sources of performance pressure.
The Paradox of Sleep Effort
Research has shown that sleep effort, the degree to which someone tries to control their sleep, is one of the strongest predictors of insomnia severity. This is because effort implies a goal and goals activate the prefrontal cortex which maintains arousal. Sleep occurs not when you achieve it but when you allow it. This distinction between achieving and allowing is the key insight for overcoming sleep performance anxiety.
Building Trust in Your Sleep System
Your body has been successfully putting itself to sleep every night of your entire life. The sleep system is robust and self-correcting. Even after a terrible night your body will compensate with deeper more efficient sleep the following night. Building trust in this natural system means gradually releasing the belief that you need to manage your sleep and instead trusting that sleep will come when the conditions are right and you stop interfering with the process.
Practical Tips
Practice Paradoxical Intention
Instead of trying to sleep gently try to stay awake with your eyes open in the dark. This removes the performance pressure and often leads to rapid sleep onset.
Redefine Success
Instead of measuring success by how quickly you fall asleep measure it by how relaxed your body feels. Relaxation is achievable through effort. Sleep follows naturally.
Let Go of Techniques
If your arsenal of sleep techniques has become a source of pressure, simplify. Sometimes just lying comfortably with no agenda is more effective than running through a checklist.
Accept That Some Nights Will Be Difficult
Acceptance reduces the resistance that maintains arousal. Knowing that one difficult night is manageable and temporary removes the catastrophic stakes.
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