Do you struggle with paradoxical insomnia, or sleep state misperception?
Are you convinced that you’re not getting any sleep whatsoever for days or weeks at
a time?
Have you ever felt as though time flew by during the nights as you laid in bed?
Perhaps you’ve had a bed partner who tells you they saw you sleeping when you were sure
that you were awake?
The good news is, this isn’t uncommon and there are some things you can do to help you
recognize when you’re asleep and when you’re awake — and this is what I’m going to
be talking about in today’s video.
Hi, I'm Martin Reed.
If you have insomnia, I offer sleep coaching programs that will give you all the skills
and support you need to enjoy better sleep for the rest of your life.
You can learn more at insomniacoach.com
Now research shows that people with chronic insomnia often underestimate how much sleep
they’re getting.
So, someone with insomnia might think it’s taking them longer to fall asleep than it
actually is and they might get more sleep than they think they’re getting.
This sleep state misperception — not knowing when or if you are awake or asleep — is
often driven by arousal, and this makes sense when you consider that people who don’t
pay any attention to sleep, who spend no time thinking or worrying about sleep, tend to
assume that they’re asleep for almost the entire time they’re in bed.
People with chronic insomnia, however, often spend a lot of time thinking and worrying
about sleep — not just during the day, but at night, too.
Now, this activates the arousal system and can make sleep more difficult.
It might then take longer to fall asleep, we might wake more frequently during the night,
spend more time awake during the night, self-monitor for sleep, and feel fatigued during the day.
All these consequences can lead us to believe that we’re getting less sleep than we actually
are, and this can perpetuate the problem.
So, what can you do if you think you might be experiencing paradoxical insomnia or this
sleep state misperception?
Well, I think that figuring out how to reduce worry is a good place to start!
Something really quick and easy you can do is not check the time during the night!
When you check the time, you activate the arousal system since you now have to process
this new information and respond to the worry this information often generates — especially
when it comes to how long it might be taking you to fall asleep or how much time you have
left before your alarm is going to go off.
Secondly, recognize that self-monitoring might be playing a role.
When we monitor for sleep or for the effect of sleep, we might notice or pick up on things
that could lead us to believe sleep didn’t happen or was insufficient.
For example, if we feel groggy and lethargic when we get out of bed in the morning, we
might think this is down to insufficient sleep — when that might not be the case.
When we self-monitor, we become far more likely to notice things that might otherwise have
gone completely unnoticed — for example, puffy eyes, wrinkles, aching muscles, etc.
Similarly, if we make a mistake at work or experience a bad day, we might conclude that
we didn’t get enough sleep.
On this note, since a lot of sleep-related worry and arousal stems from concern about
what the next day will be like if we can’t fall asleep or fall back to sleep, it can
be really helpful to give yourself the opportunity to recognize how much control YOU have over
the quality of your day and how little control insomnia has by engaging in enjoyable, enriching
activities as often as possible.
So, as you’ve probably picked up on by now, worry, anxiety, and arousal are likely to
be big drivers of sleep state misperception.
With this in mind, we can see that taking steps to strengthen the body’s own biological
mechanisms for sleep might help overpower the arousal system, improve sleep, and help
reduce sleep state misperception, this paradoxical insomnia.
This means that, once again, we return to the evidence-based cognitive and behavioral
techniques I talk about a lot on this channel!
So, allotting an appropriate amount of time for sleep by observing a consistent and appropriate
sleep window with a regular final out of bed time in the morning can be really helpful
for the body clock, while building sleep drive to help you fall asleep faster and spend less
time awake at night.
Often, the quicker you fall asleep at the start of the night, the easier it can be to
recognize sleep is happening because when we wake during the lightest stage of sleep
it does often feel as though we were still awake.
Ultimately, the less you worry about sleep, the less attention you pay to sleep, the less
you monitor for sleep (and for the effects of sleep) the easier sleep will be and the
better able you might be to feel the difference between sleep and wakefulness — but really,
perhaps the real goal should be not even caring or paying any attention to how much sleep
you’re getting.
If you can get to that point, that’s when you know that you’re truly leaving insomnia
behind for good.
So I hope you found this short video helpful.
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I do try to share some new sleep snippet videos every week.
If you have any questions, comments, feedback, or suggestions for a future video, please
leave a comment below or you can email me directly.
My email address is hello@insomniacoach.com.
Thanks for watching, and — as always — I'd like to leave you with this important reminder.
You can sleep!