A common question I get asked is how to deal with relapses — what to do when insomnia
returns after a few nights, weeks, months, or even years of good sleep.
If you’re concerned about an insomnia relapse — or if you’re going through one right
now — stay tuned, because 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
So, before we start talking about how to respond to relapses, I think it’s worth spending
a little bit of time to explore what we mean by a relapse — since what I consider to
be a true relapse might be a little bit different to your own definition!
Many of us recognize that every day of our lives won’t always be fantastic, won’t
always be great, and won’t even always be good.
So, I think it makes sense to consider that every night of our lives won’t always be
fantastic, won’t always be great, and won’t always be good.
In other words, just as each day isn’t always as good as (or better than) the previous day,
each night won’t always be as good as (or better than) the previous night, either.
So, first and foremost, I think it’s helpful to recognize that difficult nights from time
to time are a part of life — just as difficult days from time to time are a part of life!
Nobody has a great night of sleep every single night of their lives.
A few difficult nights does not mean we are experiencing an insomnia relapse — it just
means we are experiencing a few difficult nights, which are a normal part of life and
a normal part of the human experience.
Sometimes there’s an obvious cause of sleep disruption — for example, we might receive
some news that leaves us worried or excited.
We might be going through a big life change, we might be traveling, we might be experiencing
some work stress.
The list goes on and on — there are probably as many triggers for sleep disruption as there
are people in the world.
If there is an obvious cause of sleep disruption and it’s something you can address, then
great — it’s worth addressing that problem.
But what if there’s no obvious cause (or the cause is something you can’t really
address)?
Well, here’s the thing — difficult nights themselves aren’t really the problem.
It’s our reaction to difficult nights that usually determines how long they’ll stick
around for.
When we don’t react much to difficult nights, we give sleep the opportunity to get right
back on track all by itself.
Now, by reaction, I am talking more about our behaviors rather than our thought processes.
I would never suggest anyone attempts to fight or avoid sleep-related thoughts that might
generate worry or anxiety — because it’s when we try to control our thoughts (or respond
to them in a way that leads to us to no longer do things that are important to us or to live
life in a way that’s not aligned with our values) that we often get caught up in them!
Thoughts are just thoughts, so they require no reaction beyond recognizing them as thoughts
— nothing more and nothing less.
In other words, it’s OK to feel worried and it’s OK to feel anxious — that just
means you are having thoughts, and that means you are a human being!
So, with that out of the way, let’s delve into the behavioral side of the equation when
it comes to reacting to the return of difficult nights.
Let’s say you are outside and on a walk.
You trip over.
You get up.
What do you do next?
Do you look around for the cause of the trip?
Do you start to worry if you can’t find an uneven paving slab or a misplaced rock
to blame for your fall?
Do you start to worry that you’ll probably fall over again if you continue walking?
Do you spend the rest of the day worrying that you’ll never be able to walk again
because you might trip?
Do you buy new shoes in a bid to reduce the risk of tripping over in the future?
Do you go online and research tripping and falling over and the best ways to recover
or avoid tripping or falling over?
Do you cancel plans with friends because those plans might involve walking or increase the
risk of falling over?
Do you only allow yourself to walk indoors where you have full control over the environment?
My guess is, you don’t do any of these things.
You trip, you maybe feel a bit hurt (or a bit embarrassed) and then you get on with
your day.
You get on with your life and recognize that you might trip again at some point in the
future, but that’s part of life and worth the risk in return for a life lived according
to your values.
And yet, if we have a history of insomnia, one difficult night (or a few difficult nights)
might be all that’s needed to bring back all our sleep-related worries, fears, and
unhelpful behaviors.
So, with this in mind, I believe the best response to an insomnia relapse is not to
respond at all — at least, in the short-term!
Continue going about your day as normal, avoid the temptation to go to bed earlier or stay
in bed later or to nap during the day.
Continue to do things that bring joy and enrichment to your life and refuse to allow concern about
sleep to control your life or your decisions.
In other words, avoid the temptation to modify your life or your routine in response to this
temporary sleep disruption.
If you do that, you give sleep the best opportunity possible to get right back on track all by
itself — and it will almost always do just that, if you can just avoid that completely
understandable temptation to get involved in the process, to put effort into sleep,
to try to control sleep, or to put pressure on yourself to sleep.
Now, let’s say that your sleep doesn’t seem to get right back on track all by itself
— even though you feel you haven’t made any changes since those difficult nights returned,
maybe you’ve found yourself struggling with sleep for a few weeks.
In this case, I’d suggest re-implementing any techniques you found helpful in the past.
If you’re a regular viewer of this channel, you know that I am a big believer in cognitive
and behavioral techniques such as sleep restriction and stimulus control.
If you’ve implemented techniques like these in the past (and found them helpful) then
you can simply implement them again — just as they proved to be helpful in the past,
they’ll almost certainly prove to be helpful again!
So, if you find that you are consistently spending too much time awake at night, you
might ensure that you aren’t allotting too much time for sleep each night.
If you find that you are tossing and turning all night and finding it really unpleasant
to be in bed, you might get out of bed whenever being in bed doesn’t feel good and do something
to help make that nighttime wakefulness a bit more pleasant until conditions for sleep
feel a bit better.
Perhaps the most important response to difficult nights, though, is going about our days as
normally as possible — because if we can live our lives as though insomnia doesn’t
exist, it often stops existing, because when we give sleep less of a role and less of an
influence in our lives, we often start to put less effort into sleep, put less pressure
on ourselves to sleep and allow the body to take care of sleep all by itself — which
is exactly what it wants to do.
So I hope you found this short video helpful.
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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!