How to get back to sleep

Daniel Erichsen
Nov 5 · 2 min read

One of the most common questions someone with insomnia has is what to do when waking up at night. It’s often a camouflaged way of asking how one can get back to sleep. Or even more bluntly put — what can you do to make yourself fall asleep again.

There’s a lot you can do to sleep better and better until you have no insomnia at all. And we will get to some of those things in a second. But first, and this is very important, there is nothing you can do to produce sleep.

The fact that you can’t do anything to make yourself sleep may sound discouraging, but looked at from another angle, this knowledge can be very empowering.

Imagine trying to change the weather. As this is impossible any effort would simply lead to disappointment and frustration. Now why is it that few people are annoyed by not being able to change the weather? We know we can’t. Knowledge and insight is empowering.

This said — what should one do when waking up in the middle of the night?

It really all depends on how you feel. If you feel comfortable and thinking of something pleasant comes easy to you — stay in bed. You’re likely to fall back asleep soon.

If you on the other hand find it impossible to think of something pleasant, if you start getting frustrated then you need to distract yourself. You can stay in bed as long as you can do something like reading a book, listening to a podcast or watching TV and this takes your mind off sleep.

Wait, you may think, isn’t that going to wake me up?

A very common fear is that watching TV is alerting and will cause more difficulties sleeping. Here’s the insight; it is the fear of losing sleep and the attempts at protecting sleep by not doing something that is distracting that is the problem.

Studies have shown that screens and light have no impact on insomnia. Being afraid of losing sleep because of light or screens on the other hand produces a lot of trouble sleeping. Distraction from the fear of losing sleep and thinking about sleep overall is the key not only to falling back asleep — but to completely getting past insomnia as well.

In summary — when you wake up at night, let the knowledge that it is impossible to produce sleep keep you from getting frustrated, distract yourself by thinking of something pleasant or if not possible do something you enjoy.

And when you get to a place of not only not being afraid of waking up, but even looking forward to having some time to read a great book, it will no longer happen.

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