How to rebuild trust in our ability to sleep

Hello there!

I wanted to share with you a slightly different (well, not too different) perspective one can adopt for their insomnia recovery journey.

So far, we've mostly talked about how we can change our attitude towards wakefulness at night and remove the pressure from sleep so that we no longer fear it. And that’s one angle of looking at it. There is another angle that can help you arrive at the place where you want to be.

Let’s start from the very beginning.

Trust issues

When we begin to struggle with insomnia, our trust in our body's ability to sleep is significantly shaken. We feel lost and scared because the thing that has been so reliable all these years suddenly seems incredibly difficult, foreign, and unintuitive. It may even make us feel like the process of sleeping doesn't make sense anymore. Have you ever asked yourself, “How the hell did I manage to do it so effortlessly before?”

The lack of trust in our body is another way to describe insomnia. We all have felt that, and the logical step here is to start rebuilding that trust. When we no longer question this ability, take our hands off the steering wheel, and let the body do what it needs to do, whenever it needs to do it, sleep becomes easier again.

So, how do we get our trust back?

Gradually.

Think of it as domesticating a wild animal. It’s going to be shy and scared at first. As we begin to welcome and feed the animal, it’s still going to be very suspicious. With time, it might start cautiously approaching us, grabbing the treat, and then quickly leaving. That’s expected. With time and patience, and never with force, the animal becomes more and more comfortable around us.

Similarly, with our trust. At first, we might feel like our ability to sleep is gone completely. When we think of it this way, of course, it makes us scared and desperate.

But here's the good news: the ability as such has never left us. It’s still here, safe and sound.

When we begin to understand better what is going on with us, we might start seeing some glimpses lasting a couple of days, maybe hours, or even minutes. Then our worries and fears come back. That’s normal.

To rebuild the trust, we need to start collecting evidence that our body is capable of producing sleep without our conscious involvement.

How to start building trust

🤔 “But how do I do that, if I haven’t yet had a normal night?”

You are right. We can’t start with something big that’s not yet here. It's like expecting a wild animal to start playing with you right away.

Sometimes, we really want to get evidence of something, but that thing doesn’t seem to happen:

👉 “If only I were able to fall back asleep after waking up, then I would know that I can sleep.”
👉 “If only I had a night when I didn’t experience fear, then I would feel more confident.”
👉 “If only I had one good day after no sleep, then I would feel differently.”
👉 “If only I had 2 good weeks in a row, then I would be convinced that I can break my yo-yo pattern.”

I’ve been there, and for a long time, I tried to get the experience I wanted, only to find myself frustrated.

We can’t produce the experience that we want at will; we need to start with the evidence that is already here. And slowly go from there. We need to see any experience, as small as it might be for now, as proof that the body knows what to do. It might not be something huge now, but it’s not nothing.

For example, a person has been struggling with not being able to fall asleep, and every time they feel like sleep is happening, they suddenly become hyperalert and awake. We can discard this experience as a failure to fall asleep, or we can see that brief moment of drifting off as evidence that the body is initiating sleep. And while it hasn’t yet translated into a full transition, it is trying, which means the ability is there (it can’t not be!).

Or we had one amazing night, but then the next night was rough again. It’s natural to feel upset about it and try to find out what went wrong. But this perspective doesn’t bring us closer to trusting our body. What we can do is to see that one night as proof that such a possibility is not off the table, and if it happened once, it can happen again. We might not know when and how it will happen, but we know that our body is capable of producing such peaceful sleep.

Maybe we feel like we didn’t sleep at all last night, but we remember a dream. What stops us from using it as evidence that sleep did happen, since dreams only occur during sleep, even if it didn’t feel like the usual sleep?

Maybe we had a great stretch for a week or a month of perfect sleep, but then fear kicked in, and we feel wired again. Why not view that good stretch as proof that it’s possible for our body to produce sleep for a longer time?

The key here is not just to collect evidence that we can trust our body but also not to insist that since we have that evidence, it has to happen now. We only recognize that what once felt impossible now becomes a very real possibility.

If we pair this recovery perspective with working on accepting the moments when we are awake, it can greatly facilitate our journey and help us feel supported.

Remember, trust doesn’t come back all at once. It will be elusive for a while and take time to become our natural state.

I hope this letter has brought you some value and comfort. ❤️

See you next time!

Ali