On fear of fear (or anxiety about anxiety)
The trap of many insomniacs
Hi friend, it’s a super confusing topic to talk about but I will try. Many people have asked me the same question and I decided to share my thoughts on it.
Fear of fear, or anxiety about anxiety – the stickiest trap we can get to during insomnia. And we want to get out of it, don’t we?
Where that fear of fear comes from?
When we begin the recovery journey one of the first things we learn is that insomnia is the fear of sleeplessness. You may also encounter it as “hyperarosual“, “desire to control the outcome“, “problem-solving“, “feeling unsafe“, “conditioned response“ etc. – it’s all the same thing. Simply put: “I should be asleep now, but I’m not – and I don’t like it”.
To beginners: I really encourage you to watch this video in case you haven’t. It explains in detail what insomnia is.
Very quickly the mind figures out: “aha, since anxiety is the problem here, I need to get rid of it first and then I will sleep okay.”
If you found yourself thinking that, you are most likely in a trap.
But don’t worry, I’ve been there too (not anymore), and I have a few thoughts to share...
The impossible “fear of fear” loop
When we begin struggling with sleep, it is one thing. When we add to it the task of solving anxiety once and for all – the problem acquires a new depth. Instead of sleeplessness being the only “enemy“, we have now two – “sleeplessness“ and “anxiety”. When we have two enemies to fight, we won’t get anywhere. (None of them are enemies in reality, btw!)
The brain gets a command: “Watch out for sleeplessness and any sign of anxiety!”, and we begin to feel scared of any sensations, thoughts or emotions that happen to us automatically… Paradoxically, we start to react to them with more sensations, thoughts and emotions. That’s when the loop closes.
Identifying anxiety as an enemy, or a problem to solve, is the vicious cycle that is much harder to break. Way harder than focusing on sleep alone.
Don’t demonize anxiety
Fear, worry, anxiety are just a signal from the brain – it’s neither bad nor good. Its purpose is to inform us about a possible danger. Removing that feature of the brain to alarm us is neither possible nor reasonable because we still want to stay alert when there is a real danger.
Of course, since our brain doesn’t see the difference between real and not real threats, anxiety that came from a perceived threat is unnecessary suffering. Nevertheless, anxiety is not a bad guy, it’s a byproduct! Fighting with it is pointless at best, it’s the aftertaste of the uninvestigated beliefs.
Another way to put is that solving fear about fear is like fighting with your own shadow. That’s the game you can’t win. So when we say “how do I stop getting triggered by fear?”, we actually mean: “how can I never fear again? how can I never feel anxious?”
But is there a person on this planet who has never felt anxious or scared in their life? Is it really possible? I don’t think so.
That said, when I encountered this issue, I haven’t found the way out in continuing to work with anxiety alone. I tried to read Clair Weekes about her great outlook on anxiety and the fear of it, but found myself having more anxiety than before. Solving “anxiety about anxiety” made me stuck. I felt angry and frustrated for making things worse… until I told myself: “screw anxiety, I’m not gonna focus on it now. I’m gonna shift my focus back on my sleep situation“.
Shift back from two to one goal
That’s when changes started to happen for me: with that mental refocus on the source of insomnia, I noticed the gradual reduction in anxiety too without trying to solve it! No longer was I triggered by anxiety itself because it was not a priority for me anymore.
I divorced anxiety from a sleep outcome and it helped me feel more free.
I kept showing the brain that wakefulness isn’t a threat (I dedicate to this topic most of my videos) and forgot about solving anxiety itself.
Pretty soon I witnessed that the connection between anxiety and sleep wasn’t that strong as I thought. Sometimes I could feel anxious and sleep anyway, while sometimes I could be super calm and not sleep even a bit.
That’s when I realized: “I don’t have to get rid of anxiety to sleep!”. It can happen regardless of my inner state. That realization led me to more peace and sleep. The spell of “fear of fear“ was broken without me working directly with it.
Now, don’t get me wrong: anxiety can disrupt sleep, I don’t argue with that at all! But what I invite you to challenge is the belief that anxiety always results in a sleepless night. If that was true, then literally every anxious person should be a chronic insomniac, but we don’t see that happening! That belief is what often produces more anxiety and makes us hypervigilant to any sign of fear.
Trace back to the source
What could help is to recognize if the current “anxiety about anxiety” problem was created in response to dealing with insomnia. If that is the case, then fear of sleeplessness and fear of fear in that context are not two separate issues.
The only reason we learned to fear anxiety is because we believe that if we have it we can’t sleep. Which is not entirely true!
And it seems to me that bringing our focus away from anxiety about anxiety back to where that anxiety originally came from (fear of sleeplessness) can help us move forward on our journey.
Now ,some of you may say: “so you are saying I shouldn’t address my anxiety as such?“. There is nothing wrong with alleviating the suffering from anxiety, my point is that as long as the sleep is somewhere in the equation we are gonna keep getting stuck in the infinite loop of fighting our shadow.
Take care <3
Alina
DISCLAIMER: Not medical advice. Everything in this newsletter and website represents personal opinion and experience and is provided for informational purposes only. The author is not a medical doctor, psychotherapist or any other licensed professional. Any information provided by the author does not constitute and/or substitute medical, psychotherapy, counselling or any other professional advice and treatment. It is not intended to treat, cure, diagnose any medical or psychological condition or disorder. Always seek professional licensed help if you have any health concerns.