Insomnia
“Most days it feels like I just can’t drift off to sleep, I get frustrated at being awake, I toss and turn and ask myself why I can’t just fall asleep? It’s horrible and I even find myself worrying in the day, like what if I don’t get to sleep tonight” If this resonates, it doesn’t mean you’re broken or stuck like this forever. Insomnia is very treatable — especially with CBT-I, implementing gradual, supported behavioural/cognitive techniques and re-engaging your biological and neuro-chemical signals for rapid sleep onset, and sometimes EMDR/ACT, depending on what’s driving it.
What is Insomnia?
Insomnia isn’t just “having a bad night’s sleep.”
It’s more like:
“Sleep has become a struggle — I can’t fall asleep, stay asleep, or get restful sleep… and the knock-on effects are starting to affect my days.”
The problem is about sleep drive vs. arousal (wired-but-tired)
The sleeplessness isn’t random — it’s often tied to thoughts like:
“What if I don’t sleep and tomorrow is ruined?”
“What if I’m broken / this will never improve?”
“I need to fall asleep right now.”
“Why can’t I just switch off like everyone else?”
So the core problem is often a cycle: worry + effort + clock-watching → your body goes into alert mode → sleep becomes harder → you try even harder next night, and the cycle continues.
You might be dealing with insomnia if you notice a pattern like:
“Most nights I’m lying there trying to sleep, but my brain won’t switch off.”
“I’m exhausted all day, then wired at night.”
“I watch the clock and panic about how little sleep I’m getting.”
“I dread bedtime because I expect another battle.”
“I try really hard to ‘make sleep happen’ — but it backfires.”
“I cancel things or rely on caffeine/naps just to get through.”
Even if you’re not sure your symptoms hit all criteria, those patterns are still worth support.
It’s messing with your everyday life
Insomnia becomes clinically significant when it causes distress or impairment, such as:
fatigue, low energy, headaches
poor concentration, memory, slower thinking
irritability, anxiety, low mood
reduced performance at work/study
less motivation for exercise and social life
feeling dependent on naps/caffeine/alcohol to cope
Increased appetite for junk food
These situations almost always trigger the spiral
Not every single time — but typically, bedtime, night waking, naps, sleeping in, stressful periods, travel, early mornings, and big next-day plans trigger the “threat mode” response: tension, racing thoughts, restlessness, and hyper-awareness of sleep.
You start changing your habits, trying to control sleep, or pushing through exhausted
People often cope by:
going to bed earlier, lying in longer, or napping to try to catch up on sleep
only feeling able to sleep if certain conditions are in place (someone nearby, the “right” routine, specific sounds, supplements, checking the time, reassurance that tomorrow will be manageable)
getting through the day, but in distress (fatigue, irritability, brain fog, dread about the next night, relying on caffeine, feeling “wired and tired”)
It feels bigger than the actual night
A key part of insomnia is that the impact of a bad night can start to feel out of proportion to what’s realistically happening — even one rough night can make tomorrow feel doomed.
It’s not “dramatic.” Your nervous system starts treating sleeplessness like a threat, so your brain goes into monitoring mode: What if I don’t sleep? What if tomorrow is a mess? What if this never gets better? That pressure keeps sleep feeling high-stakes.
It’s been going on for a while
In DSM-5 terms, insomnia disorder involves difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking too early, with the problem happening at least 3 nights a week for at least 3 months, despite having enough opportunity to sleep.
And it tends to become a pattern: the sleep problem repeats, the worry about sleep grows, and it starts affecting mood, concentration, energy, confidence, and daily functioning.
It’s messing with your everyday life
For a provisional DSM-5 insomnia disorder diagnosis, the sleep problem needs to cause meaningful distress or impairment — meaning it noticeably gets in the way of things like:
daytime energy (fatigue, exhaustion, feeling unrefreshed)
concentration and memory (brain fog, slower thinking, forgetfulness)
work/study (reduced performance, mistakes, struggling to keep up)
mood (irritability, lower frustration tolerance, feeling more anxious or flat)
relationships (snappiness, withdrawing, not having the energy to engage)
daily life admin (chores, emails, errands, appointments feeling harder to manage)
motivation and coping (less resilience, everything feeling more effortful)
confidence about sleep (dreading nights, worrying about how you’ll function tomorrow)