Ep 67. Why You Get Wired at Bedtime (Encore)

In this episode,  I dive into the surprising reason your brain won’t let you sleep at night, even when nothing is actually wrong.

You’ll learn:
 

• Why insomnia is rooted in survival, not broken sleep
  
  

• How wakefulness becomes linked with fear
  
  

• The role hyperarousal plays in keeping the cycle alive
  
  

• The difference between real danger and perceived threat
  
  

• Why trying to fix sleep often backfires
  
  

• How understanding the brain supports real, lasting recovery
   

This conversation reveals how perceived danger, NOT wakefulness itself, keeps insomnia going, and how neuroplasticity allows the brain to unlearn  fear and return to sleep naturally. 

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Transcript Below 👇🏼

About Beth Kendall MA, FNTP:

For decades, Beth struggled with the relentless grip of insomnia. After finally understanding insomnia from a mind-body perspective, she changed her relationship with sleep, and completely recovered. Liberated from the constant worry of not sleeping, she’s on a mission to help others recover as well. Her transformative program Mind. Body. Sleep.® has been a beacon of light for hundreds of others seeking solace from sleepless nights. 
 

DISCLAIMER: The podcasts available on this website have been produced for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. The contents of this podcast do not constitute medical or professional advice. No person listening to and/or viewing any podcast from this website should act or refrain from acting on the basis of the content of a podcast without first seeking appropriate professional advice and/or counseling, nor shall the information be used as a substitute for professional advice and/or counseling. The Mind. Body. Sleep.® Podcast expressly disclaims any and all liability relating to any actions taken or not taken based on any or all contents of this site as there are no assurance as to any particular outcome.

Insomnia, Hyperarousal, and the Brain’s

Perceived Danger Response 

A Personal Update: Joining the Peloton Revolution

Today we are talking fundamentals — or at least one of the fundamentals of my approach to insomnia. But first, I have to tell you, because this is really big news, that I have joined the Peloton Revolution.

If you're not familiar with Peloton, it is a company that sells exercise equipment. And I bought one of their stationary bikes a while back. It's quite nice. It has this big screen attached to it that you can join classes on with all of these great instructors without ever having to leave your home, which is pretty amazing when you live in the Arctic of Minnesota.

But this is newsworthy for a couple of reasons. The first is I've never really been a big biking fan. It's just never really been my thing. So I ordered this Peloton bike a while back, and I was pretty skeptical that I would like it, but it had this really good refund policy. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna try it.

And now I love my Peloton. Like I have joined the Peloton cult completely, and I absolutely love it.

Becoming a Morning Person (Naturally)

But the whole reason I'm telling you this is that not only have I become a biking person and a semi-morning person, but I am also working out early as well.

Now, I realize that to most people, this would not be big news. But in my world and in my life, this is something that I never thought would happen because nights were always such a struggle for me.

Even when I was in a good stretch of sleep, I was still just outrageously groggy and out of it and didn't feel particularly functional until somewhere around noon.

So the fact that I'm recording this podcast at 9:30 in the morning and have already done my workout kind of blows my mind.

And I really did not force or try to make this happen. It just naturally evolved on its own — probably because I wasn't trying to force anything.

I always secretly wanted to be more of a morning person. But once I finally accepted and even embraced that I was not a morning person, of course, this is exactly when I turned into a morning person.

So go figure.

But if there's anyone out there feeling like I was, wondering if you're ever not going to feel like a zombie in the morning, stay open to what's possible. Because I still can't believe this is my life after 42 years of insomnia.

Core Philosophy: Insomnia Is Based in Survival

Okay, so back to our original programming.

Today I want to go deeper into how I view insomnia, what it is, and how it happens.

In episode one, I talked about my three core philosophies. You can go back and listen to those, but to give you a recap:

The first one is insomnia is based in survival.
Second, sleep is a passive process.
And lastly, our brains are changeable.

These three philosophies inform everything that I do, but today I'm going to focus on the first one — how and why I believe insomnia is based in survival.

Now, do make sure to listen until the very end, because there are some important caveats that I see my students get stuck on with this information, and I want to help you avoid that if possible.

Insomnia as a Conditioned Fear Response

Okay, so you've probably heard me talk about insomnia in a couple of different ways.

Sometimes I call it a fear of not sleeping, or a fear of being awake at night, a learned fear response, a conditioned fear response, a habituated fear response, a conditioned arousal response.

All of these accurately represent my views, but they don't really get to the heart of what's causing the conditioned hyper-arousal response, which is a perceived threat.

The brain is interpreting danger in the form of wakefulness, so it creates hyper-arousal, which paradoxically keeps us awake.

So even though wakefulness in and of itself isn't inherently unsafe, the brain has linked this with danger.

How Insomnia Begins

Now, the way this usually happens is some sort of life circumstance occurs that causes some sleep disruption.

And this can be from anything — an illness, coming off a medication, a stressful life event, becoming a new mom. There are so many things that can trigger that initial sleep disruption.

Maybe someone experiences a single sleepless night, but they've never been through something like that before, so it becomes a very emotionally charged event.

And during this period of disruption, something in our relationship to sleep starts to change.

We suddenly become worried about it or concerned that something's wrong. A little seed of fear gets planted in the mind about our own ability to sleep.

And we unintentionally start engaging with it from a place of effort versus effortlessness.

Why Effort Backfires

Now, many people assume it's the event that caused their insomnia, but it's actually our response to the event — or how we engage with it — that creates the initial fear of not sleeping.

And this makes a lot of sense, because what we tend to do is problem-solve sleep like we would all of our other life problems, right?

I was so good at creating insomnia because I'm such a good problem solver.

We start researching sleep. We implement all the right things — all the sleep hygiene. We start following biohackers. Maybe we start going to doctors or other practitioners. We get acupuncture. We take all the supplements. Maybe we take medication.

And all the while, this is confirming the brain's perception that wakefulness is a threat.

Slowly, wakefulness gets linked with danger.

The Perceived Danger Loop

So then, anytime the potential threat of not sleeping comes on the horizon, the brain kicks into hyper-arousal to alert you to that possibility.

We get stuck in a perceived danger loop where the more we don't sleep, the more we try to sleep, and the more the brain truly believes we're in danger.

As the link between not sleeping and danger gets stronger over time, hyper-arousal becomes conditioned to happen automatically.

That's why you get that super weird experience of feeling sleepy on the couch and then wide awake the minute you hit the pillow.

It's the perceived danger response kicking in on behalf of your amazing, diligent brain.

Understanding What’s Really Happening

Now, this is important to understand because it's hard to break out of this loop if you don't understand why you're in it.

Your brain will want to believe that there's something very physically broken within you, and it was that initial sleep disruption that changed everything.

And something did change, but it has nothing to do with your body's ability to sleep.

It has to do with the addition of this perceived danger response.

Of course, do always check things out with your doctor because there are very real physical causes of chronic sleep disruption.

But I'm talking about chronic insomnia, which I view as a fear or anxiety of not sleeping.

Influences and Neuroplasticity

Now, the idea of conditioned threat responses isn't really new.

I was first introduced to it through Annie Hopper's book, Wired for Healing, which was a great book. Annie Hopper is the founder of DNRS, which stands for Dynamic Neural Retraining System.

I then started reading a lot of Dr. John Sarno's work on TMS, which stands for the mind-body syndrome, and how it relates to chronic pain.

And then I got into Dr. Joe Dispenza's books, and he talks about changing these automatic responses in an entirely different way.

And then, of course, the main focus of my master's was self-directed neuroplasticity.

So these ideas aren't really novel — they just haven't been applied to insomnia yet.

And I suspect they'll gain a lot more traction in the coming decade as they're already becoming much more accepted in the mainstream around addressing chronic pain.

Breaking the Loop

Okay, so how do we break out of this loop?

Again, in order to break out of it, you have to understand that it's perceived danger at play.

This understanding will create a whole new awareness of the problem and how you engage with it.

Many people try to address insomnia by fixing sleep directly, and this typically backfires.

Because once we lose our faith in whatever external thing we're using — or the external thing is eclipsed by hyper-arousal — we're back to square one dealing with the same automatic fear response.

So I don't focus on making sleep happen. It's a passive process anyway.

I work with the hyper-arousal response that's getting in the way of sleep happening.

Perceived vs Real Danger

The purpose of hyper-arousal in the context of insomnia is to protect us from something the brain perceives as dangerous.

But the key word here is perceives.

It feels dangerous because your brain is sending alarm bells, but being awake at night or waking up at night isn't inherently dangerous.

Now, sometimes I see folks struggle with this word perceived because they're dealing with very tangible challenges associated with insomnia.

It's a tough thing to go through, and I am in no way denying or diminishing those things.

But when I say perceived, I'm talking more about the brain's interpretation of a moment based on the link it's created.

Fear as Interpretation

You can think of a fear of wakefulness almost like you would a fear of heights.

If someone has a fear of heights and they're on the top floor of a building, their brains aren't thinking about what is happening — their brains are going straight to what could happen.

So they're feeling fear based on the past or the future, not the present moment where there's no actual danger present.

And this is normal. We want our brains to work this way.

But it's also why it's important to understand what your brain is doing in the here and now, because the now is where we have the ability to effect change and create a new experience around what the brain perceives as dangerous.

Common Pitfalls in Recovery

Now, a lot of times my students grasp this concept really well, but then there's this tendency for effort to shift in a new direction.

So maybe there's less effort toward fixing sleep directly, but then it becomes, okay, let's hurry up and show the brain that everything is fine so I can sleep again.

But survival responses really don't work like that.

It's not an overnight process.

We shift a fear through understanding, awareness, consistency, and small incremental shifts over time.

And we wouldn't want our safety systems to work any other way, because we are literally creating new neural pathways in the brain.

The Power of Neuroplasticity

And isn't it just remarkable that we have the ability to do this?

We are no longer at the mercy of our reptilian brains.

We have the potential to unlearn these fears, which never ceases to amaze me.

Closing

So that wraps up today's episode on perceived danger.

Thanks a lot for being here.

I'm Beth Kendall, and this is the Mind Body Sleep Podcast.

Bye for now.