Ep 63. Understanding Hyperarousal w/ Richard Wills

 In this foundational episode, Beth is joined by Mind. Body. Sleep.® co-coach Richard Wills to explore one of the most important — and least understood — aspects of insomnia: hyperarousal.

Together, they unpack what hyperarousal really is, how it shows up in the body and mind, and why it’s the true obstacle standing between you and natural, effortless sleep.

You’ll learn the four types of hyperarousal and how each one can subtly (or not so subtly) keep the brain on high alert. Beth and Richard share personal insights, relatable stories, and practical ways to help your brain stand down from perceived threats so sleep can re-emerge on its own.

If you’ve ever wondered why your body feels wired when you want to rest, this conversation will bring clarity, relief, and a renewed sense of hope.

Key topics:

• What hyperarousal is and how it develops

• The difference between appropriate arousal and overactivation

• Emotional, physical, mental, and silent hyperarousal explained

• How fear of wakefulness reinforces insomnia

• Practical ways to calm the system and teach the brain safety again

Enjoy! 🧡

 

 

Beth:

Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast. I am so very delighted today to be joined by someone who is very important, a part of the MINDBODY sleep world. And that is Richard Wills. Hi Richard.

Richard:

Hey Beth. How are you doing today?

Beth:

I am doing great. And for anyone out there not familiar with Richard, he is my co-coach in the program and we alternate weeks in the community. We answer questions and do support calls. And honestly, it has been such a wonderful few years together because I learn so much from you, Richard, as well as I do from all the students, but it has been just so very easy to work together.

Richard:

It's been great, Beth, and I've really thoroughly enjoyed working with you, and again, I learned a ton from you.

Beth:

Absolutely. So today we are talking more about hyper arousal. We're going to talk about what it is, how it tends to show up and how we can work with it. Richard, you have in the past created such an excellent breakdown of hyper arousal, so I really wanted you to come on and share that with the audience so they could have a better understanding of it as well. Because I think anytime we can shine a light on why something is happening, then it all feels a little less scary and threatening. And lord knows, I surely wish I had even heard the word hyper arousal before I turned 50. So I'm very happy to be doing the whole podcast around this topic.

Richard:

Yeah, it's really an important topic, Beth, and I'm really eager to dive into it.

Beth:

Yeah. Okay, so let's get going. Why don't you, Richard, if you don't mind, lay a bit of a foundation for us and tell us what hyperarousal is and what role it plays in the experience of insomnia.

Richard:

Yeah, so great question, Beth. Well, hyper arousal happens when our mind and body too are just more activated than the situation calls for. So sometimes it's referred to as being extra vigilant, but that's not really quite the same thing. You can be alert without being wound up. For example, let's say you're looking up in the night sky because they're supposed to be shooting stars, you're looking for shooting stars and you're very vigilant, but you're not wound up. You're not really aroused in that sense.

Yeah. So hyper arousal really happens when the body's arousal system goes too far. So let's say God forbid your house catches on fire and what would you do? Well, your heart would be racing, you'd be breathing heavily, you'd be running and so forth. Well, this is not hyper arousal. This is an appropriate level of arousal for the situation. So you want to be activated in that case. Now, if you have the same rush of fear and pounding heart and so forth on a first date or on a presentation, now that's more of an overreaction because the situation doesn't require that and that's what we'd call hyper arousal. So your body is kind of acting as if there's a bear in the room when there isn't.

That's what gets us into trouble with sleep. So most of the time we do associate hyper arousal with anxiety, and most of the time that's pretty accurate, but it doesn't always come from fear or anxiety. For example, if you won the lottery, your heart might race too. And so excitement can do it. A child on Christmas for example, could be excited and that could be more arousal than you need for the situation, but it doesn't have to be fear to be hyper arousal. So all of this is kind of built on this fight or flight mechanism that we have. And this is just wonderful thing that protected us from danger from way back. And of course goes back before humans to other animals also. So this is something that when there was a real threat, there's a grizzly bear for example. We needed to have all these things happen in order for us to survive, we needed to have a racing heart, intense muscles and fast breathing. So that's appropriate arousal, but when the same reaction kicks in without the real threat, that's hyper arousal.

So fight or flight and hyper arousal are connected, but they're not exactly the same thing. So just appropriate fight or flight that really keeps us alive if there's a real threat. But hyper arousal, I mean that doesn't really so much keep us alive, it just keeps us awake. That's the problem. And that's where insomnia comes in, Beth. So I mean, it's helpful to look at sleep as requiring two things. On the one hand, there's the sleep drive and that's basically how long you've been awake that day, or actually maybe going back a day or two more than that. And so when you're awake long enough, you're going to be sleepy and you're going to be able to sleep as long as you don't have too much arousal. Now the arousal can be real if there's real threat there, and that will keep you awake. But most people with insomnia of course, don't have real threats.

And most people with insomnia have plenty of sleep drive. So the thing that gets in the way of sleep is this hyper arousal. So we don't have the real predators that we had 10,000 years ago. The predators we have are kind of internal. These worries we have might be work or relationships or taxes, and that's what keeps us awake. Now, what usually happens on top of this, not only do we have the anxiety about these different things going on in our life, but then on top of that we have the fear kind of gets doubled up because in most cases we become afraid of being awake itself. So there's the fear of the problem, taxes, relationships, and then fear of the wakefulness itself. It's kind of a compound fear.

Beth:

Yeah. It's interesting. As you were talking, it's really the first time I've separated hyper and arousal, right?

Richard:

Yeah.

Beth:

Because arousal, I mean, it's crazy. How long have I been in this work? And it's like there's arousal, but this is hyper arousal. And you did such a good job of explaining it. In the mentorship, we define it as a heightened state of alertness, but you're going a bit deeper to explain that it's actually an exaggerated state of activation beyond what a situation calls for. And that's where the hyper part of arousal can come in. And of course, this is based on our past experiences and programming around sleep.

But I think anyone dealing with insomnia can relate to this because when you're going through it, you start to notice that your brain seems to interpret anything around sleep in a much bigger way than people that don't have insomnia, right? So there's this sensitization there, and of course that's why we go to such lengths to protect our sleep so much because that's essentially what our brain is telling us to do. But just having the understanding that there is some heightened sensitivity that maybe other people that don't have insomnia aren't dealing with. And that's why the brain can interpret things in a threatening way, even when they might not be dangerous at all.

Richard:

For sure. You said it so well, Beth, and I think people with insomnia tend to have a background of just being more anxious than the average person also. And so when we have this tendency for anxiety, we basically have kind of a sensitized nervous system from all the stresses we've experienced in our lives, and we just overreact to a lot of things. So not just for sleep, but for life generally.

Beth:

Yeah. There's definitely some temperament traits that we all share, at least a few of them in there, and that's not uncommon at all. So okay. I think that really covered what hyperarousal is. What are some of the ways that it tends to present itself, Richard?

Richard:

Yeah. Well, this is really interesting part of it, Beth, because we can just kind of talk about hyperarousal generally, but when we look at it, we can really kind of divide it up into four different types. And they usually aren't presenting purely like this. Usually there's a mixture, but the first kind I call emotional hyper arousal, and that's just kind of the more pure anxiety or fear aspect of it. And then on top of that, there can be physical hyper arousal. So that's more of the bodily reaction, the physiological reaction, the racing heart, the tight muscles, the heavy breathing. So that's the physical part of it. And then there's the mental part of it, which isn't exactly the same as the emotional part. The mental part of it is when our thoughts are spinning, our thoughts are going round and round, we're overthinking. So we can have emotional hyper arousal with the anxiety, the physical hyper arousal with the racing heart, for example, the mental hyper arousal with the racing thoughts.

But then sometimes I've had a lot of clients that I've coached say, well, I just woke up and I'm not feeling scared. My heart isn't racing, my mind isn't racing, but I'm just awake. And what I call that is silent hyper arousal. So there's no obvious fear, racing heart and so forth, but you're just awake. And I think what happens there is that you have enough of this kind of activation to keep you awake, but not enough to keep you scared. So the way I think of it is it's always helpful to think back what our primitive ancestors had to deal with. So if there was a grizzly bear that's sleeping in the cave, there's a grizzly bear 10,000 years ago, and it's roaring right at the cave, and obviously you've got to be awake, you're probably going to have all three kinds, the emotional, physical, and mental. But let's say on another night, I, lion's roars can be really loud. I actually went camping once in Florida. There was this wildlife preserve like a mile away, and I could hear the lions roaring at night. Oh wow. Experience. And hopefully they were well caged. But anyway, so primitive person hearing a lions roar a mile away, well just, okay, well I got to be awake for this, but I'm not really scared and I'll listen to make sure it doesn't get closer. So I think that's kind of the basis for silent hyper arousal enough to keep us awake.

I think a lot of people with insomnia kind of have this quiet, low grade alertness that keeps the brain from just totally letting go and relaxing and falling back to sleep.

Beth:

Okay. Alright. So just to break this down, you mentioned that there's the four possible expressions of hyperarousal, the emotional, physical, mental and silent. And these can shapeshift for all of us, especially throughout the course of the recovery process. We've seen this happen where it can kind of shift into something different than maybe you've ever experienced. But I especially love how you named it silent hyper arousal because this was definitely how it expressed for me. And there was someone on the group call yesterday, and this is how it expresses for him as well. And it is such a bizarre feeling to have this happening but not have any physical symptoms to go along with it. And I think for me, this is why when someone suggested that I had sleep anxiety, I just wrote that off right away because it didn't, my experience of it didn't match what I thought anxiety was, and it almost felt a little bit offensive to me, but it was anxiety related, it was just that hyperarousal was happening so beneath it was an unconscious conditioned response that was happening. It just wasn't expressing the same. And then oddly enough, on my way out of insomnia is when I started having a more physical expression of hyper arousal. And that's kind of another whole podcast. But I love this and I'm so curious how, so you were talking, and I would say for me it was emotional, mental, and silent hyperarousal mostly. But I'm curious how it showed up for you, Richard.

Richard:

Yeah, yeah. Well, it really showed up all four ways for me.

I think before I started learning about insomnia and learning started to recover when I was in the thick of my insomnia, I think I had all kinds and I'd wake up, I'd typically fall asleep fine, but then I'd wake up, say at three o'clock in the morning and I'd typically feel anxious, and that would be the first thing I'd feel. And then my thoughts would be going round and round, why am I awake? What's wrong? And so forth. And the physical would then kick in. And I don't think it was necessarily racing heart, but yeah, tight muscles, achy muscles, I experienced that a lot. And then as things got better, as I moved forward in my recovery, a lot of the more kind of dramatic aspects of arousal, emotional and physical and mental started calming down. But I would still have the silent hyper of arousal, If that makes sense. I think that's kind of the mildest form of it. And I think it's often the last to go just kind of a lack of sleepiness. If you only slept three hours, you wake up, you'd expect yourself to be still kind of groggy and sleepy. And when you're not, I think that's often a clue that you're dealing with silent hyper arousal.

Beth:

For sure. And of course, we work with people with all of these expressions in the mentorship. And it's funny because it's not uncommon for people say with physical expressions of hyper arousal to wish it was silent hyper arousal. And then for the people that have the silent hyper arousal, sometimes they wish it was physical so that there was something tangible to work with. There's nothing to actually work with. It's just sort of just happening. And you're like, what is the deal? It's so bizarre.

Richard:

But Beth, I found that it's really helpful for a lot of the clients to break it down into these four kinds of hyper arousal. And when they hear about silent hyper arousal, they're kind of relieved that, okay, this is understandable. It's the same process. I'm not weird. And it's actually kind of a good sign that things are probably getting better.

Beth:

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And no matter what the type is, you kind of mentioned this already, the approach is to both is really the same, right?

Richard:

Yeah,

Beth:

Yeah. So what can we do? What can we do, Richard? How do we start working with hyper arousal so it doesn't feel the need to keep showing

Richard:

Up? Right. Okay. Well, that's the big question. That's really basically what the whole curriculum here at MINDBODY sleep is about.

But I think the first step is realizing that there are two kinds of threats. There are the real threats like the grizzly bears, and that there are the perceived threats, like the fact of being awake or worrying about your taxes or job. That's not something that's appropriate to be dealing with in the middle of the night, even though it might be something to deal with in your life. So realizing that you're not dealing with real threats is helpful. And I think it's definitely the first step because a lot of people think that they're really is a threat just by the fact of being awake. They think that it's going to be a threat to their health. And there've been studies, there was a big study, the Lovato study with what, 37 million people. There was no difference in the death rate between how long people lived between good sleepers and people with insomnia. So that just really, really was very helpful for me to realize.

Beth:

I know I love that study for the sheer sample size alone, it's just so gigantic that.

Richard:

Amazing.

Beth:

Yeah.

Richard:

So of course, I mean, you still want to put your insomnia behind you, but in terms of health threats, it's not what we used to think.

So one of the things though is that the fear center in the brain that creates hyper arousal really evolved way before we had logic or language. So sometimes logic and language can be limited, and if we just have them alone, I know for me that wasn't enough. And I think over and above that we need to do things to show our brain that we're not really in a dangerous situation, it's not a real threat, and we can show it by acting in ways that tell our brain that there's no danger. So for example, if there were a real grizzly bear, you would be up and dealing with the threat. You'd be running away trying to fight it and so forth. And the brain would pick up on this. But let's say it's the middle of the night and you wake up with a racing heart and so forth. Well, if you just kind of, alright, you just open a book and start reading, or once you kind of acknowledged the feeling, or if you go down and watch tv, I used to get up and watch Steinfeld, and that's how I recovered basically. So doing something enjoyable tells the brain, this isn't really a threat. If there really were a grizzly bear, you wouldn't be watching tv. You'd be,

You wouldn't be doing something enjoyable, relaxing. So I think that's where your behavior kicks in. And I'm not saying you have to get up, you, you can just kind of rest in bed if purposely, you wouldn't just be relaxing in bed. So there's nothing, we don't dictate what you have to do, but if you do something that befriends wakefulness rather than fighting, fighting, fighting it and struggling with it really sends a message, the message, this isn't a real threat. And the brain kind learns to stand down. And over time when you do this over and over, sleep starts to come naturally again.

Beth:

Yeah. So well said. I love that. And I think this really speaks to the three-step process that we use in the mentorship, which is just first understanding the problem, which alone can help so much because like I said, what I would have given just to hear someone say the word hyperarousal

During all those decades, and then we learn how to respond in new ways so that we can update the brain's perception of threat. And the great thing, and this speaks to befriending wakefulness and not fighting the grizzly bear, but the great thing is that while we're watching and listening to the brain, the brain is actually watching and listening to us. So it's taking cues from us and how we act and behave and respond to determine the level of threat in any given situation. So it's very teachable and changeable. And then the lastly is just living your life, right? Because nothing is more powerful than that in terms of

Richard:

Absolutely. Yeah.

Beth:

Just getting back to effortless sleep again, where sleep is just sleep and there's not much more to it than that.

Richard:

If we live our life just kind of during the day and we don't kind of put our life on hold, oh, I won't have lunch with my friend today because I'm too tired. And sometimes there's some rationale to that. But that again, sends the message that your sleep is a real threat that you have to deal with before you can deal with the rest of life and enjoy yourself.

Beth:

And it's actually the opposite. It's like getting back into life is what diffuses the threat. It really is. And that's what becomes the teacher, the cue back to the brain.

Richard:

Right?

Beth:

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, do you have any other last thoughts to share on the subject of hyperarousal?

Richard:

No, I think we've kind of summed it up, Beth, and I'm certainly eager for any of the listeners if they have questions over and above what we talked about, but I think this sums it up.

Beth:

Yeah, I think this was a really good foundational episode for people that want to understand hyper arousal. And Richard, I can't thank you enough for coming back and talking to us. I know that your days are busy these days, and if any of you out there want to hang out with Richard and I in the mentorship, come join us. Between the two of us, we have been through over 80 years of insomnia, so we deeply understand the struggle of it, and we are here to help you get beyond it. Absolutely. Until next time, this is the MINDBODY Sleep Podcast. Bye for now. And bye, Richard.

Richard:

Okay, bye Beth.

Beth:

See you later.