Ep 59. Why Does Insomnia Go Away and Come Back?

Ever feel like your insomnia was finally gone… only to have it come back for no apparent reason?

This used to drive me absolutely bananas. 

Insomnia can vanish for weeks, months—or even years at a time, and then reappear again without warning. 

No wonder it's so confusing. 

But once I learned how memory works and how the brain stores experiences, it started to make a lot more sense. 

In this episode, I share:

• Why the cyclical nature of insomnia points to a mind-body loop (not a broken brain)
  
  
• How unconscious “imprints” get reactivated
  
  
• What it really means when insomnia “comes back”
  
  
• Why flare-ups aren’t “setbacks” but chances to update old wiring

The good news? The brain can rewire. So past triggers lose their grip—and you can step fully into your life again 🧡

Mentioned Resources:

👉 Why Your Insomnia Triggers Are Mostly Unconscious

Connect with Beth:

👉 Instagram 

 

Work with Beth:

👉 Start the Free Insomnia Course

👉 Learn About the Mentorship


Full Transcription 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.

FULL TRANASCRIPT:

 
Why Insomnia Can Be Cyclical In Nature 

Introduction

Hello everyone, it’s so good to be back with you on the podcast today! My name is Beth. I’m a sleep coach for people with insomnia. And I’ve been on a productive pause from the podcast recently partly to enjoy the last days of summer here in Minnesota (because they’re always way too short!) and partly to build out some exciting new things inside the mentorship.

I’m not going to say too much about that just yet, other than to share that I’ll be going a bit deeper into the unconscious mind by adding a fun little mini-course to the community. I’m so excited about it. If you listen to the podcast, then you know that the unconscious mind is an area that has always been of great interest to me and one that I feel is vastly underexplored, especially in the world of insomnia. But I’ll be talking more about that in the future.

Today’s Topic

So, what are we talking about today?

Well one of the things people ask me all the time is: Why can insomnia go away and then come back? So that’s what we’re going to dive into. First, I’m going to share a little bit about my own experience with the situation. Then I’m going to talk about the understanding that helped me see it much differently, and lastly I’m going to emphasize why absolutely nothing has gone wrong when this happens. In fact, on some level, we even (gasp)want it to happen in order to truly get beyond insomnia for good.

Let’s get going…

My Experience With Cyclical Insomnia

For sure, one of the most bizarre aspects of my own experience with insomnia was how it could be gone for months (or for some people even years) at a time and then just mysteriously come back seemingly out of the blue.

I cannot even tell you how incredibly perplexing this was to me.

Because when I was in one of those cycles where insomnia was gone, it really felt gone. In my head I would think: “Oh thank God that’s over.” And I think there was some small part of me that thought: Surely I had paid my dues, right? Surely I had suffered enough with such a horrible sleep problem, that I had to be off the hook by now.

But then somehow, insomnia would come back. And not only would I be just completely devastated but I was left spinning my wheels trying to figure how that could be.

How could I go from sleeping like a relatively normal human being, to being right back in the cycle of insomnia just like it was day one.

It made zero sense.

Understanding Memory and Patterns

But once I started learning more about how memory works, and specifically how the brain captures information and retrieves information, it started to make a lot more sense. And when things make sense to me, I'm much more apt to let them go.

So that’s what I’m going to share with you.

Now the first thing I want to say about this and what I really wish someone had said to me during those extreme cycles of insomnia because it would have made all the difference in the world back then, was that the cyclical nature of the sleep trouble I was experiencing was actually a pretty good indication that what I was dealing with was a mind-body pattern, right?

Because your brain doesn’t just break, and then start sleeping again, and then break all over again. If insomnia was due to a physical, or structural issue, it would have been much more consistent. Not like an up and down roller-coaster for all those years.

So like I said, if someone had explained this to me, I would have seen that my brain was never truly broken — it was just replaying an old pattern. And when I say ‘pattern,’ what I mean is a collection of memories tied to the experience of insomnia that were getting stirred up again.

How Imprints Form

So let’s take a closer look at this….

As most of you know and have personally experienced, there's usually some sort of event or stressor that changes your relationship with sleep.

For me, it was the move to a different bedroom at age 8. For Richard, my support coach, it was his residency. For some, it's the birth of a child. While for others, it might be a medication reaction, a trip, a time change, or just some kind of stressor that puts some pressure on sleep.

The actual circumstance doesn't matter so much as understanding what happens in the brain during that time.

So, during this time, the brain creates what I call an “imprint.” An imprint is a memory, or set of memories tied to the experience of insomnia that gets stored in the unconscious mind — almost like a snapshot.

Now, this “imprint” can stay dormant sometimes forever. We may never even know it’s there. But sometimes, it can re-emerge later on down the road when something in our present experience resembles the original situation in which the imprint was created.

So our past experience is coming into the present moment.

One student referred to it almost like a flashback, which I thought was such a great analogy.

And it can really be anything that triggers the imprint — a sensation, a place, or even a smell. The brain notices a similarity in the environment and then goes back into the database of its files and pulls up the appropriate “imprint” to match the situation. There’s a great companion blog to this podcast that I wrote quite a while back called: “Why Your Triggers Are Mostly Unconscious.” And I’ll link that up in the show notes in case it’s helpful.

But this is precisely what our brains are supposed to do and nothing has gone wrong when this happens.

When Imprints Reactivate

Now, what gets a little tricky here is that when the imprint is activated, it doesn’t just bring up the memory — it brings back all the thoughts, emotions, and sensations that were originally tied to that memory. And that’s why it can feel like you’ve been knocked right back to square one — because that’s what the imprint is telling you.

And that's usually when we innocently start slipping back into old sleep-related behaviors; most of which involve trying to fix our sleep and find interesting ways to outrun all the difficult emotions and sensations that are showing up with the imprint.

But this is the wrong rabbit hole, my friends. Because nothing inherently changes within your body’s ability to sleep. You don’t just lose that overnight. It’s the reactivation of the imprint that we want to focus on — that’s where we want to put our love and attention because updating the imprint is what changes your experience of insomnia down the road.

The Good News About Memory

Now, the great thing about memory is it's extremely malleable… it’s extremely changeable. It changes every time we bring it into our active awareness. That means that every time you meet insomnia with a little more compassion, a little more understanding, a little less resistance, you’re automatically updating the imprint.

And isn’t that great news! Because I just thought I was stuck with this horrible condition.

But using our responses as a way to neurologically update the mental imprints that are holding up insomnia is how we move out insomnia for good (hallelujia).

A Practical Example

So just to give you a practical example of this… when I used to have a sleepless night, the imprints that came forward in my brain made the whole thing feel very huge and scary. My brain had connected not sleeping with something very, very bad, so every time I had a rough night it set off a lot of panic, worry and automatic catastrophizing about everything that could go wrong.

But once I started to understand what insomnia is and why I had it, I started to respond much differently. I didn’t automatically believe every thought my brain was telling me. And because of that, those old memories started to update — and the imprint started to update right along with it.

Now if I have a rough night, there’s little to no reaction to that. My brain doesn’t tag it as dangerous anymore, and the imprints of the past no longer hold all that pain and suffering. Now that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, of course it did, but the way I hold those memories now is lighter so they don’t control my life anymore.

Common Fears About Being “Too Far Gone”

Now, there might be some of you that are thinking:

“But Beth, what if I’m too far gone?”

Or, “What if my imprints are too strong?”

But no imprint is permanent because the brain is designed to change — in fact, it’s changing all the time. That’s one of the most fundamental truths about neuroplasticity.

So if you ever feel discouraged because it seems like insomnia has “come back,” remember, it hasn’t actually come back — I think the idea of it coming back implies that insomnia is some sort of outside force or monster that is coming back to haunt you (or at least that’s how I perceived it). What’s really happening is simply the reactivation of some old wiring that your brain is so graciously offering up as a chance to work through.

Final Thoughts

So, in a sense, the obstacle truly does become the path on this journey.
I hope this episode brought some clarity around why insomnia can go away and come back, and why it’s just a normal part of the recovery process.

If you’re enjoying the podcast, I would love it if you left a quick rating or review. It helps others with insomnia find this work — and your words might be just the encouragement someone else needs to hear.

Until next time, thanks for joining me on the Mind. Body. Sleep podcast, bye for now.