Why does the thought of going to bed make me anxious?

It’s a strange and intensely frustrating experience; only half an hour ago, you felt ready for sleep, but as you get ready for bed, you’ve become increasingly worried that you won’t be able to sleep.

Many of us know the feeling of falling or being asleep, then suddenly being catapulted back into wakefulness. After a few nights of this, you start to worry about whether you will be able to get to sleep at all, and suddenly there’s a real problem: your brain has begun to associate the idea of going to bed not with sleepiness, but with being awake, resulting in a bout of insomnia.

This phenomenon is known as “conditioned arousal,” where a trigger—such as something in your sleep environment/routine—leads directly to a fear of going to bed and being unable to sleep, and this fear will further prevent or disrupt sleep. In order to break this cycle, you must retrain the brain to reassociate your bed and bedtime with relaxation and sleep instead of worry and wakefulness.

BREAKING THE NEGATIVE ASSOCIATION

By using CBTI, you can effectively learn to de-condition the association between going to bed and poor sleep. These techniques will also help remind you that you have previously slept without a problem, challenging any negative thoughts that tell you you’ll never be able to sleep again.

You can also try keeping a notebook by your bed to jot down negative thoughts or worries about sleep—the act of writing effectively empties the thoughts from your mind, allowing you to drift off to sleep.

Conditioned arousal

Before conditioning, you go to bed and fall asleep normally. But once something triggers a night or two of broken sleep, the risk is that your worrying about bedtime—and the sleep problems this causes—escalate until you expect not to be able to sleep.

“Normal” state

You have no worries about sleep; when bedtime comes, you fall asleep easily.

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Trigger for sleeplessness

You don’t worry about sleep, but once in bed, you are awakened or kept awake by something.

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Anxiety develops

Once a trigger has interfered with sleep, you begin to worry about going to bed.

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Conditioned arousal

Worrying starts earlier and becomes more severe, repeatedly keeping you awake.

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