Why a Bad Night Doesn’t Mean You’re Starting Over
You’ve had several good nights of sleep. You’re feeling hopeful. Maybe you make plans you’ve been avoiding or start imagining life beyond insomnia. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a terrible night hits. I’ve had this happen many times during my battle with insomnia and while in recovery.
When things start looking up—when you’re sleeping better, feeling better, and your energy begins to return—it can be completely devastating to experience a terrible night again. All of the negativity around insomnia comes rushing back, the headache, frustration, anger, irritability, anxiety, and low mood all come barreling in. It can feel like, overnight, you are back to square one and will never be truly well. However, what many people don’t realize is that insomnia recovery often looks less like a straight line and more like a winding mountain trail.
The Myth of Linear Insomnia Recovery
Setbacks, or speedbumps, in insomnia recovery are bound to happen, and it can be so discouraging when they do! The deep frustration with setbacks is especially pronounced after having a few good nights’ sleep. It only takes a night or two for you to feel a hundred-fold better, and you can acutely contrast this against the misery you were experiencing a mere few days before. Because the uplifting benefits of good sleep are almost immediate, you instantly realize how awful insomnia makes you feel and deeply resist returning to the fog of insomnia. We desperately want healing to happen steadily. We believe that better sleep should lead to even better sleep, and progress should continue upward. But this is not usually the case.
Setbacks are a Required Part of Insomnia Recovery
Setbacks, or speed bumps, are a way in which your brain is forming new patterns and circuitry around sleep. When symptoms flare up, it is not failure of the process, but a part of the recovery process itself. The flare is an opportunity to continue responding to sleep and wakefulness differently. When you respond differently, your subconscious forms new neural pathways around sleep. This is the work of insomnia recovery! Think of setbacks as an opportunity to reteach your brain and readjust your relationship to sleep. A bad night is not evidence that you’re moving backward. The fluctuations in recovery are normal. In fact, fluctuations in insomnia recovery are a necessary step to move forward.
Why Insomnia Recovery Setbacks Feel So Scary
People with chronic insomnia tend to be hypervigilant about sleep. Since sleeplessness plays such a prominent role in how they feel during waking hours, every bad night feels highly significant. Three good weeks can be overshadowed by one rough night. The mind starts scanning for explanations, and people often abandon what was helping because they assume it stopped working.
One can quickly interpret a setback as danger, but the setback itself is often less damaging than the story we tell ourselves about the setback. Just because you encountered a speedbump does not mean you are failing. Your brain is simply learning a new relationship to wakefulness. The question isn’t whether you’ll have another rough night. The question is whether you’ll interpret that rough night as danger or simply as part of the journey.
What Real Insomnia Recovery Looks Like
Insomnia recovery is a gradual trend rather than a perfect progression. Good nights become more frequent, and bad nights become less frightening. Recovery is measured over weeks and months, not night by night. Think of it as two steps forward, one step back. Overtime you still move forward. The goal isn’t to eliminate every bad night. The goal is to stop letting bad nights define your future.
Setbacks Don’t Mean You’re Stuck
If you’re in the middle of insomnia recovery, don’t judge your progress by your worst night. Look at the broader pattern. Setbacks are frustrating, but they are not proof of failure. In many cases, they are simply part of the journey.
One of the most important skills in insomnia recovery is learning how to respond when those inevitable speed bumps appear. That’s exactly why I created the Rest ReSET Program. Rest ReSET helps you understand what’s happening in your brain and nervous system during setbacks so you can stop viewing them as signs of danger and start seeing them as opportunities for growth and retraining. Recovery doesn’t require perfect sleep. It requires a new relationship with sleep, wakefulness, and the occasional rough night. If you’re ready to build that foundation, I invite you to learn more about Rest ReSET and take the next step in your recovery journey.
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