Every August, as summer winds down and backpacks begin to fill, I hear from people whose sleep suddenly starts to unravel.
The culprit isn’t always school itself. Sometimes it’s simply the knowledge that tomorrow morning requires something of us…a school drop-off, an early meeting, a doctor’s appointment, or a flight that leaves before sunrise. The alarm clock suddenly becomes more than a clock—it becomes a deadline, a responsibility, and for many people with chronic insomnia, a source of quiet dread. Ironically, the more important it feels to sleep well before an early morning, the harder sleep becomes.
I know this cycle well. My son is a competitive high school swimmer. If you’ve ever been involved in swimming, you know the lifestyle. Practice often starts before most people have even considered getting out of bed. Our mornings routinely began long before sunrise, packing food for the long day ahead, loading towels and gear into the car, and making sure everything was ready for the school day, while the rest of the neighborhood slept. People often asked if those early mornings ever become easier, and the truth is, they never really have.
It was not necessarily the work involved with the early mornings that was the problem. Rather, it was how much mental energy I devoted to worrying about waking up. Night after night I found myself calculating how many hours remained before the 4:30 a.m. alarm, mentally rehearsing the morning, and desperately trying to force myself to fall asleep because I had to function the next day. The fear of not waking up rested quietly in the background all night.
This is one of the strange paradoxes of chronic insomnia. The event we’re worried about is often far less frightening than the emotions surrounding it. Missing the alarm is rarely catastrophic, yet our brain treats it as though the stakes couldn’t be higher. Why? Because waking up early often symbolizes something much deeper than an alarm clock. For many of us, early mornings become tangled together with beliefs we’ve carried for decades. These beliefs often revolve around views about responsibility, performance, productivity, competence, and ability to meet the demands of life.
These beliefs rarely develop overnight. They are often woven into childhood experiences, family expectations, perfectionism, or years spent measuring our worth by what we accomplish. By the time adulthood arrives, the fear of sleeping through an alarm has become attached to something much larger: our identity. It’s no longer about getting up at 4:30. It’s about proving we’re competent, dependable, and that we are not lazy.
When viewed through the lens of neuroplastic symptoms, this makes perfect sense. The brain is not simply reacting to tomorrow’s schedule; it is reacting to what tomorrow represents emotionally. If productivity, responsibility, or competence have become emotionally charged subjects, then an early morning naturally becomes fertile ground for anxiety. And anxiety, as anyone with chronic insomnia knows, is not particularly compatible with peaceful sleep.
This is one reason I encourage people to become curious about their emotional landscape rather than endlessly trying to control their sleep. Instead of asking, “How can I make myself fall asleep?” a more revealing question might be, “What feels so important about tomorrow?” Sometimes the answer has very little to do with tomorrow. It could have more to do with emotional burdens rather than sleep problems, and emotional burdens have a remarkable way of showing up at two o’clock in the morning.
As children head back to school this month, many adults will notice their own sleep becoming more fragile. Parents worry about getting everyone out the door. Teachers prepare for a new year. Students feel pressure to perform. Even those without children often find themselves returning to busier routines after the slower pace of summer. If your sleep feels more anxious right now, you’re not broken. Your brain may simply be responding to perceived pressure.
The good news is that pressure can be understood, explored, and gradually untangled. When we begin examining the fears beneath our insomnia rather than fighting the insomnia itself, something important begins to change. This philosophy lies at the heart of the Rest ReSET program. Rather than offering another collection of sleep hacks, supplements, or rigid rules, Rest ReSET helps you understand the deeper processes that may be keeping insomnia alive. Through guided journaling, emotional awareness, and a fundamentally different relationship with sleep, you begin creating the conditions for your brain to unlearn the very patterns it once learned so well.
If this resonates with you, I’d love to continue the conversation. My newsletter explores the emotional and neuroplastic roots of chronic insomnia through thoughtful articles and a perspective that moves beyond the endless pursuit of better sleep habits. If you’re ready to stop fighting your nights and start understanding them, I invite you to join me. Sometimes the path to more peaceful sleep begins not with changing your bedtime—but with changing the story your nervous system has been telling itself all along. The newsletter signup is below.
