#Sleepless near me series#

'As soon as they go into the bedroom and lie down in bed, that conditioned arousal kicks in and bang, their eyes open and their brain starts to go and they can't turn it off, and all of a sudden they can't fall asleep. 'The person develops what we call conditioned arousal,' Professor Drummond said. Sleep is one of these funny things that the harder you try to do it, the less likely it is to actually happen.' How the body responds to sleep anxietyĪs a person becomes more fixated on sleep, and anxious at the prospect of another sleepless night, the body responds to bedtime counterintuitively, by generating stress hormones – rendering the person almost physically incapable of sleep and developing an association with bed as a place of stress, not rest. 'Everything they're thinking about is related to sleep. 'People develop what's called an attention bias towards sleep,' he said. Professor Drummond said trying too hard to sleep is unhelpful. A lot of people develop a misattribution that everything is to do with sleep – like, 'If only I slept better, I'd be the Prime Minister'.' 'You have less tolerance for tiredness, and everything gets blamed on the tiredness. 'What happens is you get anxious about not sleeping, and then worry about it and put all these sort of maladaptive habits in, like trying too hard,' she said.ĭr Junge said cognitive behavioural therapy was the 'gold standard' for insomnia. In their desperation, many insomniacs begin designing their lives around improving their sleep, Dr Junge said. 'And that's when it really develops a life of its own.' 'Almost an obsession around their sleep'

#Sleepless near me series#

'It's essentially a series of behaviours and thoughts that utterly conspire to make this insomnia worse and keep it going over time,' he said. While these behaviours are understandable among people who are feeling tired, Professor Drummond said they often became 'perpetuating factors' that could ultimately make the situation worse. People might try to cope by going to bed early, napping during the day, drinking extra caffeine, spending more time in bed looking at a phone, or being overly sedentary. 'Those are the people who then we say go on to develop chronic insomnia.' 'But for roughly 15 per cent of people, even once the stressor is gone, they continue to sleep poorly. 'For 85 per cent of the people out there, when that initial stressor is gone, sleep goes back to normal, and everything's fine,' he said. Prof Drummond said people with insomnia disorder often wrongly attributed every problem to their sleeplessness. While many people experience disruptions to sleep during times of upheaval or anxiety, the difference in patients with insomnia is the sleep problem will persist even after the initial stress trigger is resolved, says Sean Drummond, a professor of clinical neuroscience at Monash University. A 2019 Sleep Health Foundation study found nearly 15 per cent of Australians have symptoms which could meet the diagnostic criteria, whether they realise it or not. Insomnia disorder is defined by a failure to fall or stay asleep for three or more nights a week for three months or longer.

'I am so scared my brain is broken and that it will never let me sleep again … I'm not over-exaggerating, I truly feel this way.' 15 per cent of Australians may experience insomnia disorder 'I know this may sound ridiculous, but will I die from insomnia?' another post reads. 'Anyone else have a partner who sleeps like a baby every night? So infuriating!' comments another. 'Second day on no sleep, who else?' asks one poster. Sometimes they post medication questions or treatment recommendations, but mostly they're just looking for someone who understands the lonely despair of what feels like endless consciousness. Late at night, online insomnia forums are populated with the desperately sleepless. 'But sometimes if you're really worried about it, or have a lot riding on it, then you don't.' And when you go into bed you think, 'I've got to do this well, I've got to sleep'. 'Sleep itself becomes the performance,' Dr Junge said. 'I had a lot of unproductive days where I just had to stay at home, and basically do nothing or try and catch up on sleep, because I didn't have the mental capacity to do anything apart from very basic things.'įor decades, Melbourne health psychologist and Sleep Health Foundation board member Moira Junge has seen patients at this 'pointy' end of insomnia, when the act of sleep itself – far from being a relaxing and reinvigorating experience – is wracked with performance anxiety. 'I didn't want to see anyone when I was really bad and hadn't had an opportunity to catch up on sleep.

( Supplied: Helena Morland)įor three months, Ms Morland battled through worsening sleeplessness while juggling a university course and raising her family. Helena Morland has dealt with insomnia on and off for the past 10 years.