5 Steps to Change Your Relationship with Insomnia

5 Steps to Change Your Relationship with Insomnia

By Graeme Thompson

It’s 3 a.m. and you’re wide awake again. You’ve done everything right today. No caffeine after noon, phone off, dark room, calming sleep sounds, and yet sleep isn’t coming. You start doing the sleep math: If I fall asleep right now, I’ll get four hours. Then three. Then two. Each minute feels heavier, and the anxiety builds.

If this sounds like you, you’re not alone. Thousands of people across BC struggle with insomnia every night, and the harder they try to sleep, the more elusive it can become. That’s because sleep can’t be forced; it has to be allowed. Try it out, force yourself to fall asleep right now. You’re probably still awake, right.

The good news? Learning to change your relationship with insomnia can change your sleep. Instead of battling wakefulness, you can begin to understand, befriend, and work with your body’s natural rhythms. These five steps, drawn from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-i) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), can help you do exactly that.

Step 1: Start by Noticing — Track Your Sleep Like You’d Listen to a Friend

If you want to improve any relationship, the first step is to start paying attention. If you’re like me, like most people, you know what sleep can do for you and how much you miss it when it’s not there. But when’s the last time you asked your sleep what it needed? Tracking your sleep is the start of a conversation with you and your sleep.

Most of us only notice our nights when they’re bad. But what if, instead of judging or ignoring your sleep, you started to listen to it? Tracking your sleep isn’t about perfect numbers, it’s about noticing patterns with curiosity and care.

Think of it like checking in with a friend:

• How did they seem today?
  
  

• What helped them relax?
  
  

• What made things harder?
  
  

The same applies to your sleep. By keeping a simple sleep diary, jotting down when you went to bed, how long it took to fall asleep, how rested you felt in the morning, you start to see what your sleep is trying to tell you. Check out this link to download a free sleep tracker template guide: SLEEP DIARY.

Maybe your sleep improves when you get morning light, or falters after late-night scrolling. Maybe weekends throw off your rhythm more than you thought. Tracking helps you take stock, so your next steps are based on understanding, not guessing.

You don’t need fancy apps or devices, though those work too. A notebook beside your bed works fine. What matters most is the spirit of attention: noticing without judgment, just like a good friend would. Try the above sleep diary or try this free app (no subscriptions needed): CBTi Coach

Key takeaway: You can’t nurture what you don’t notice. Start by simply observing your sleep with curiosity.

Step 2: Stop Fighting Sleep

By the time sleep issues have become insomnia, it can feel like sleep is the enemy. We tighten our focus, count the hours, and do whatever we can to wrestle sleep into submission. But paradoxically, this effort can activate the brain’s arousal system, the one that keeps us awake when we’re stressed.

Trying really hard to make sleep happen is like trying to fall asleep while running a race; it ain’t going to happen. The more pressure we put on ourselves, the more alert we become. Good for running a race. Bad for falling asleep.

When you notice yourself lying awake, take a gentle breath and say to yourself, “It’s okay to be awake right now.” This simple act of acceptance reduces the tension that fuels insomnia.

If you’ve been awake for more than about 15–20 minutes, get up and do something calming with as dim of light as possible; read a familiar book, stretch, or watch the same show you’ve seen 100 times (don’t worry about the blue light, we’ve got bigger fish to fry). Return to bed when you feel naturally sleepy. This retrains your brain to associate your bed with sleep, not frustration.

Key takeaway: Letting go of control opens the door for our friend, sleep, to return naturally.

Step 3: Build Up Your Sleep Pressure

Sleep pressure, known scientifically as homeostatic sleep drive, is one of the most powerful forces behind healthy sleep. Adenosine, the sleepiness hormone, builds in your brain helping you to feel sleep. By the time you need to go to sleep, adenosine needs to have already been built up.

Imagine building up your sleep pressure like creating a welcoming space for a guest or friend. Throughout the day, you’re getting your place ready for them to come in. Every waking hour makes it a little more inviting for sleep to come over. There’s things you can do to create a welcoming space and things you do that make it less likely that sleep will visit you when you try to sleep.

To build healthy sleep pressure:

• Wake up at the same time every day, even on weekends, +/- 15-30 minutes.

• Get morning sunlight within the first hour of waking to anchor your circadian rhythm.

• Stay active—physical movement increases adenosine, the chemical that builds sleep drive.

• Limit naps to 20–30 minutes, and avoid them after mid-afternoon.

• Limit caffeine, especially after 12pm.

You can’t force sleep, but you can set the stage for it by living in sync with your biology.

Key takeaway: Sleep comes easier when your body has earned its rest.

Step 4: Redefine What Rest Means

Many people equate rest only with sleep. But rest is broader; it’s any state of relaxation that allows your body and mind to restore themselves.

When you lie in bed thinking, “I’m not sleeping, this is bad,” your stress response activates which does not promote rest. But if you remind yourself, “Even if I’m not asleep, I’m resting, and rest is good for me,” your body softens. Heart rate slows, muscles release, and the mind quiets.

This mindset shift is known in ACT-based sleep therapy as redefining success. Instead of aiming for a specific number of hours, aim to rest peacefully, whether asleep or awake. Ironically, this makes sleep more likely to arrive naturally.

You can even experiment with quiet wakefulness, lying calmly, eyes closed, focusing on gentle breathing or body sensations. This teaches your nervous system that wakefulness in bed doesn’t have to be a threat.

Key takeaway: Rest is restorative, even when sleep hasn’t yet come.

Step 5: Think of Improving Sleep Like Going to the Dentist (Fun, I Know Right!)

Most of us just want to stop thinking about sleep altogether; lie down, close our eyes, and wake up rested. And that’s absolutely the goal. But to get there, you first need to treat the problem that’s been keeping things stuck.

Fixing your sleep problems is a bit like going to the dentist for a cavity. Just like you can’t fix a cavity by being really good at brushing your teeth and always flossing, you can’t fix insomnia by being really good at your sleep hygiene. If you’re really struggling with your sleep, the issues go deeper than a couple of quick fixes. You’ve got to retrain your brain to become friends with your sleep. This re-aquaintance period is more intentional and involved than what you’ll need to do down the road. But you’ll need to do something different for a while before you can go back to not thinking (read: worrying) about your sleep.

You may need a period of closer attention, structure, and new routines, like a short course of sleep therapy (CBT-i), to help your system heal. Once your sleep patterns stabilize, you can return to living normally, without tracking or strategies.

Improving sleep isn’t a lifelong project. It’s a temporary, focused period of care that allows you to rebuild trust with your body. After that, sleep goes back to doing what it’s always wanted to do, be that supportive friend in the background, there for you and encouraging you to live a life you love.

Key takeaway: You don’t have to live this way forever; but you do need to do something different before you can stop worrying about sleep again.

From Fear to Trust

These five steps may seem simple, but they represent a profound shift: moving from control and fear toward trust and cooperation with your body.

Changing your relationship with insomnia doesn’t mean never having a restless night again. It means those nights no longer define your days. It means responding with calm instead of panic, patience instead of pressure.

In clinical practice, people often begin to see meaningful change within six to eight weeks of consistent effort. Progress builds gradually, one night, one routine, one compassionate choice at a time.

When you stop battling sleep and start listening to what your body is asking for, something beautiful happens:

Sleep stops being something you chase and starts to become a friend that finds you.

If you want to learn more, check out the following

Book: Hello Sleep by Jade Wu

App: CBTi Coach by Veterans Association

Sleep tracker: Download at Thompson Psychotherapy

If you’ve tried it all and believe that working with a professional trained in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia is right for you, reach out to so we can connect about designing a treatment plan that will work for you.

Author:

Graeme Thompson

Thompson Psychotherapy

W: www.gthompsonpsychotherapy.com

E: gthompsonpsychotherapy@gmail.com

P: (604)283.8285