When insomnia comes back: how to deal with insomnia relapses when insomnia returns

Many of us recognize that every day of our lives won’t always be fantastic, won’t always be great, and won’t even always be good. So, I think it makes sense to consider that every night of our lives won’t always be fantastic, won’t always be great, and won’t always be good.
In other words, just as each day isn’t always as good as (or better than) the previous day, each night won’t always be as good as (or better than) the previous night, either.
Here’s the thing - difficult nights themselves aren’t really the problem. It’s our reaction to difficult nights that usually determines how long they’ll stick around for. When we don’t react much to difficult nights, we give sleep the opportunity to get right back on track all by itself.
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The best response to an insomnia relapse is not to respond at all - at least, in the short term! Continue going about your day as normal, avoid the temptation to go to bed earlier or stay in bed later or to nap during the day. Continue to do things that bring joy and enrichment to your life and refuse to allow concern about sleep to control your life or your decisions. In other words, avoid the temptation to modify your life or your routine in response to this temporary sleep disruption.
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Now, let’s say that your sleep doesn’t seem to get right back on track all by itself - even though you feel you haven’t made any changes since those difficult nights returned, maybe you’ve found yourself struggling with sleep for a few weeks.
In this case, I’d suggest re-implementing any techniques you found helpful in the past. If you’re a regular viewer of this channel, you know that I am a big believer in cognitive and behavioral techniques such as sleep restriction and stimulus control. If you’ve implemented techniques like these in the past (and found them helpful) then you can simply implement them again - just as they proved to be helpful in the past, they’ll almost certainly prove to be helpful again!
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Perhaps the most important response to difficult nights, though, is going about our days as normally as possible - because if we can live our lives as though insomnia doesn’t exist, it often stops existing, because when we give sleep less of a role and less of an influence in our lives, we often start to put less effort into sleep, put less pressure on ourselves to sleep and allow the body to take care of sleep all by itself - which is exactly what it wants to do.
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My name is Martin Reed and I am the founder of Insomnia Coach®. I offer sleep coaching services that give people with insomnia all the skills and support they need to enjoy better sleep for the rest of their lives. I also offer a free two-week sleep training course for people with insomnia at insomniacoach.com/sleep-train...
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