Vicious Cycles

A key element of cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBTi) is that negative thoughts and beliefs lead to unhelpful behaviours that in turn lead to undesired outcomes. Let’s say you have a poor night’s sleep. Your thought might be “I slept poorly last night, so I will need to make up for it tonight”. You might decide to go to sleep earlier to get more sleep. This will likely make your sleep onset potentially more difficult.

Why? Because when you go to sleep earlier than your usual bedtime, your circadian rhythm will still not have prepared your brain for sleep, and since you haven’t been up long enough yet, your sleep pressure will not be strong enough, concepts discussed in previous weeks. The result will be that you will likely spend some time lying awake in bed and potentially sleep poorly again. In this example, the wrong thought led to a wrong action, that has in turn led to an undesired outcome. Using the same logic, you might try to go to bed even earlier the following night making the problem even worse.

Common barriers in the way of a good nights sleep are negative thoughts and excessive worry. When we begin to feel exhausted from our lack of good sleep, our problems and stressors seem more significant and more overwhelming, leaving us feeling more anxious and less able to cope. As such, we begin to feel distressed and get automatic thoughts that are distorted, unrealistic, and unhelpful. With more worry and anxiety, comes more difficulty falling and staying asleep, that leads to unhelpful and maladaptive behaviour. This then leads to continued poor sleep and frustration. As the image above shows, it becomes a vicious cycle…

Meet Pedro

So let’s describe an example of how our thoughts can impact our emotions and behaviour.

Pedro is in a situation at work where he received criticism from his manager on a recent project report he spent a long time working on. He has thoughts such as “I’m not good enough” or “I’m going to get fired”.

Behaviour Dwelling

This, of course, makes him feel worse and he starts to feel more upset and down. He sits at home and dwells on what happened at work. He starts to remember other times he didn’t do well in other aspects of his life, and begins to convince himself that he’s totally failing in his life.

Dwelling on the past makes him feel worse and he feels as if his body and mind are drained of energy. Going back to work feels like a huge effort and he’s not sure he can face it. He ends up feeling hopeless.

You can see how stress can fuel itself, with each part linking to the others and we can easily tip into a downward spiral vicious cycle. The good news is that this programme will help you develop the skills to prevent this happening! And changing one part of the cycle can help change the others.

As Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher says, “men (and women) are disturbed not by things, but by the view they take on them”. So, the thoughts about, or the meaning we give the event.

Because some of the most common triggers of low mood and insomnia include life stress, anxiety, and worry, it is be helpful to learn how to identify these triggers and learn to cope better with them. There are a number of techniques that you can use to prevent those automatic thoughts from keeping you up at night. With planning and practice, you will soon be controlling your thoughts rather than letting them control you.