The most common mistakes that make insomnia worse are staying in bed awake, clock-watching at night, trying to “force” sleep, and napping to make up for lost sleep. These responses feel sensible, but they weaken your natural sleep pressure and turn the bed into a place of struggle — keeping the insomnia cycle going. Recognising and changing them is a key part of effective insomnia treatment with CBT-I, the first-line approach recommended by NICE and the NHS.
Many people who struggle with insomnia naturally try to find solutions that will help them sleep. Unfortunately, some of those very attempts make the problem worse. To understand why, it helps to know that insomnia is rarely caused by tiredness alone. More often it is a cycle that builds up between your thoughts, your sleep habits and a state of bodily alertness.
Once this cycle takes hold, even a very tired person can find themselves lying in bed awake for a long time. In trying to cope with the difficulty, people develop habits that strengthen the insomnia rather than easing it. Understanding the common mistakes can be an important step towards better sleep.
What are the common causes of insomnia?
Before looking at the mistakes that make things worse, it helps to understand what commonly triggers insomnia in the first place. Insomnia usually starts with a mix of stress and the way the body and mind respond to it.
- Stress and anxiety
- A racing mind at night
- Unhelpful sleep habits
- Trying to “force” yourself to sleep
- Using a phone or screens before bed
These factors can push the body into a state of heightened alertness at exactly the hours when you want to fall asleep. When the body is alert, sleep struggles to arrive naturally — even when you are exhausted.
Which mistakes make insomnia worse?
Often, in trying to solve the problem, we do things that reinforce it. The most common mistakes are:
- Staying in bed when you can’t fall asleep
- Checking the clock during the night
- Trying to “force” yourself to sleep
- Napping during the day to make up for lost sleep
Although these actions seem logical, they can strengthen the very cycle that keeps insomnia going. For example, when you stay in bed awake for a long time, the bed can shift from being a cue for sleep to being a cue for wakefulness and struggle. In the same way, checking the clock again and again raises tension around sleep, making it even harder to drift off.
Why doesn’t trying harder to sleep work?
Sleep is a natural process that cannot be summoned by effort. When you try to force sleep — straining to drop off, checking whether you’ve fallen asleep yet, or thinking about sleep constantly — the body actually becomes more alert. That alertness switches on the body’s arousal system, which is the opposite of the sleep state.
This is why, in many cases, the solution to insomnia is not “trying harder” but learning how to stop fighting with sleep. Letting go of the struggle is a central part of insomnia treatment.
How does insomnia treatment help break the cycle?
When insomnia has persisted for a while, changing the habits that hold it in place is a central part of treatment. During CBT-I (cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia), the work focuses on:
Changing unhelpful habits
Identifying and replacing the behaviours that strengthen insomnia, such as lying in bed awake or napping to cope.
Strengthening sleep pressure
Restoring the natural drive to sleep so that, by bedtime, your body is genuinely ready.
Reducing alertness around sleep
Calming the worry and physical tension that keep the arousal system switched on at night.
Rebuilding the bed–sleep link
Re-establishing the bed as a cue for sleepiness and calm rather than frustration.
Insomnia treatment does not try to force sleep to arrive. Instead, it helps create the conditions that allow sleep to return naturally.
What does the research say about insomnia treatment?
Over recent decades a large body of research has shown that cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is the most effective treatment for chronic insomnia. Studies consistently find that it helps to:
- Shorten the time it takes to fall asleep
- Reduce night-time waking
- Improve sleep quality
- Lower the tension and worry around sleep
One of the key advantages of CBT-I is that the improvement tends to last after treatment ends, because you learn how to work with your sleep system rather than against it. For this reason, leading sleep organisations — including NICE, the NHS and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine — now recommend CBT-I as the first-line treatment for chronic insomnia, ahead of sleeping tablets.
In summary
Insomnia is not just a problem of tiredness. It is often a cycle that builds up between thoughts, sleep habits and bodily alertness. In trying to solve the problem, we sometimes create habits that strengthen the insomnia — such as staying in bed for a long time when we can’t sleep, checking the clock at night, or trying to force ourselves to sleep. Changing these habits is an important part of insomnia treatment and can help break the cycle that holds the difficulty in place.