If you dread going to sleep at night, postpone it as long as possible, or generally prefer not to think about it, you’re not alone. You may have somniphobia, a fear of sleeping. Luckily, it’s a treatable problem.
Somniphobia is a fear of sleeping or falling asleep. It may also be called sleep anxiety. Somniphobia is known as a specific phobia, similar to phobias of animals (e.g., sharks), the natural environment (e.g., thunderstorms), certain situations (e.g., elevators), and others. Phobias cause an intensity of fear or anxiety that is out of proportion to the situation. They are persistent fears that significantly and negatively impact your quality of life.
Why might someone fear sleeping? There are actually several reasons why someone could develop this phobia.
You might be more likely to develop a fear of sleeping if you:
- Have previously suffered from insomnia, and fear its possible return
- Suffer from frequent and upsetting nightmares
- Have specific fears about bad things that could happen while you’re sleeping (e.g., your home catching on fire)
- Have a specific fear about dying in your sleep
- Experience a lot of dread, worry, and anxiety about the next day at bedtime
- Have a history of sleepwalking, sleep paralysis, or other parasomnias
- Experienced a trauma that happened at nighttime or while sleeping
Do You Have Somniphobia?
The number one symptom of somniphobia is significant fear and emotional upset when you think about sleeping or go to bed. Other symptoms include:
- Worrying about sleep, nightmares, or parasomnias throughout the day
- Difficulty concentrating during the day due to worry
- Physiological signs of anxiety when thinking about sleeping or trying to sleep
- Adopting elaborate pre-bedtime rituals to try to manage your fear and anxiety
- Avoiding going to bed as long as possible
- Leaving the lights, television, or music on while sleeping
- Sleeping in places other than your bed to make it feel less like “going to sleep”
It’s important to note that a fear of sleeping isn’t unique to somniphobia. Nightmare disorder, in which you have repeated, upsetting dreams that you remember, can lead to a fear of sleeping. If you remember scary nightmares that wake you up, you can develop a fear of going to sleep, knowing that nightmares may happen. In posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a significant fear of sleeping can stem from recurrent upsetting dreams related to a trauma, or from hypervigilance that can make it hard to fall asleep or stay asleep.
A fear of sleeping can also be a sign of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) if worry about sleep is a prominent symptom alongside similar worry about several other non-sleep-related things. Alternatively, if you have panic disorder, and have previously experienced a panic attack or panic symptoms at nighttime, or which have woken you up from sleeping, you can easily develop a fear of sleeping.
The Impacts of Somniphobia
It’s natural to want to avoid things that you fear or make you anxious. And as with any phobia, you’ll likely want to avoid the situation you fear altogether. But sleep cannot be avoided altogether – it’s necessary for your body and mind, and you will fall asleep eventually no matter how much you fight it.
It’s common to experience the physiological sensations of increased fear and anxiety if you have somniphobia. These sensations come from the fight-or-flight response, which is the body’s natural reaction to threatening situations. The sensations of anxiety related to sleep, including at bedtime, can also worsen the phobia by making sleep and bedtime even more aversive.
There are some common ways people try to control the fear of sleeping given that you can’t avoid sleeping altogether. One way is delaying going to bed as long as possible, until exhaustion takes over.
Another is adopting elaborate pre-bedtime rituals to feel “prepared” for the discomfort of going to sleep. For example, you might use a calming pillow spray, only sleep in specific clothing, try to optimize the temperature in your room, take a specific combination of supplements, eat or drink specific foods, etc.
While these may be helpful for some people, they can become quite time consuming, and anxiety can spike if these rituals cannot be carried out. These are examples of safety behaviors – they lower fear and anxiety and lend a sense of safety. The problem with safety behaviors is that they only do so in the short term – in the long term, they actually make the phobia worse.
Treatment for Somniphobia
Fortunately, somniphobia (like other specific phobias) isn’t something you have to suffer with – effective treatments are available and relief is possible!
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is proven effective in treating anxiety disorders, including phobias like somniphobia. In CBT, there are various techniques used to reduce anxiety and treat phobias. Some of these include:
Exposure Therapy
Exposure therapy is the most common phobia treatment and a CBT therapy technique used for many types of anxiety. In exposure therapy, you work with your therapist to gradually and intentionally approach, rather than avoid, the source of your fear. For somniphobia, you would likely build a hierarchy of sleep-related fears, and then use this to gradually work your way from the least anxiety provoking to most anxiety provoking situations. Exposure therapy teaches you to not rely on avoidance to manage your fear. It teaches you how to face your fears and that you can withstand feelings of anxiety. It also helps you stop using safety behaviors.
Relaxation Training
Relaxation training is another helpful technique used in CBT to treat anxiety. Through practice exercises, your therapist will help you learn to more readily activate your relaxation response – the opposite of the fight-or-flight response that occurs when you’re feeling fearful. Relaxation training helps you become less susceptible to the physiological signs of anxiety that can contribute to anxiety and phobias.
Changing Your Thinking
Cognitive restructuring is a technique in which your therapist helps you practice thinking differently to lower your anxiety. You learn to identify and challenge unhelpful thoughts. At the same time, you learn to implement more helpful thoughts (and likely blend these with exposure therapy techniques described above).
This approach be very helpful for people with somniphobia – scary experiences related to sleep can lead to understandable but unhelpful beliefs about sleep. For example, if you’ve experienced insomnia before, you might have a lot of troubling thoughts throughout the day about just how bad things could be if you don’t sleep well. The more you think about the scary consequences of insomnia, the more likely you are to feel anxious. Unhelpful thinking patterns like these can be understandable, but also contribute to somniphobia.
Recommendation
In summary, cognitive behavioral therapy can be quite effective at treating somniphobia as well as other conditions that make sleep challenging. If your sleep has suffered because of anxiety or the other factors described above, please contact us if you’re ready to reclaim your ability to go to sleep comfortably and easily.
