Thoughts flicker like disconnected lanterns in a tunnel — flaring up and fading out, keeping me from sinking into the darkness of sleep. Each new position in bed turns me into a stone sculpture, frozen by the endless, failed attempts to fall asleep. Midnight silence settles like dust on my eyelashes, while the dawn already glides across the rooftops — cold and relentless, the judge passing sentence on the new day. “Yes, I hear you. I hear you coming, glowing blue every second. But please, just wait a little longer”. The night has slipped away, and I’m left standing on the platform — like someone who missed their train. Just me, and my insomnia — the ruthless ticket inspector of the last car to the land of dreams.
In this episode of the Misery Shared Podcast, Slava talks about insomnia. He shares his personal observations and tips — what you can do if you’re struggling to fall asleep, or if you don’t have immediate access to a psychologist. He also explains why insomnia happens in the first place, and what it might be trying to tell you.
Disclaimer: the author makes it clear that he is not a psychologist or a psychotherapist. He strongly opposes any form of online diagnosis. This podcast is not intended for self-diagnosis or self-treatment. Its purpose is to explain things in simple terms and to encourage people to seek help from a therapist — even if it feels like a waste of time. It also aims to help listeners choose a good mental health professional.
So, if you need to deal with insomnia right now, there are several science-backed self-help strategies that the author shares in the podcast. Listen to the episode to find out what you can try — and how to manage insomnia at home, especially if seeing a doctor isn’t an option.
The exact causes of insomnia can only be listed — and even then, the list won’t be complete, since multiple factors may be involved at once. For example, if sleep maintenance is disrupted due to anxiety or hyperarousal, and you start waking up earlier than usual, the brain might mistakenly begin to perceive falling asleep itself as a stressful experience. In that case, the cause could be twofold — an anxiety disorder (or another condition), and a learned association where the act of falling asleep is also seen as something to avoid, like stress. In cases of burnout, the focus shifts toward ineffective sleep. The person may spend a lot of time in bed, but sleep no longer restores their energy. Even after sleeping, they still feel exhausted — often linked to the depletion of the body’s internal resources. With procrastination, the connection to insomnia is even more direct. We may voluntarily delay sleep — putting off bedtime until the very last moment. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as self-sabotage or “revenge bedtime procrastination”, and it’s driven by the urge to squeeze out at least some free time for ourselves in the evening or at night.
So, if the problem isn’t only — or isn’t at all — physiological (like when you want to sleep, but your body wakes you up due to sleep apnea, snoring, or other reasons), then relying solely on sleep medication and not considering a psychologist isn’t a long-term solution. For two reasons.
First, sleep disturbances may have already become behavioral. Your brain might have learned certain patterns associated with falling asleep. Or the root cause could lie deeper — something you’re not even aware of. In that case, you might end up needing sleeping pills not just short-term — and that could lead to dependence.
Second, artificial sleep is — in some ways — like a cheap imitation of real sleep. Even setting aside the potential for building tolerance to the medication (needing higher doses over time) or becoming dependent on it, there are still other important concerns.
Artificial sleep tends to be shorter, with fewer deep sleep phases, less restorative, and often comes with a groggy feeling in the morning. In other words, you might preserve the form of sleep — just closing your eyes — but without many of the actual benefits that sleep is supposed to provide by nature. Even if you manage to perfectly match the timing — falling asleep and waking up at the “right” hours over a long period — but only with the help of sleep medication, the phases of that sleep still can’t be fully replicated. And because of that, many internal processes — such as growth, tissue repair, immune function, regeneration, and even the brain’s natural detox — will be disrupted.
Sleeping pills are meant only for very acute situations — for example, after a loss, a trauma, or during severe anxiety, when someone needs help getting through the peak phase. If they’re used long-term and regularly, without any attempt at therapy — they become a crutch, not a cure. And when they’re discontinued, rebound insomnia can occur — even worse than the sleep issues that existed before the medication.
That’s why you need a doctor — because they can see the bigger picture more clearly. And there’s a reason why psychologists are often prioritized in such cases: in the end, only they can help retrain your body to fall asleep properly.
From a scientific perspective, sleep is a critically important state for overall health. During sleep, vital processes take place that restore and maintain the functioning of both the brain and body. Although from an evolutionary point of view, being active at night posed risks — such as predators — and nighttime immobility served as a protective mechanism, sleep is still essential for the brain. In other words, sleep shouldn’t be seen merely as an evolutionary habit. During sleep, memory consolidation and the “reshuffling” of information occur. Scientists also believe that sleep helps strengthen important neural connections while weakening unnecessary ones — a process known as synaptic downscaling. Moreover, specific stages of sleep have been shown to be directly involved in transferring learned material into long-term memory. In addition, during sleep, the brain activates the glymphatic system, which “washes” the brain — blood and cerebrospinal fluid actively filter out metabolic waste, and this process happens most effectively while we sleep. In that sense, sleep acts as a “clean-up crew” for the brain after a day of activity. Beyond that, key growth hormones are released during sleep, and tissue repair and immune system restoration are at their peak.
Without sufficient sleep, a person loses the ability to retain information, focus, and becomes more vulnerable to illness and premature aging.
However, for all these restorative processes to take place and activate at the right time, the transition into sleep must happen naturally — and at night.
Why this timing matters, what common misconceptions exist about melatonin, and much more — all of it is covered in this episode of the podcast.
The next episode will focus on burnout. And the one after that will dive into a somewhat controversial, yet equally fascinating topic — procrastination.
If you want to contact us but are afraid to use comments, you can send us an e-mail. After that it will be enough to delete your letter from the “Sent” folder.
Our e-mail address is: help@belarus.fm
