If you’re struggling with chronic insomnia, it’s not because you haven’t tried hard enough.

It’s not because you’re broken.

And it’s not because you haven’t found the right sleep hygiene hack.

It’s because insomnia becomes conditioned over time—and this conditioning keeps your nervous system on high alert every night.

In this episode, I want to show you why that happens… and what to do about it.

​

The Heart of Chronic Insomnia: Sleep Anxiety and Hyperarousal

At its core, long-term insomnia is a psychological and physiological loop.

You begin to feel anxious about sleep.

That anxiety activates your nervous system.

Your body enters a fight-or-flight state.

And that physical hyperarousal blocks your ability to fall and stay asleep.

This happens even when you’re exhausted.

You might feel wired at bedtime.

You might toss and turn while your mind spins.

You might even jerk awake just as you’re drifting off.

These are all signs that your nervous system is on high alert.

So how does this keep going?

There are 3 common patterns that fuel insomnia over time:

• Unhelpful perceptions
• Unhelpful reactions
• Unhelpful behaviors

Unhelpful Perceptions

This includes misunderstandings about sleep and insomnia.

You might think:

“There’s something wrong with me.”

“My body just doesn’t know how to sleep.”

“I’ll never function again if I sleep badly tonight.”

You may also carry extreme fears about the long-term effects of insomnia.

These thoughts feel real—but they’re often based on misinformation.

As your mind catastrophizes, your body believes the threat is real.

Cue more stress.

Cue more hyperarousal.

Cue more sleeplessness.

Throughout this system, you’ll learn to shift your perceptions.

By understanding how sleep actually works and how insomnia is maintained, your fear naturally decreases.

When the fear drops, your nervous system begins to calm down.

Unhelpful Reactions

These are the emotional and cognitive patterns that keep your sleep anxiety alive.

You might feel emotionally volatile when you don’t sleep well.

You might spiral when you feel tired during the day.

You might try to force yourself to sleep.

Or berate yourself for not being able to.

These reactions keep you trapped.

With tools like mindfulness, acceptance, and self-compassion, you can learn how to reduce emotional overreactivity and soften your nervous system response.

Unhelpful Behaviors

This includes what you actually do in response to insomnia.

You might:

• Spend extra time in bed trying to make sleep happen
• Take long naps
• Cancel plans to “protect” your sleep
• Avoid life activities that used to bring you joy

These behaviors unintentionally reinforce your fear of insomnia.

They train your brain to believe sleep is fragile and must be “protected.”

But this pressure only makes things worse.

​

Conditioned Hyperarousal: Why Your Body Reacts Automatically

Here’s the kicker.

After enough nights of poor sleep and high anxiety, your nervous system starts associating nighttime with threat.

Even if you’re not consciously anxious, your body remembers.

This is known as conditioned hyperarousal.

You might feel sleepy at 9pm.

But the second your head hits the pillow, you’re wide awake.

You might even sleep fine one night, only to find yourself triggered the next.

That’s not your fault.

It’s a...

If you’ve ever wondered how your insomnia actually started and why it’s been so hard to fix… this email is for you.

Because insomnia develops in a fairly predictable way.

And the science explains why so many people end up stuck in it long after the original stressor is gone.

There are three ingredients that lead to chronic insomnia:

Risk factors, a triggering event, and then sleep anxiety.

Let’s walk through this.

Step 1: Risk factors make you vulnerable

These are things in your life that increase your chances of developing insomnia.

Examples include:

• A family history of insomnia
• Prior sleep difficulties
• Being female or getting older
• High sensitivity to feeling bad when you don’t sleep
• Perfectionism or Type A tendencies
• Anxiety, depression, or trauma history
• Health anxiety
• A strong need for control in life

If any of these sound familiar, you’re not alone.

They don’t cause insomnia directly.

But they do make you more likely to struggle when something stressful happens.

Step 2: A triggering event causes short-term sleep disruption

This is usually a stressful situation that temporarily disrupts your sleep.

It might be:

• Work pressure
• A loss or grief​
• A new baby
• Financial stress
• A health scare
• Big life changes
• Or even excitement

These events can make it harder to fall asleep or stay asleep for a while.

This is completely normal.

In most people, once the event passes, sleep returns to normal.

But for others… it doesn’t.

Step 3: Anxiety takes over

When the short-term disruption doesn’t resolve, a deeper pattern starts to form.

You begin to worry:

“What if I can’t sleep again tonight?”

“How will I function tomorrow?”

That worry feels real—and your body reacts like it’s in danger.

This triggers nervous system hyperarousal.

You enter fight-or-flight mode… in bed.

Your heart races.

Your muscles stay tense.

Your thoughts spiral.

You get sudden jerks as you’re falling asleep.

You wake up in the night, wired.

You constantly monitor how close you are to sleep.

Your body isn’t broken.

It’s just been trained to associate nighttime with danger.

This is why insomnia persists—even when the original stressor is long gone.

So, what’s really going on?

Insomnia is not a disease or a defect.

It’s a learned pattern of fear and nervous system activation around sleep.

And that’s actually good news.

Because what is learned can be unlearned.

Why this matters

Understanding that the root of insomnia is sleep anxiety and hyperarousal shifts everything.

It’s not about fixing your sleep directly.

It’s about calming your anxiety and retraining your nervous system to feel safe at night.

That’s what the End Insomnia System is built to do.

It’s not a set of sleep hacks.

It’s a full transformation that helps you:

• Rewire your response to insomnia
• Reverse hyperarousal
• And reduce the fear of not sleeping

So sleep starts happening naturally again.

One final note

This isn’t your fault.

Insomnia develops from a storm of life stress, personality traits, and your body doing its best to protect you.

But it’s also something you can work through.

And you don’t have to do it alone.

You’re not broken.

You’re not alone.

And you’re not stuck with...

I and 100s of others have used the End Insomnia System to recover from insomnia for good and sleep great again for life.

Have you ever had doubts that a new system that goes after the root cause of insomnia - hyperarousal - might not work for you?

If so, you’re not alone.

Many people struggling with insomnia feel skeptical at first.

And it’s understandable.

You’ve probably tried countless things that didn’t help or, worse, made things more frustrating.

But let’s explore some common doubts you might have and why they don’t mean the End Insomnia System can’t work for you.

Objection #1: “I have insomnia, but I’m not anxious.”

Maybe the word “anxiety” doesn’t feel like it fits.

That’s fine.

Instead, try focusing on what happens in your body at night when you can’t sleep.

Do you feel tired but wired?

Agitated?

Frustrated?

Is your heart pounding?

Are your muscles tense?

Are your thoughts racing?

That’s not just “normal restlessness.”

That’s a textbook fight-or-flight response.

Your nervous system is reacting to a perceived threat.

That reaction is anxiety - whether you feel mentally anxious or not.

You don’t need to identify as “an anxious person” to recognize your body is stuck in high-alert mode.

And that’s what’s interfering with your ability to fall and stay asleep.

Now ask yourself:

If you truly felt no fear about insomnia or its consequences, would your sleep still be an issue?

In almost every case, the answer is no.

​Objection #2: “I’ve been disappointed so many times. Why should I trust this system?”

Totally fair.

Most people reading this have tried everything - supplements, sleep hygiene, CBT-i, and walked away frustrated.

The difference here is that the End Insomnia System doesn’t focus on making sleep happen.

Instead, it helps you dismantle the anxiety that prevents sleep from happening naturally.

This system doesn’t offer a quick fix. There are none, trust me.

It provides a step-by-step process for unwinding the nervous system patterns that keep you stuck.

And while it takes time, the long-term results are real.

If you’re tired of surface-level fixes, this is a different approach entirely.

Objection #3: “Maybe I’m just broken.”

This one hurts the most - and it’s one of the most common.

You’ve had so many sleepless nights, you’ve started to believe something is deeply wrong.

You’ve probably googled endlessly.

You’ve read scary theories on Reddit.

You’ve convinced yourself that something inside your brain or body is irreparably damaged.

But here’s the truth:

You are not broken.

Your nervous system has been trained to associate night with threat.

And it’s doing what it’s supposed to do when there’s danger: keeping you alert and awake.

This is not a defect.

It’s conditioning.

And conditioning can be reversed.

​​

Objection #4: “My insomnia is too unique for anything to help.”

Maybe you fall asleep fine, but wake up at 3 a.m.

Or maybe your mind races the second your head hits the pillow.

Or maybe you feel calm at night, but still can’t sleep.

The manifestations of insomnia vary.

But the mechanism under the surface is almost always the same:

A nervous system stuck in threat mode.

A mind trained to over-monitor sleep.

A cycle of fear and struggle that’s gotten deeply ingrained.

This system addresses that cycle—no matter how your insomnia shows up.

Objection #5: “My psychology is too complex for this to work.”

You may...