You're Making Your Insomnia Worse (But Not in the Way You Think)

What if a huge portion of your sleep-related suffering is actually optional?

That might sound dismissive—it's not. Stick with me, because this reframe changed how I think about insomnia, and I think it can do the same for you.

The concept: Clean pain vs. Dirty pain

This idea comes from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and it's beautifully simple.

Clean pain is the unavoidable stuff. It's the fatigue after a rough night. The frustration of lying awake at 3 a.m. The sadness, the anxiety, the heaviness.

These feelings are real, and they're a natural part of being human. You don't need to fix them or make them go away—they belong here.

Dirty pain is the suffering we pile on top.

It's the catastrophizing and self-criticism:

"If I don't fall asleep in the next twenty minutes, tomorrow is ruined."

"What's wrong with me? Everyone else can sleep."

It's the desperate struggle to force yourself to relax, which—as you've probably noticed—has the opposite effect.

Dirty pain shows up in a lot of familiar ways.

1. It's when you evaluate your night in the most extreme terms possible.
2. It's when you never pause to question the story you're telling yourself about what poor sleep means.
3. It's when you reach for coping strategies that feel good in the moment but create more problems over time.

And it's when you've been suffering for so long that misery starts to feel like your default setting—like it's just who you are now.

Here's the key insight:

You have very little control over clean pain, but you have a lot of control over dirty pain.

And for most people with insomnia, dirty pain is where the majority of their suffering lives.

That's actually great news.

It means there's real room to feel better—not by sleeping perfectly, but by changing how you relate to the struggle.

The Tug-of-War you didn't sign up for

Let me give you a picture of what dirty pain looks like in action.

Imagine you're standing at the edge of a bottomless pit.

On the other side stands the Insomnia Monster—big, terrifying, impossibly strong.

A rope stretches between you across the pit, and you're both pulling with everything you've got.

You're terrified of falling in, so you pull harder. The monster pulls back. You dig your heels in, arms burning, and think:

"If I can just pull hard enough, the monster will fall in, and this will all be over. I'll finally sleep. I'll finally feel normal again."

But you can't outpull the monster. You never could.

Now think about this:

Can you imagine trying to fall asleep while locked in that kind of life-or-death struggle?

Can you imagine trying to be present with the people you love, do meaningful work, or enjoy a single afternoon—while playing that game?

You can't. That's the trap.

So what do you do?

You drop the rope.

You don't have to win the tug of war. You don't even have to play. The monster might still be standing there on the other side of the pit. That's fine. You're not fighting it anymore.

When you drop the rope—when you stop white-knuckling your way through every bad night and every tired morning—something shifts.

The struggle loses its grip. You start to suffer less. And paradoxically, sleep often starts to come more easily, because you've finally lowered the stakes.

What this looks like in practice

Dropping the rope doesn't mean you stop caring about sleep.

It means you stop treating every night...