What do you do when you've exhausted all the sleep aids?
After battling insomnia for four years and trying a range of treatments to no avail, I went to a hypnotherapist—here's what happened.
When talking about wellness and the fundamentals of good health, there’s one thing that keeps coming up over and over again: Sleep.
Stressed? You need more sleep. Have brain fog? You need more sleep. Breaking out? Yup, more sleep. But, as any insomniac will tell you, knowing how important sleep is can make it even more impossible to do. We’ll call it a Catch ZZ.
From 2016 to 2020, I was hit with consistent bouts of insomnia where my body quite literally forgot how to fall asleep. I was well-versed in every sleep aid on the market (melatonin, magnesium, CBD, THC, lavender pillow spray, all the teas), strategies for good sleep hygiene (no blue light, no caffeine, no sugar, no reading in bed) and other health tips that apply to everything in life (exercise, meditate, drink lots of water, eat well). Nothing worked. And eventually I became reliant on the drug Zopiclone, which is supposed to be just a short-term treatment of severe insomnia. I was popping that little bitter blue pill every single night, and then it stopped working. The last thing on my list to try was hypnotherapy.
It may sound a bit woo-woo and conjure images of guests on ‘90s talk shows acting like animals on stage, but it’s not like that at all. “Hypnotherapy is like being half awake and half asleep,” Andrew Gentile, a certified hypnotherapist, told me during a virtual appointment. “It opens a portal so new instruction can be used to target the part of the mind that controls not only the thoughts but also the body.” Think of it as a guided meditation that gets you to a deeper level of relaxation.
How does it work, exactly? The hypnotherapist guides the client through a few techniques to imagine their heart rate slowing down and their thoughts getting quiet. By doing so, their body gets the message to do the same. “Often that’s all someone needs—simple hand-holding—to get them to a more relaxed state and remind their body how to shift gears so it can fall asleep,” said Gentile.
This last part resonated with me. I felt like my body had forgotten how to switch states, like my fight or flight response was permanently activated. “Stress keeps us from falling asleep,” said Gentile “Often when we lie down at night [worries] come out because we haven’t had time to process them during the day.”
My major problem was having one bad night’s sleep that triggered a slew of others—which Gentile said is also all too common. “You start thinking sleep is fragile, it’s difficult to achieve, and so before bed, instead of getting sleepy, your adrenaline and cortisol get elevated,” he said. But implementing techniques learned through hypnotherapy can steer you back into relaxation mode so you can drop off to sleep.
During my session, Gentile guided me to remember times when my mind and body would transition from stress to rest. He told me to recall feelings of relief—coming home from work after a long day, putting down the pen after an exam, leaving a job interview. “These are moments of transition,” said Gentile. “So we’re reminding the mind and the body that it has the capacity to transition out of stress and into a state of calm, relaxation, and peace.” He encouraged me to let out a sigh, which is what we naturally do in such moments of relief. “It’s what our physiology does to create the drop in cortisol and stress hormones.”
I admit I had a hard time focusing on his words. And although I felt relaxed, I worried hypnotherapy wouldn’t work for me. He told me that’s common, but doesn’t mean the session wasn’t effective. Time will tell, he said, and it’s normal to need more than one session.
That night, I was able to fall asleep naturally, without any aids. The following night, I had trouble, so I went through Gentile’s guides, which he had recorded for me, and eventually fell asleep. Since then, I’ve had the occasional restless night, but with Gentile’s tips, I’ve been able to stave off any bouts of insomnia.*
*This story is an updated version of one originally published on Best Health. The magazine is folding at the end of the month and I’m not sure what will happen to the site (and all my stories), so I’ll be sharing them here on occasion.
Until next Sunday,
Renée
Super interesting! I've heard of hypnotherapy for a few ailments before but never knew if it worked or not. Glad you shared.