Insomnia can cause challenges in falling asleep or staying asleep. Rather than occurring on its own, an underlying cause often triggers insomnia.
If you can figure out the reason behind your insomnia, it often makes determining the correct treatment easier. It can also yield better and longer lasting results for insomnia and for your overall mental well being.
What Causes Insomnia?
In the majority of cases, another condition or circumstance in your life is interfering with your body’s ability to get to sleep and achieve restful sleep. Determining this cause may be difficult. If whatever is causing your insomnia presents problems during the times you are awake, you may have adapted so that there is little interference with your daily routine although there continues to be an impact on your sleep.
The most common triggers for insomnia include:
- Depression – A common side effect of depression is a change in sleep patterns. While many people with depression experience excessive fatigue, they may find themselves unable to get restful sleep.
- Anxiety and Stress – Anxiety can keep your mind active and your senses alert as a protective measure. This makes it difficult to fall asleep even if you are feeling tired.
- Substance Use – Alcohol and other substances interrupt your circadian rhythm and can keep you from getting the sleep you need.
- Lifestyle – Drinking caffeine, exercising at the wrong time, an irregular sleeping schedule, and other habits or changes in your life can make sleep difficult.
- Ineffective Sleeping Environment – This can be an easy trigger to fix, but not always easy to identify. A bad mattress or a room that is too hot, cold, noisy, or bright may make it hard to sleep.
- Medications – Some medications will cause sleeping problems, including antidepressants. Changing up medications or seeking alternative treatment methods for depression and anxiety may help manage problems with sleep.
If you are struggling with insomnia, there are various techniques you can use. Many of these address lifestyle issues that could be causing insomnia, but can also often help you achieve more restful sleep, even if it is a different trigger leading to your insomnia. These strategies include cutting back on or eliminating alcohol and caffeine, avoiding screens in the hour before you go to bed, incorporating physical exercise into your daily routine, and keeping the same sleep schedule every day of the week.
Get Help with Your Insomnia from a Jericho Therapist at Right Path Counseling
While there are different solutions you can find for insomnia, such as making lifestyle changes or taking medications either prescribed or over the counter, determining the underlying cause of your insomnia – whether that is anxiety, depression, substance use, or another concern – and treating that can help reduce your insomnia. It can also address other symptoms that might have resulted.
Right Path Counseling offers therapy in Jericho for patients throughout Long Island. We can treat insomnia, as well as conditions that may cause insomnia such as depression and anxiety. We have multiple psychotherapists on our team, enabling us to connect you with the therapist that will provide the right treatments and research based methods to help maintain both your physical and mental health. Send us a message or call our front office to get matched with a therapist today.
