Poor sleep is rarely the problem itself. It's the alarm bell going off because something deeper needs attention.
By Maryam
It wasn't until I started reading seriously about sleep science, particularly Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep, that something shifted in me. I want to share what I've learned, not in clinical language, but the way I'd explain it to someone sitting across from me.
Sleep Is Active, Not Passive
The first thing worth knowing is that sleep is not simply the absence of wakefulness. While you sleep, your brain is doing some of its most important work: consolidating memories, processing emotions, clearing metabolic waste, and restoring every organ system in your body. Walker describes sleep as the single most effective thing we can do each day to reset our brain and body.
When we sleep well, we are more emotionally resilient, more clear-headed, and better able to handle the inevitable difficulties of daily life. When we don't, even for a few nights, our anxiety increases, our impulse control weakens, and our capacity to cope quietly shrinks.
What the Research Shows A 2020 study in Nature Human Behaviour by Ben Simon, Rossi, Harvey, and Walker found that even modest night-to-night reductions in sleep predicted meaningful increases in next-day anxiety. The part of the brain that acts as a rational brake on emotional reactivity, the prefrontal cortex, is significantly impaired by sleep loss, while the amygdala (our threat detector) becomes overactive. We become, quite literally, less ourselves.
What We Actually Measure
Sleep quality is about more than hours. There are a few key parameters worth understanding, because they can help you make sense of your own experience at night.
Sleep Latency, How long it takes to fall asleep. More than 20–30 minutes consistently suggests a nervous system still in "go" mode at bedtime.
Sleep Efficiency, The proportion of time in bed actually spent sleeping. Healthy efficiency sits at 85% or above.
REM Sleep, The stage where we process emotions and consolidate memories. Walker calls this "overnight therapy." When REM is disrupted, we wake emotionally raw and unrested.
Slow-Wave (Deep) Sleep, The body's deepest restoration stage. Research shows it's the strongest predictor of next-day anxiety reduction, more deep sleep, noticeably less anxiety.
The Day Creates the Night
Here is the insight that changed how I think about sleep: we cannot spend our days saturated with unmanaged stress and emotional exhaustion, and then expect to fall asleep with ease. The nervous system does not have an off switch. What happens during the day is the script that sleep will attempt to process at night.
Environmental factors matter, a cool, dark room, consistent sleep and wake times, no screens or caffeine close to bed. These are real and worth doing. But they are the foundation, not the whole house. If the internal world is overwhelmed, rearranging the bedroom furniture won't fix it.
We need to manage stress during the day, not just at bedtime. Sleep hygiene matters, but it can't do the work that daytime regulation needs to do.
Two practices I return to again and again are Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) and Yoga Nidra. Both are evidence-based, require no equipment, and take 20–30 minutes.
PMR works by deliberately tensing and releasing muscle groups throughout the body, it's neurologically impossible to hold significant physical tension while deeply relaxed, and the practice trains exactly that shift.
Yoga Nidra, sometimes called "yogic sleep, " guides the body into a deeply restful state between waking and sleeping, measurably lowering cortisol and supporting recovery. For anyone carrying the weight of stress or burnout, these are not luxuries. They are tools with a solid evidence base behind them.
A Word on Alcohol
Common myth: "A drink before bed helps me sleep."
I hear this often, and I understand why, alcohol does make you feel drowsy. But drowsy is not the same as asleep, and sedation is not the same as sleep.
Alcohol suppresses REM sleep, the very stage Walker describes as "overnight therapy, " where the brain processes emotional experience in a way that genuinely helps us recover from what was difficult. It also fragments the second half of the night as the liver metabolises it, often causing early waking and a sense of having barely slept at all. People who drink to sleep are, in effect, blocking the biological process that would most help them with whatever is keeping them awake in the first place.
If Sleep Has Been a Problem for a While
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia, CBT-I, is recommended by both the American College of Physicians and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine as the first-line treatment for chronic insomnia, ahead of medication. It addresses the thought patterns and behaviours that maintain sleeplessness, and its benefits last. If you've been struggling for months, it's genuinely worth pursuing with a trained practitioner.
Tracking your sleep is also more useful than it might sound. Our memory of how we slept is surprisingly unreliable, shaped by mood, expectation, and what we feared might happen. A simple sleep diary, filled in for a few minutes each morning, gives you actual patterns rather than impressions. And patterns are almost always where the answers live.
Sleep is not a passive retreat from the world. It is one of the most active and important things your body and brain do. When we take it seriously, when we address the stress that disrupts it, build practices that support it during the day, and understand what is actually happening in those hours, so much else tends to follow.
If any of this resonates, I'd love to hear what comes up for you. Sleep is something I think about a lot, and it rarely gets the attention it deserves.
References
- Walker, M. P. (2017). Why We Sleep. Scribner.
- Ben Simon, E., Rossi, A., Harvey, A. G., & Walker, M. P. (2020). Overanxious and underslept. Nature Human Behaviour, 4, 100–110. View study
- Walker, M. P., & van der Helm, E. (2009). Overnight therapy? The role of sleep in emotional brain processing. Psychological Bulletin, 135(5), 731–748. View study
- Goldstein, A. N., & Walker, M. P. (2014). The role of sleep in emotional brain function. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 10, 679–708. View study