Why Can’t Highly Sensitive People Get a Good Night’s Sleep?
Everyone has trouble sleeping sometimes but, for highly sensitive people (HSPs), it’s a nightly struggle. Studies show HSPs often have difficulty falling asleep and also have nightmares more than others.
While it's easy to blame a few bad nights on poor bedtime habits, noisy neighbors or the stress of an upcoming job interview, there's clearly something else going on when it's a chronic problem. So what sets HSPs apart when it comes to sleep?
The answer may lie in their sleep reactivity, a term used to explain the relationship between sensitivity and sleep disruption.
What are Highly Sensitive People?
Psychologist Elaine Aron coined the term ‘highly sensitive person’ to describe individuals with heightened sensory awareness. Put simply, HSPs notice things, both consciously and unconsciously, that affect the five senses more than most people. Lights are brighter, traffic is louder, cheese is smellier, that wool sweater is itchier.
If you’re an HSP, you may find yourself hiding out in the bathroom at parties without really knowing why, until you realize how much calmer you feel when you're away from all the crowds and human energy.
What is Sleep Reactivity?
Sleep reactivity is the degree to which stress affects your sleep, making it difficult to fall or stay asleep. Everyone has a different sleep reactivity level, but people with high sleep reactivity have more disruption to their sleep when they’re stressed.
High sleep reactivity is not good news. It leads to poor sleep quality, which can affect your mood, concentration, creativity and overall health. It also increases the risk of insomnia and the risk of developing depression and anxiety.
Guess what? Studies show that HSPs have a higher sleeper reactivity than most.
Why Does Sleep Reactivity Affect HSPs So Much?
The reason why HSPs struggle with sleeper reactivity is down to three core traits that are always present in highly sensitive individuals:
- Sensory overload
HSPs are highly attuned to what’s going on around them. Their brains naturally absorb more sensory information from their environment, from sights and sounds, external events and nonverbal communication to the emotional states of other people. So much input can become overwhelming to HSPs and disrupt their ability to sleep through the night.
- Response to stress
Since HSPs absorb more information from their environment than other folks, to them, the world is an overstimulating place. They are more likely to experience high stress levels just by trying to navigate the world around them. Think of it like your survival instinct on overdrive. HSPs are always on high alert, and the heightened stress can make it tougher for them to relax and drift off into a peaceful slumber.
- Depth of processing
According to Aron, the primary quality of HSPs is depth of processing. This means you think, reflect and mentally organize everything around you, including sounds, smells, colors, crowds, temperature and other people’s emotions. This processing function creates individuals who are creative, empathetic and full of ideas as they think about patterns, meanings and connections between things.
Unfortunately, you also have a hard time turning off your brain when it’s time to rest. While you may consciously feel tired and ready for bed at night, you are still unconsciously sorting and analyzing every piece of sensory and emotional information you encountered throughout the day. Everything from the sound of your neighbor’s lawnmower to the pain of a loved one’s grief is looping through your mind once more, making it nearly impossible to relax and fall asleep easily.
How Can HSPs Sleep Better?
Although highly sensitive people naturally process information more deeply than others, there are techniques you can adopt to help you fall asleep more quickly and sleep more soundly throughout the night.
1. Mindfulness-based therapy for insomnia
Mindfulness may be particularly useful in treating the insomnia caused by high sleep reactivity. It aims to both reduce your wakefulness at night, and help you manage your emotions as you react to the fatigue of sleep loss the next day. Mindfulness-based therapy for insomnia is a particular type of mindfulness training. It combines cognitive behavioral treatments for insomnia with the principles and practices of mindfulness meditation.
Mindfulness works because it takes HSPs out of their heads. It encourages you to develop awareness of the present moment by noticing the impermanent nature of things. By seeing impermanence, you realize attachment to certain outcomes can cause stress.
For example, if you see worries and events as things you need to control, you become stressed. Mindfulness encourages you to see them as clouds drifting past you. You can notice them and let them go.
2. Cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia
Cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) targets difficulties with falling asleep and staying asleep, in part by identifying your negative thoughts about sleep that keep you awake at night. Once you’ve identified those thoughts, you work on modifying them to be more realistic.
Often, people with sleeping problems compensate for “lost” sleep by increasing their time in bed without actually sleeping – something therapists call sleep extension. CBT-I encourages you to avoid activities in bed like reading or watching TV. Instead, the program promotes good sleep hygiene, and uses the principles of cognitive therapy to help you become aware of your thoughts and look at them more rationally and less emotionally.
3. Relaxation techniques
Techniques that relieve stress before bedtime can be very effective for HSPs. These practices help by reducing the release of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline, and by slowing your heart rate and breathing, which make you feel calmer. You release your daily stress and reduce your mental activity at night.
There are many types of relaxation techniques. Some of the simplest include breathing exercises which train you to focus on your breathing instead of the thoughts that loop through your mind.
Final thoughts
If you're an HSP, and poor sleep is affecting how you function day to day, it's worth trying the above therapies as part of your self-care, or seeking out a sleep and/or HSP expert to help you come up with a treatment approach. Getting good sleep is essential for everyone, but it's especially important for HSPs who have higher sensitivities than others and need to feel rested, just to get through the day.
The bright side of being environmentally sensitive is that you are as affected by the calming effects of relaxation and mindfulness as you are by everyday stresses. Use those skills to get a good night’s sleep in your own unique way.
