Insomnia: When the Body Refuses to Let Go (Therapy practice in Paris 10 - for Expats)

Insomnia is not a matter of discipline or good lifestyle habits. It can affect people who are very organized, very reasonable, who “do everything right.” What happens at night is often a reflection of what is happening during the day — or of what one hasn’t had the time, or the opportunity, to process.

What insomnia may be signaling

There are several forms of insomnia: difficulty falling asleep, repeated awakenings during the night, or waking very early and being unable to fall back asleep. These forms can overlap, and they don’t all carry the same meaning.

What often comes up is the idea that in the evening, when everything stops, thoughts take over. The bed becomes the place where the mind keeps spinning — worries, unspoken things, to-do lists, imagined scenarios. During the day, staying busy helps; at night, that support disappears.

Insomnia can also be linked to a more diffuse anxious state, a depressive period, an unresolved difficult event, or simply a life where emotions don’t really have space to be felt and released.

The paradox of “I have to sleep”

One of the most exhausting aspects of chronic insomnia is the anxiety generated by the lack of sleep itself. Bedtime starts to feel intimidating. You watch the clock. You calculate how many hours are left before morning. This heightened vigilance, of course, makes sleep even harder to find.

This mechanism is not irrational — it’s human. But it can spiral, creating distress that goes far beyond the issue of sleep.

What we can work on together

In therapy, insomnia is not treated as an isolated symptom to be “fixed.” Instead, we look at the surrounding context: the overall emotional state, what occupies the mind at night, what the body is expressing through this difficulty in letting go.

Sometimes it involves understanding what keeps a constant state of alertness in place. Sometimes it relates to something older. Sometimes sleep improves as we work on something else — anxiety, a difficult life situation, a complicated relationship.

There is no single protocol. Each situation is unique.

A few words on “sleep advice”

There are many practical recommendations about sleep — limiting screen time, keeping regular hours, avoiding caffeine after 2 p.m. These are not wrong, and they can help to some extent. But they don’t change much if the real difficulty lies elsewhere. It’s a bit like trying to treat a fever with a fan without looking for its underlying cause.

If you are going through a period of insomnia and feel there may be something more to explore, feel free to reach out to me.