Why do people get insomnia even though they are exhausted?
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Bad things happened to them and their brain has adapted to protect themselves from constant threats. And even when there is no actual threat, their brains are stuck that way. They need intensive therapy to heal from it, something that is not available to many. Others do not know it is possible to heal
I doubt anyone really knows. Sleep is a big mystery, just like most of the actual workings of the brain and psychology in general.
It’s probably related to (perceived) stress and stress hormones. It’s “funny” how even hard (-> exhausting) exercise can cause sleep problems even though it would allow for the best recovery.
One of the more common reasons involves day/night (circadian) rhythms. Your brain tracks not only how long you’ve been awake and how much sleep you’ve gotten recently, but also roughly what sun time it is. If all is well, you don’t make melatonin until sundown, and your sleep and night signals line up. However, if you’ve recently flown a couple thousand miles east or west, or work weird shifts, you’re not synced with the sun. If you stay up using a computer or phone, or being under bright lights, you suppress melatonin production. The result of all of these is a mismatch between the part of your brain saying “we need sleep” and the part saying “it’s daytime, we need to wait.”
People with chronic insomnia also tend to have a lot of counterproductive habits. Bed goes from being a calming sleepy place to an irritating/anxious place associated with tossing and turning, where they check the clock to see how bad their sleep is (but actually get less and less accurate at estimating sleep timing.) The fear of insomnia becomes a vicious cycle of trying too hard and being keyed up at night, enough to overcome the brain’s sleep drive.
Circadian rhythm problems are treated with careful management of bright light, darkness, and sometimes added melatonin. Other insomnia responds well to a brief course of specialized therapy that helps counter the thoughts and habits messing with sleep.
One of the main reasons is that we have symbolic thinking. We are the only know kind of animal that a word, a symbol or a thought acts exactly as the real object/situation and triggers the same as the original stimuli.
When we are on bed and we think in a perceived danger (for example something that may happen tomorrow) then our body react the same way as we were actually present in a real dangerous situation.
It doesn’t matter how comfortable and safe we are on the bed, the though will trigger a real alert status in our body, and we are not wired to sleep if we are in a situation where our safety is risked.
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