You don’t have insomnia
You have a lifestyle that keeps you awake
Recently, I’ve been living with a friend who claims to have insomnia. After watching her night after night, I started to wonder—maybe she doesn’t have insomnia at all. Maybe she just has a routine she doesn’t want to change.
Yes, insomnia is clinically real, and it affects a lot of people. But for most of us, it’s not some medical mystery. It’s more like a warning light on the dashboard of our lives—one we keep ignoring.
Sleep isn’t something you can chase down. The more you run after it, the more elusive it becomes. I’ve been trying to explain this to her lately. Sleep is like a butterfly. You don’t catch a butterfly by chasing it; you build a garden, and it comes to you. Sleep works the same way. Create the right environment; remove distractions, wind down, respect your body’s natural rhythms—and real rest will follow.
But instead of cultivating that environment, she slaps a label on herself and calls it a day. She says, “I have insomnia,” but does nothing to alleviate it.
She’s not cursed. Her body isn’t betraying her. It’s screaming at her. And instead of listening, she’s making the same choices that keep her wired, exhausted, and stuck in a self-inflicted cycle—because change feels worse than another sleepless night.
She doomscrolls at 1 AM, flooding her brain with blue light and endless distractions. She treats caffeine like a lifeline, riding the artificial high until the inevitable crash. Her eating habits swing between extremes—starving, then bingeing, running on sugar to “push through.” The stress is relentless; mental chaos, overstimulation, an addiction to busyness, and an inability to shut down. It’s a cycle, and her body is paying the price.
And the more I watched her, the more I realised… maybe she didn’t want to sleep.
Because when you’re exhausted, everything becomes justifiable—at least in the short term. It’s ok to snap at people, skip the gym, reach for junk food and numb ourselves with mindless scrolling. It’s easier to say, I didn’t sleep well than to admit, I didn’t take care of myself. When you’re running on empty, no one expects your best—including you. Sleep deprivation becomes the ultimate scapegoat for a life of avoidance.
And maybe it’s not just her.
Maybe a lot of us do this.
How many times have we made choices we know will make us feel worse later, simply because, in the moment, it’s easier? We stay up too late, eat things we know will wreck our energy, avoid rest, and then wonder why everything feels hard. We tell ourselves we’re just “bad sleepers,” but in reality, we’re avoiding the discomfort of real change. Because fixing our sleep means fixing everything else too.
So before clinging to insomnia as part of your identity, take control. Put down the phone. Improve your diet. Stop chasing the next hit of stimulation. Create a bedtime routine that respects your body’s needs.
See what happens when you put the excuses to bed.
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