The Relationship Between Perfectionism and Insomnia

Last week someone asked me if perfectionist behavior, such as planning, tracking, and organizing, had a relationship to their insomnia. The person asking the question expressed a feeling that their insomnia is what prompted these types of behaviours. They saw a strong tendency toward perfectionism as a way of compensating for the negative consequences of sleep.

The question was: Are these behaviors related to insomnia? The answer is yes, but not in the way you might expect.

Perfectionism and lower sleep quality

Perfectionism is one personality factor that is very strongly linked to the development of chronic insomnia. Perfectionism scores are also strongly linked to lower sleep quality in sleep studies, even in people without insomnia.^1,2

Specifically, perfectionism, anxiety over making errors, and unhelpful sleep-related beliefs are directly related to developing chronic insomnia.^1,3

Distorted thinking about sleep

Psychologists have also determined that people who are more perfectionistic are more prone to thinking and emotions that run counter to what the facts are. This link is true more generally and also specifically as it relates to sleep.³

You might have imagined the opposite – I assumed that before looking into the research. Distorted thinking about sleep is linked to chronic insomnia because it drives sleep anxiety and unhelpful sleep behaviors.

Unhelpful sleep behaviors and chronic insomnia

People with these traits are more prone to engage in behaviors like napping, overplanning to avoid consequences, and catching up on sleep when they suffer from short-term sleep troubles. These behaviors can inadvertently encourage the development of chronic insomnia by:

• Weakening your sleep drive through staying in bed more and napping
• Weakening your bed/sleep association (staying in bed awake)
• Creating daytime sleep effort

Sleep-related anxiety

People with perfectionistic tendencies are also more prone to fears about making mistakes and taking the wrong actions and decisions in life. My personal thinking is that if someone has a fear about making mistakes, and then also has unhelpful non-fact-based fears about sleeplessness; this combination could create a strong emotional investment for "controlling" sleep and the consequences of poor sleep.

People would feel this result as sleep-related anxiety. Sometimes this "controlling," even though it appears rational on the surface, actually fuels insomnia.

Separating perfectionism from unhelpful sleep-related thinking

In general, it does turn out that a person's ability to be organized tends to be linked to lower insomnia scores. But this benefit is eliminated when people engage in unhelpful sleep-related thinking when they can't sleep.⁴

So it appears one cannot "organize" themselves out of insomnia. But it would also appear that if people can identify and disengage from unhelpful sleep-related thinking that it might be possible that other perfectionistic tendencies (like being organized) could be helpful.

Common sleep-related beliefs

Coaches and therapists use assessment tools that evaluate someone's beliefs about sleep. There are up to 30 statements for a person to rate their level of agreement with, including "I need to get 8 hours of sleep to function well" or "When I can't sleep I should try harder."⁵

A coach or therapist can identify the most unhelpful thoughts using the tool and can work with the person with insomnia to unpick the fears underneath them and replace them with healthier and more accurate thinking. Sometimes this alone can be enough to eliminate someone's sleep anxiety.

Nothing is always or never

In my experience, the most common unhelpful thoughts that are most easily refuted by the facts are beliefs that start with "always" and "never." Or a repetitive thought about something that has never actually happened. Nothing is always or never, as nearly every single thing people see as a negative consequence related to sleep has had an exception or a different cause. Just putting these into perspective is immensely helpful.

Do you have any thoughts that you recognize are not helpful to your sleep? What are they and how do you cope with them? Please share your thoughts so our whole community can benefit!