Welcome and Core Perspective
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Mind Body Sleep Podcast. Before we dive in, a giant thank you to anyone who has taken the time to rate or review the show. It truly helps this work reach the people who need it, so I surely appreciate that.
If you're new here, I'm Beth and I help people understand insomnia through a mind-body perspective. At the core of my work is the idea that insomnia isn't a broken sleep system, it's a protective response in the brain.
When the brain has learned to associate not sleeping with danger, it shifts into alert mode. And that's what we call hyperarousal. So instead of trying to fix insomnia at the sleep level, we look upstream at the patterns, beliefs, and behaviors that are keeping hyperarousal alive.
The Nighttime Bathroom Pattern
Today, I want to talk about something that so many people with insomnia experience, and that's needing to go to the bathroom sometimes multiple times a night.
So if you're someone who's lying in bed thinking, I better go again just in case, or if I go now, I won't have to get up later. Or maybe you just notice a lot of urgency in your bladder, this episode is for you.
And just to be clear, nothing I share here is medical advice. I'm speaking from my own personal experience and my work with others. So always check with your doctor if you have symptoms you're concerned about.
How Common This Really Is
Okay, so many of the people who have come through the Mind Body Sleep Mentorship have dealt with the increased need to go to the bathroom at night. So it is very, very common.
I am not exaggerating when I say that I would sometimes get up six to eight times a night to go to the bathroom. And understandably, this can start to feel a little concerning because there's often a very real sense of urgency driving it.
The Daytime Versus Nighttime Distinction
One of the things that helped me start feeling a little bit better about this whole thing was realizing that if I truly had a bladder issue, I would have been dealing with that during the day too. I would have been running to the bathroom all the time during the day, just like I was at night.
But that wasn't my experience. During the day, my bladder was fine. I didn't even think about it. It was just at night that this urgency seemed to show up.
So seeing that distinction helped me let go of the idea that something was seriously wrong with me or my body.
Anticipation and Safety Behaviors
So, what is going on with this? What is driving the need to make all of these bathroom runs?
I view the urgency to go to the bathroom at night primarily as an anticipatory pattern and a safety behavior. And both of these are tied to hyperarousal and a fear of not sleeping.
A safety behavior is anything we do with the intention of protecting sleep. What's happening here isn't so much urgency as much as it is anticipation and the desire to protect sleep at all costs. It's hyper-arousal saying, let's take care of this now so it doesn't interrupt me later.
The Getting Ready Pattern
I also view this as a getting ready pattern. Most of us were primed early in life to go to the bathroom before doing anything, right?
How many parents out there say, go to the bathroom before we get back in the car? Or are you sure you don't have to pee first? Or does anyone need to go to the bathroom before we go? You better go just in case.
And then if you didn't go, but 30 minutes later you had to go, well, you know, that wasn't always so good. So there is this sense of preparation and protection that comes with this pattern.
And isn't it just like this with insomnia? Sleep goes from being this neutral experience to something we diligently prepare for and try to get right.
So all of these things factor into it. And I know for me, there was almost this sense of safety attached to checking that off the list. It was like, okay, I got that out of the way. So now it's not going to bother me for the rest of the night.
Sensitization and Monitoring
But here's what I started to notice all of that going to the bathroom and trying to stay ahead of the game actually created a felt sense of urgency in my bladder.
My system became sensitized to even the smallest amount of urine. My brain was constantly monitoring for should I go again? Maybe I should go again.
And that monitoring turned up the volume on what I was feeling.
Relief and Control
There was also this sense of relief that came from going, not necessarily from emptying my bladder, but from doing something that felt protective, like I was staying in control.
Our brains love anything that reduces uncertainty. And for me, going to the bathroom started to do that. It quietly became a safety habit.
And I don't think this is anything to be embarrassed about. I actually think it's pretty amazing how our bodies can create this kind of loop all in an effort to keep us safe.
How to Work With It
So now you might be wondering, okay, Beth, but how do I work with this? Is there something I need to do?
And as always, I'll say that simply understanding what's going on does most of the heavy lifting for you. Once I started to understand how the mind works and how I was unknowingly creating the experience of insomnia, this whole thing started to feel a lot less fatal to me.
I began to see the pattern for what it really was, a protective mechanism. And from there, the way I interacted with it naturally changed. Not because I forced anything, but because the meaning I had assigned to it shifted.
I went from believing I had a broken bladder alongside my broken brain to thinking, wow, it's actually pretty fascinating how the brain can create physical sensations in the body in an effort to keep me aligned with what it perceives as safe.
What I Did Not Do
Now, some of the things I did not do were get mad at myself, blame myself, shame myself, or think it was something that could never get better.
I continued going to the bathroom several times a night for quite some time. But as hyperarousal started to come down and I was taking the whole thing a lot less seriously, I was able to start sleeping through that sense of urgency.
And eventually my brain just stopped sending the signal altogether. I still have periods where I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, but I would say about half the time, I just sleep through the night and it's not a problem.
Closing
My friends, I hope this shined a light on the not so mysterious after all pattern of going to the bathroom multiple times a night when you have insomnia.
In closing, I'll say that your body knows how to sleep and that's never going to change. I'm Beth Kendall. Bye for now.
