Introduction: Why This Conversation Matters
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. I am excited about today's episode because I think it's a really cool topic and I see it as a foundational conversation, not just for insomnia, but for life itself and how we experience it.
I wanted to create this episode because I believe that understanding the mechanics of your own mind, at least to the degree that we currently understand them, can be incredibly supportive in this process.
There is this idea that we don't want to get too far in the weeds with the science because it only creates more confusion. And on some level, I completely agree with that because sleep itself is simple. There's nothing you need to do or be. And that is the true beauty of sleep.
But I also think that we, as a collective, are hungry for this kind of information and a greater understanding of our own human experience, whether you struggle with insomnia or not.
I know that when I first started learning about some of the concepts I'm going to talk about today, I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. And I'm still very intrigued by why humans do what we do and what drives our personal reality.
And you know, the thing about insomnia is it almost forces you into these kinds of inquiries, right? It is such a loud and uncomfortable thing to go through that eventually you get to this point. And honestly, I think that's if you're lucky. Because otherwise you stay spinning your wheels, looking for outside solutions that really don't work, and you miss out on this opportunity to understand yourself.
Seeing insomnia through the lens that I share from in the podcast actually helped de-escalate the problem for me. It made insomnia feel a lot less powerful and personal. And it's really what led to what is now a completely different relationship with sleep.
So let's have some fun with this topic today, which is all about focus.
What We’re Going to Cover
Here's what we're going to cover. First, we'll talk about why focus isn't always deliberate, although it can be, but it's also learned. Then we'll look at the actual brain mechanics going on behind focus. And finally, I'll share some real life examples of how this works and how it showed up for me during insomnia.
Let's dive in.
Focus Is the Fuel for Insomnia
You often hear me say that focus is the fuel for insomnia. And today I want to be very clear about what I mean by that and what I don't mean.
Because on the surface, it makes a lot of sense, right? We hear phrases like your focus creates your reality all the time. But why would that be?
What's going on in the brain that determines what we pay attention to? And why does that attention shape our lives so powerfully?
So let's break it down.
When I say that focus is the fuel for insomnia, I'm not saying that we're always choosing to focus on sleep, although sometimes that is the case. But a lot of the time, our focus is very automatic. The brain is simply doing what it's learned to do, and we experience the results of that.
Now, with insomnia, the brain has learned that not sleeping feels scary, uncertain, or downright dangerous. And once the brain learns that something is dangerous, focus naturally follows.
So yes, there is an aspect of focus that involves where we put our attention, but there is also another layer of focus that's far more automatic. And it's shaped by our lived experiences and what the brain has learned to prioritize around that.
Which raises some interesting questions.
Why does the brain focus on some things and not on others?
What's actually driving the mechanics of focus?
How is it decided what comes into our conscious awareness and what doesn't?
The Brain’s Filtering System
Let's talk more about that.
There is this really cool system in the brain that reflects what you've learned through your life experiences, and its job is to bring what matters most into the foreground of your attention.
Now, we are being absolutely flooded with information every single second. There's external noise. There's internal thoughts. There's emotions, sensations, sights, sounds, memories. It's a lot.
And if all of that came into our awareness at once, we would feel completely overwhelmed and probably never want to leave our house.
Which is why, in all of its remarkable wisdom, the brain has a way of working with that.
There is this fancy dancy filtering system called the reticular activating system, or the RAS for short. And it's located primarily in the brainstem.
You don't need to remember the names of all of this. That part isn't really important. What matters most is what it does.
The RAS influences what rises into our conscious awareness and what stays in the background.
And it doesn't filter based on logic. It filters based on importance.
Everyday Examples of the RAS at Work
Have you ever been in a crowded room where there's all of these conversations going on and there's music and laughing and glasses clinking, and all of a sudden you hear your name?
You're not consciously listening for it, and all of a sudden there it is, somewhere in all of that noisy chaos.
You didn't decide to listen for it. You weren't scanning the room for it. The RAS, through the auditory system, has deemed it important because it's your name. And that's why it's filtered into your conscious awareness while everything else stayed in the background.
Or let's look at another example that many of you ladies out there might relate to.
Have you ever noticed that when you're about to make a hair change or maybe get a new cut or color, you suddenly start seeing that cut or color everywhere?
When I cut bangs about a year ago, it felt like bangs were suddenly everywhere I went. They had always been there, of course, but now they were showing up on my radar. And that's not because the whole world suddenly got bangs. It's because bangs suddenly had meaning for me. They mattered because I was about to put them on my own head.
Or let's use the common example of a car.
Maybe you've noticed that when you're in the market for a new car, or your best friend tells you that they just bought a new car, suddenly you start seeing that particular car everywhere.
They blurred right into the background before, but now suddenly there's some significance to this car. So the RAS is putting them in front of you.
Nothing changed on the roads in terms of these particular cars. The filter in your brain changed, and that's why it now wants to show them to you.
How the Brain Learns What Matters
So the RAS is constantly asking one simple question.
What matters most right now?
And whatever the brain has learned matters is what gets amplified in your life.
But how does it decide what matters most?
It doesn't do that on its own.
It doesn't sit down and logically evaluate what deserves attention and what doesn't. Like I said earlier, it learns what matters through experience.
Things become important to the brain when they're paired with emotion, repetition, or perceived risk.
When something carries a strong emotional charge, like insomnia, the RAS takes note.
When something feels scary or uncertain, the RAS takes note.
When something is repeatedly monitored, the brain assumes it must be important.
And once that importance is learned, the RAS simply does what it's supposed to do, which is bring that thing into the foreground of your awareness.
So this is part of the reason insomnia feels so big and all-encompassing. It's literally being filtered into your day-to-day life in a multitude of ways.
And our brains are incredibly efficient at this. It's constantly updating its filters based on what we attend to and what we experience.
How Insomnia Begins
So how does this play out in insomnia? How does insomnia even become a thing?
Understanding the RAS helps us answer that.
You've probably heard people come on the podcast and talk about how they were champion sleepers prior to insomnia and never had a problem with sleep before or even thought too much about it.
And then they find themselves in this situation where hyperarousal is showing up whenever they want to go to sleep.
When you start to understand the mechanics behind this, it actually makes a lot of sense.
People don't just suddenly lose their ability to sleep. Not at all.
Insomnia usually begins when there's some kind of stressor that changes your relationship with sleep.
That's when the meaning of not sleeping starts to change.
And when the meaning changes, attention changes.
Sleep, which was once a fairly neutral experience, becomes paired with uncertainty or fear. And the RAS learns, oh boy, this matters now. A lot.
So then literally anything having to do with sleep starts getting filtered into your reality, and a lot of it is scary.
Sleep, Algorithms, and Hyperfocus
It works just like the algorithms online.
If you're shopping for new dishes, guess what? You're about to see every dish known to man.
It's the same way with the search engine of our brain.
We start really noticing how tired we feel and basically any sensation. We start checking the clock like never before. We start paying extra close attention to how we sleep. We learn about all the stages of sleep.
We start trying to predict what is going to happen from night to night. We start researching.
Sleep becomes something to achieve at all costs.
Meanwhile, your sleep system is over there going, hey, I'm not too sure what is going on here, but I have got you. I can get you back on track. You don't need to go through all of this. I've been doing sleep your whole life.
But at this point, the fear of not sleeping becomes so much bigger than trust in your own body.
Plus, we've got the RAS bringing in all the things.
So it's easy to see how this can happen, right?
The Good News About Recovery
But here is the good news, my friend.
The same system that learns insomnia is also the same system that unlearns it.
And isn't that the best thing ever?
So what does that actually look like?
This podcast and the mentorship address this very thing.
The transformation that people get inside the mentorship really is at the identity level.
We look at what the brain has learned to believe about sleep. We look at some of the fears that are showing up around sleep. We learn to think about sleep differently.
And we're not doing this through force or fixing. We're doing it through small perspective shifts over time.
Seeing, Believing, and Changing Meaning
Have you ever heard that phrase, seeing is believing?
I think this is actually a misconception.
What you see doesn't create what you believe. What you believe creates what you see. The reticular activating system makes it so.
So this is the level we're working from in the mentorship.
We are putting a new lens on the camera. We're in the energy of people who see it the same way. We're creating new meaning around the experience of insomnia.
Your brain might be the search engine, but we do have a say in what goes into the search bar, which I think is so exciting.
A Personal Example of Meaning Change
I wanted to give you a quick personal example of what meaning change looked like during my own recovery process.
As you may know, I did CBTI twice. And if you want to know more about my story, go back to episodes three and four where I break it down in more detail.
But I did CBTI twice and regressed horribly. It really brought me into such a state of despair. I felt more hopeless than ever after responding so poorly.
I really felt like I was a part of this subset of people that just couldn't be helped because of that.
I was in this really dark place after getting worse instead of better. So the meaning I assigned to that was that I couldn't be helped. I was a hopeless case, and I was just going to have to live with insomnia for the rest of my life.
So then of course my brain went about finding all the evidence it possibly could to support that conclusion. Because I have an amazing brain, and that's just what the RAS does.
But then as I started to understand more and more, and got out of this mainstream thinking around sleep and started learning more about the mind-body connection, I started to see that I didn't fail at CBTI. It failed me.
And the reasons for that made perfect sense.
So the meaning of that experience radically changed.
And as a result, my focus and attention around it changed.
It's probably one of the main reasons I'm a sleep coach today.
My RAS went from pulling all the evidence it possibly could that I was a hopeless case to, oh my God, I have to help other people understand why they may be struggling with this too.
So that is just one example of how changing the meaning we assign to something through education and perspective can change what the brain decides to focus on.
Closing Thoughts
My friends, I hope this was a helpful episode. So glad you're a part of the Mind Body Sleep podcast.
I'm Beth Kendall.
Bye for now.
