The Hidden Hell of Insomnia
By Dr Amanda Gamble, Clinical Psychologist & Sleep Specialist
Insomnia is one of the most misunderstood conditions in mental health.
If you’ve experienced it — or are living with it right now — you already know the truth:
It’s lonely. It’s relentless. And it’s often deeply misunderstood by the people around you.
Many of my clients tell me they’ve stopped mentioning sleep altogether. Not because they don’t need support — but because they’ve learned what to expect when they do.
They say they barely slept and hear things like:
“Oh, I can sleep anywhere — I put my head down and I’m out!”
“Me too!” (followed by a story that sounds like heaven to an insomniac).
Or they’re met with a stream of well-intentioned advice:
“Have you tried going to bed earlier?”
“Don’t think about it so much.”
“What about meditation?” .
None of this is malicious. In my experience, good sleepers simply struggle to understand what it’s like to lose control of sleep — a basic bodily process you rely on to survive.
Why insomnia is uniquely torturous
This is one of the reasons insomnia can feel so brutal.
Sleep is essential — you depend on it to survive. When it breaks down, everything starts to unravel.
Sleep is unavoidable — you can’t opt out of the very thing you’re afraid of.
And sleep is relentless — the struggle returns night after night, with no real pause or reprieve.
In psychology, very few experiences are both relentless and unavoidable in this way. Someone with social anxiety can avoid public speaking. Someone with a spider phobia (like me) can usually avoid spiders.
But sleep isn’t like that. It is a repeated, daily battle with an automatic biological process we need in order to survive.
Over time, insomnia takes something deeply fundamental - Your trust in your own body.
Unless someone has lived through it, it’s difficult to fully grasp the fear, hypervigilance, exhaustion, and quiet grief that come with losing control over something so basic and taken-for-granted.
And so, eventually, people with chronic insomnia stop talking about it.
The cost of suffering in silence
When insomnia becomes private, the internal experience can be devastating. A battle no one sees. A struggle no one fully believes or understands. This isolation often tightens insomnia’s grip even further.
This is the hidden hell of insomnia.
And it’s far more common than most people realise.
But there is a way out
Insomnia is one of the most treatable conditions in psychology.
Comprehensive CBT-I (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia) is the gold-standard treatment, supported by decades of research showing faster sleep onset, fewer night-time awakenings, reduced anxiety about sleep, restored confidence, and long-term stability — not just short-term relief.
But treatment isn’t only about improving sleep metrics.
One of the most transformative aspects of CBT-I is bringing the hidden hell of insomnia into the open — helping people feel seen, validated, and understood in an experience that has often been carried alone for far too long.
For many, recovery begins not just with better sleep, but with no longer facing the night in isolation — having a skilled partner to walk alongside them, through the difficult hours, until trust in sleep is rebuilt. This is my mission, and I’m honoured to walk beside my clients.
