Causes of psychogenic insomnia and how to treat it psychologically

  Physiological insomnia is caused by a combination of susceptibility factors, triggers and persistent factors.  1. Susceptibility factors: Susceptibility factors are a permanent behavioral trait. Susceptibility factors can increase the vulnerability of individuals and reduce the threshold of the organism to induce insomnia generation. The low arousal threshold and arousal composition of insomnia patients are the core mediating mechanism characteristics of insomnia, which is a relatively stable susceptibility factor. Its role is expressed not only in the prodromal period but also as a permanent behavioral trait that can indicate high physical, cognitive, and emotional arousal. Some people have an intrinsic tendency to develop sleep disorders, which may be the result of defects in the underlying neural mechanisms.  2.Triggering factors: Stress is the most important trigger for insomnia. Most people may return to normal sleep after the elimination of acute reactive events or adaptation, but it is now believed that people with a high susceptibility to sleep disorders have their transient sleep problems more easily disrupted.  3, persistent factors: When sleep disorder triggers change after the emergence of persistent sleep disorder, there is enhanced physiological arousal, cognitive arousal interferes with the sleep process, but physiological arousal, cognitive arousal and transfer to emotional arousal, the patient appears anxious, poor state of mind, worry, nervous emotional reactions. These reactions in turn aggravate physiological arousal and cognitive arousal, and insomniacs overestimate their time to sleep and underestimate their time to sleep, giving them a distorted perception of sleep. For good sleepers, various stimuli, such as bed, bedroom, and time to sleep, can be well controlled and turned into potential cues to desire sleep or produce sleep. On the contrary, for insomniacs, these stimuli are often associated with frustration, arousal and inability to fall asleep, and when situational stimuli (bed, bedroom) and sleep incoherent activities are doubly repeated, these stimuli form negative conditioned reflexes that cause conditioned arousal.  The causes of psychogenic insomnia can be treated with cognitive therapy, sleep stimulation control therapy, sleep restriction therapy and Morita therapy.  1. Cognitive therapy: It is a type of treatment that changes the patient’s poor cognition through cognitive and behavioral techniques. Maladaptive cognition means distorted, unhealthy, irrational, wrong, negative over-eager concepts and thoughts that lead to emotional disorders and non-adaptive behaviors. The purpose of cognitive therapy is to correct these irrational cognitions, so that the correct rational cognition-emotion-behavior triad is harmonized, coordinated and consistent. The specific method is to introduce patients to the basic knowledge of sleep, to develop good sleep habits, and to introduce the causes and prevention of insomnia.  2.Stimulation control therapy: It is an effective method for negative conditioned reflexes. Specific methods: First, do not stay in bed or bedroom other than sleep. Second, lying in bed for 20 minutes still can not sleep, shall leave the bed, do something mild, only really sleepy back to bed. 3. Wake up and get up at the same time every day, regardless of how the night sleep. Fourth, never go to bed during the day.  3.Sleep restriction therapy: to improve sleep efficiency by reducing the non-sleep time in bed. Specific methods: A, make a sleep diary for a week (what time to go to bed, sleep, wake up) B, calculate the average sleep time and efficiency every night according to the diary. If the average sleep efficiency is below 90%, you can go to bed 15-30 minutes earlier next week; if it is between 80%-90%, you can maintain the original time next week; if it is below 80%, you can postpone the bed time 15-30 minutes next week.  4.Morita therapy: The more insomniacs try to sleep, the more nervous they are, trying to use various methods to solve the problem, but the result makes mental activity more active, more difficult to sleep. Morita therapy is to tell patients in the quiet lying if they feel like going to sleep, do not have to choose the time, at any time can be arbitrarily lying in bed, never find their own way to force to sleep, this will quickly make patients eliminate the fear of sleeplessness.