Most of us will suffer from insomnia at some point in our lives. Surveys show that as many as half of American adults have insomnia every year. Many causes can cause insomnia, including a snoring spouse, ingesting caffeine before bed, accidentally sleeping too much during the day, exercising too little, having a bad pillow, taking some medication, etc. However, in addition to those mentioned above, we found that: fighting insomnia is also an important reason. Very often, the harder we try to fall asleep, the worse the situation will become. You can think back to whether you have had such a night: the next day, you will attend an important meeting, you want to be able to sleep as soon as possible, well rested, so that tomorrow you can appear at the meeting with energy and show their best side. Since this meeting is so important to you, you must get a good night’s sleep. But as you lie in bed, you can’t help thinking that if you sleep a minute later, you’ll have one less point of energy the next day. So, you try to control yourself and desperately try to get yourself to sleep, but the more you want to sleep, the less you can sleep. As each minute passes, you become more and more irritated. Every time you raise your eyes to the alarm clock, you will emerge from the heart of a nameless fire, and finally make you completely lose the ability to sleep in the night, only to lie in bed with eyes open, frustrated waiting for the dawn. Why is this? The problem is that when you are fighting insomnia, your nervous system goes into “fight or flight” mode, creating a vicious cycle: trying to get to sleep forces your body to become more awake. We need to break the cycle by giving up the “fight”. What is “fight and flight” mode? As you know, thousands of years ago, people had to face all kinds of wild animals in order to survive, and in front of tigers, people had only two choices: fight or flight. Fighting could drive away the tigers and make themselves survive; running away could also escape from the tigers. In either of these two options, whichever one we choose, we need our nervous system to be excited and thus mobilize our whole body to deal with the threat. Therefore, as soon as the conscious mind feeds the body the command to confront, the body will immediately enter the “fight or flight” mode, so that every nerve in the body is tense. The “fight or flight” mode is the most effective human response to external threats, but unfortunately, it does not apply to our own emotions and feelings. If we treat our emotions and feelings as external threats and adopt the “fight or flight” model: either fight them or desperately run away from them. Then, in a state of high nervous tension, we will undoubtedly sink deeper and deeper into madness. We should not see them as tigers and fight against them, but rather accept them. Any confrontation with oneself will lead one to a boundless sea of misery. Under the threat of a tiger, we will die if we neither fight nor run away from it. But the negative emotion inside is not a tiger, you can never defeat it and never run away from it, you can only live in peace with it. It’s like insomnia, the more you try to control yourself, the more out of control you become. Fight insomnia and you are doomed to stay up all night. In order to solve this problem, you must transform your “relationship” with insomnia. Once you begin to truly and honestly “accept” insomnia, eventually your body will have a chance to start resting.