Relinking Wakefulness | Ep 56

Have you ever wondered what actually makes insomnia recovery possible?

In this episode, I talk about exactly that.

We explore one of the most hopeful principles of neuroplasticity — and why it’s the reason getting beyond insomnia isn't just possible… but inevitable when you understand how the brain works.

The human brain has the amazing capacity to change associations and shift links.

And truly, is there anything more miraculous than that?

In this episode, you’ll learn how:

• Your responses play a key role in rewiring the brain
• Insomnia isn’t a sign that something is broken, but a conditioned pattern rooted in hyperarousal
• Changing your brain’s association with wakefulness can be a turning point in recovery

I also share a personal story that illustrates how learned fear responses can shift, and why that same shift is completely possible for you, too.

Enjoy!

Mentioned Resources:

Ep 32: “Neurons that fire together, wire together.”

Connect with Beth:

 👉  Instagram 

Work with Beth:

👉   Learn About the Mind. Body. Sleep. Mentorship
👉   Start the Free Insomnia Course Here

Full Show Notes & Transcription HERE.

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About Beth Kendall MA, FNTP: 

For decades, Beth struggled with the relentless grip of insomnia. After finally understanding insomnia from a mind-body perspective, she changed her relationship with sleep, and completely recovered. Liberated from the constant worry of not sleeping, she’s on a mission to help others recover as well. Her transformative program Mind. Body. Sleep.® has been a beacon of light for hundreds of others seeking solace from sleepless nights.

© 2023 - 2025 Beth Kendall

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Mind. Body. Sleep.® with Beth Kendall is your trusted source for holistic insomnia recovery, blending neuroplasticity, nervous system health, and mind-body coaching to help you finally sleep again.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Hello and welcome to Mind Body Sleep, the podcast for anyone out there who wants to understand and recover from insomnia using a holistic perspective. I'm Beth Kendall, your host. Let's get started. Hello, everyone. It is so good to be with you on the podcast today. This is gonna be a juicy episode, I think. So I'm glad you're here with me. My name is Beth. I'm a sleep coach for people with insomnia, and I help you understand what's going on in your mind and body so you can get back to living the life that you love free from the fear of not sleeping. Today we're going to talk about what it means to relink wakefulness and how changing your brain's association with being awake at night is one of the most integral keys to lasting recovery from insomnia. This was an understanding I had when I was going through my own recovery process. So I hope that something that I share here will be helpful for you too. Someone asked me recently on a group call how I see the role of neuroplasticity factoring into the recovery path. And I thought this was such a great question because the truth is neuroplasticity is the basis for why we can recover at all. And neuroplasticity is simply the brain's ability to change. It's a big word for a beautiful process that allows us to unlearn previous patterns of association. So let's just talk about associations and how they factor into today's conversation. All learning happens through association. The brain links certain experiences together through our senses. So sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. It's kind of like how the smell of cookies might remind you of your grandma's house or how a certain song takes you back to a moment in time. In much the same way, your brain can link being awake at night with danger or stress, even if nothing threatening is actually happening. That's just how our brains work. It connects one thing to another to help us make sense of the world, even when those links don't particularly serve us anymore. And I go deeper into this concept in a previous episode called Neurons That Fire Together, Wire Together. And I think it's episode number 32, but I'll link that up in the show notes for you. Now, my first understanding and lived experience of this concept was after reading Annie Hopper's book, Wired for Healing, which was one of my first introductions into the whole mind-body world. But the premise of Annie's book centers on the idea that many chronic conditions of which I consider insomnia to be one are driven by maladaptive plasticity, meaning the brain can become hyper-vigilant and get stuck in a survival loop by interpreting certain events as a threat, even when they're not. Now, I don't really agree with the term maladaptive because I believe the brain and body always has a good reason for doing what it's doing. But essentially, we go through something difficult, like a period of sleep disruption, or we experience an association to sleep that triggers a protective response called hyper-arousal. And this response feels so real and like you truly have somehow broken your own brain that we believe we have lost our ability to sleep. But you haven't lost your ability to sleep, you've just developed some conditioned arousal that's getting in the way of that natural process happening. So one of the most mind-blowing ways I personally experienced the phenomenon that I call relinking was through some pretty intense chemical sensitivities I developed during chronic illness. And I've always been more sensitive to chemicals and fragrances than the average person. But when I was going through chronic Lyme disease, my brain felt like it was on fire. Even the faintest smell of something, you know, a dryer vent like a block away, candles were the absolute worst, or even Wi-Fi would send my body into a full inflammatory response. My face would get all blotchy, my eyes would water, I couldn't breathe, and sometimes I literally thought I was gonna pass out. And it made no logical sense. I mean, how could a dryer sheet a block away take me down to such a level? Yet here my body was reacting like I was in extreme danger. And the even weirder part was that sometimes the reaction would happen before I even encountered a chemical. So it was just the anticipation of it that would send my system into a panic, which was another huge clue to me that something was up. But after reading Annie's book, I started to understand that my brain had labeled these things as threats. And without even realizing it, I was constantly reinforcing that threat through the way I lived. So all of the Facebook groups I was in, the constant monitoring and avoidance of all things chemicals, the hours I spent worrying about it and researching it. I had unintentionally trained my brain to see the world as dangerous. So the survival loop just got stronger. But here is the good news, my friends. Because of neuroplasticity, we can unlearn those patterns. We can create new links. And thank God for that. Because that's basically what I did. I started to gently introduce new ways of being with the things my brain had labeled as dangerous. And then one day, and I'll never forget this because it was such a big moment. I walked into a public restroom. And this restroom had a candle burning in it. So I sort of raced for a reaction to come. But it never came. Nothing happened. And not only did nothing happen, but the candle smelled good to me, which hadn't happened in years. So I, you know, I stood there, like, what is even happening? And I know this probably sounds like a really small thing, but if you've ever dealt with chemical sensitivities, then you know what a big deal it is. And that day gave me all the evidence I needed to know that change was possible. And after that, I started smelling everything I could. And sometimes I had a reaction and sometimes I didn't, but I was no longer so deathly afraid of chemicals. And now I can walk down a target detergent aisle with zero response. And I never take that for granted because walking down the target detergent aisle was kind of like my graduation day from chemical sensitivities. So life is good. But the whole reason I shared this story is that sometimes it can be helpful to hear about situations that aren't necessarily insomnia, but clearly have some parallels to insomnia. And as a coach, these are the experiences that I'm working from. So there was never actually anything wrong with my body's resiliency to handle a dryer sheet a block away. It was that my limbic system had become so sensitized to all these things that it was creating a danger response in my body. And I do want to definitely emphasize that everything I was feeling physically was real. Everything you're going through with hyper-arousal and the effects of not sleeping is real. But the threat that the mind is operating from is not. Okay, so back to relinking wakefulness, because that's what this episode is about. What do I mean by relinking wakefulness? Well, there are lots of ways this concept has already been introduced into the world. And the first time I heard it was with Claire Weeks, her phrase of welcoming the unwelcome. In my program, I use Daniel Erickson's term befriending wakefulness. But neither of these really gets under the hood of why we would want to do such a thing. And I am a why person through and through. I like to get to the granular of why as much as I possibly can, because when something makes sense to me, I'm much more inclined to do it. And once I understand the why, I'm pretty good at letting go of the why. So why would we want to befriend wakefulness or welcome the unwelcome? Because let's just be honest, this can feel like a pretty big ask when you're going through such a hard thing. Well, we're taking old associations and creating new associations. We're taking a link of danger and creating a link of safety. We're basically creating a new experience around something the mind perceives as dangerous. So it can let go of hyper-arousal. It really is that simple. If my brain could relink the response I had to chemicals, I knew it could do the same thing with the amplified fear I felt about not sleeping or experiencing something that could potentially disrupt my sleep. Those felt like much bigger threats in my past life than they do now. So the loop can change. In fact, I would say that it has no choice but to change when you start interacting with it differently. Let me throw out a simplified example of this so you have something to go on. Let's just say that your current situation is that you're waking up at 3 a.m. and then not falling back to sleep, which is a pretty common scenario. So if you wake up at 3 a.m. and immediately start catastrophizing, worrying about what it means, how you're gonna make it through the next day, maybe even going for Dr. Google or trying everything imaginable to prevent it from ever happening again, your brain is likely going to tag this as a pretty not good thing, right? Then your brain starts to learn that, okay, you know, this isn't a threat. And that's the difference between reinforcing a fear loop and gently starting to unwind it and how our responses play a role. So I hope the concept of relinking makes sense because it's one of the most powerful tools we have. And I hope you see the hope behind neuroplasticity because it's what makes true recovery from insomnia possible. Many species can adapt and change their brains in response to experience, but only one species can consciously direct that change. And that's us, the humans. We're the only beings on the planet who can shape, sculpt, and self-direct the circuitry of our own brain, which I find extraordinary. Thanks for listening to the Mind Body Sleep Podcast. I'm Beth Kendall. I'll see you next time. Thanks for being here today. If you love what you heard on today's episode, don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe to the podcast. And if you need more support with your sleep, join me in the Mind Body Sleep Mentorship. This three month one on one program will transform your relationship with sleep so you can get back to living the life that you love free from the fear of not sleeping. Head on over to bethkendle.com for more details. I'll see you next time.