Melatonin & Insomnia
- John Navilliat
- Sep 5
- 4 min read
Does melatonin help with your insomnia?
Many people turn to melatonin to fix insomnia. However this doesn't really help resolve insomnia for long. This is unexpected for people suffering from insomnia.
Melatonin helps with sleep.
But it won't help with insomnia.
Let me explain.
If I gave you 5 minutes I'm sure you would find no shortage of high quality, peer reviewed research papers that objectively prove that melatonin provides better sleep. For example,
Hopkins Medicine and The Mayo Clinic notes that melatonin may help with jet lag and sleep cycle disruptions. But when it comes to chronic insomnia, research shows the underlying anxiety isn’t addressed.
Melatonin will not help us with insomnia because insomnia is NOT a sleep problem.
Viewing insomnia as a sleep problem makes it far more confusing to understand.
It would be far more helpful to see insomnia as a fear/anxiety/frustration problem that creates a struggle problem that then results in a sleep problem.
People suffering from insomnia crave sleep and so they fight for it using tools such as melatonin.
Melatonin does nothing to address the underlying anxiety that is keeping us in a hyper state of fear.
But sleep is a very passive process. It needs to come to us. It eludes us if we seek it out. Do you remember fighting so hard for sleep before your insomnia started? It was pretty effortless wasn't it?
The real root of insomnia: fear and anxiety
Insomnia is not caused by a lack of melatonin. It's caused by the fear/anxiety/frustration/curiosity of not getting enough sleep. There's a good chance that you used to sleep perfectly fine.
And then something happened.
And now you have a horrible abusive relationship with sleep where no matter how hard you try to appease it it refused you.
Whether you experiment with 1mg, 2mg, or even 20 mg of melatonin it does nothing to resolve the underlying fear or anxiety of not getting enough sleep.
"Melatonin fixed my insomnia! Kind of."
Craving a simple solution like melatonin is extremely understandable.
"Take this very cheap pill and the biggest problem in your life goes away."
It's so effortless isn't it?
And that's kind of why maybe taking melatonin sometimes "works". It induces a sense of effortlessness. Sometimes in our struggle with insomnia we find a "solution" in the form of "I just have to take this supplement and I fall asleep!"
It can also sound like any of the below:
"I just have to..."
Cycle melatonin off and on in case I develop a tolerance
Try out different brands of melatonin
Take melatonin at different times
How do I take melatonin for insomnia
It's like asking "how do I use crayon's to make a painting?" It's not the tool for the job.
There's no real way to take melatonin for insomnia because it's not really the solution. It's a distracting red herring that implies that we have to get sleep just right.
You can take it if you want but it's probably not going to help you for the long term because it's not addressing the root cause of the problem. Usually the reason why it "works" is because we've psychologically transfer the pressure and responsibility that we've put on ourselves to this pill.
So is melatonin BAD for insomnia?
In the same way that melatonin won't be the salvation for your insomnia, it won't also necessarily be the cause of your insomnia.
Plenty of people take melatonin every night and never have nor ever will have insomnia.
What's important isn't the dosage or the time you take melatonin but the relationship that you have with it.
If you feel like you NEED to take melatonin OR ELSE... then that is an unhelpful outlook.
When we start to put stock in the idea that we have to work and struggle to find the optimal way to take melatonin specifically and exacctly for us and until we figure out the perfect cocktail then our life will be sleep deprived torment...
How to Treat Insomnia
We need to revert back to the original relationship we had with sleep.
Back when we were more open to the idea of not getting sleep.
Back when we didn't fight hard every night for sleep to happen.
Back when we weren't constantly second guessing every thought or action we took throughout the day in case it hurt our sleep
We don't need major lifestyle changes or medications with uncomfortable side effects.
We've convinced ourselves we need to work to force sleep to happen and we need to unlearn that.
A good place to start learning how is to check out my Somnus Principles or my YouTube Channel, where we can adopt tools such as Befriending Wakefulness to address insomnia at the root.
Disclaimer: This is not medical advice but educational content.
Sources:
John the Sleep Coach
Certified Sleep Coach | Insomnia to Peace LLC
B.A., University of Rhode Island | Certified by the Sleep Coach School
Chronic insomniac ofr over 7 years.
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