Could Your Past Be Affecting Your Sleep? One Woman’s 25-Year Insomnia Journey

If your sleep hygiene is already solid, you understand sleep, you stay relatively calm at night, but you still feel like something is holding you back from deep, restorative sleep… This blog is for you.

Sometimes insomnia isn’t about effort, knowledge, or routines anymore.

Sometimes something deeper is keeping the nervous system slightly on guard.

If that resonates, read this, and if you feel ready to explore your own sleep in a deeper way, you can book a conversation here:

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There’s a moment in some client stories where sleep stops being just about sleep.

Where it becomes something else entirely.

Not because we set out for that.

But because something deeper quietly comes to the surface.

This is one of those stories.

Let me introduce you to Mindy (name changed).

Mindy came to me a few months ago. She had been struggling with insomnia for about 25 years. Not just occasional bad nights. But a long-standing pattern of light, unsettled sleep.

She would fall asleep, but never fully sink into it. She would wake before her alarm most mornings. And no matter how “functional” she became during the day, she never felt truly restored.

What makes Mindy’s story interesting is not just how long she struggled. It’s what she had already done before she ever reached out.

Over the years, Mindy had worked on her sleep extensively. She had read the books. She had learned the techniques. Her sleep hygiene was solid. She understood how sleep worked.

And perhaps most importantly, she had made peace with being awake at night.

If she woke up, she didn’t spiral. She didn’t catastrophize. She didn’t convince herself the next day was ruined. She had reached a place of acceptance.

And yet…

Something still didn’t feel right.

Her sleep remained light.

Unsettled.

Never quite deep enough.

Mindy, first heard me speak about something I call the deeper layer of anxiety.

Not the obvious kind. Not the racing thoughts or daily worries. But the quieter layer underneath. The one most people don’t notice because it doesn’t speak in words.

It speaks in patterns. In tension. In the inability to fully let go.

Something in that idea landed for her.

For the first time, she began to wonder:

What if this isn’t just about sleep?

What if something deeper is still being carried?

When we began working together, we didn’t just focus on sleep strategies. We started to explore her life. Gently. Carefully. Not to analyze or force anything. But to understand what her nervous system had been holding onto over the years.

And slowly, something began to shift.

Mindy later described it like this:

“I never thought that my sleep issues could have anything to do with my subconscious and my past.”

As we talked, memories and emotions began to surface. Not always big dramatic events. Sometimes subtle ones. Moments that hadn’t been fully processed. Moments her system had quietly filed away.

Another part of her shared:

“Things I didn’t even realize were bothering me from so many years ago came up.”

This is often how the subconscious works. It doesn’t only hold the loud experiences. It holds the unfinished ones.

Alongside our sessions, Mindy began listening to a simple meditation recording. Not as a technique. But as a way of softening. Of allowing the body to settle. Of creating space where nothing needed to be fixed. Just experienced.

And over time, something she described as true healing began to emerge.

“Healing that I didn’t even know existed.”

There was no dramatic moment. No sudden breakthrough. Just a gradual internal shift.

A settling. A loosening. A sense that something inside her no longer needed to stay braced.

And then… I didn’t hear from her for a while.

Until months later.

—

The Email That Changed the Shape of the Story

She wrote to me after a very different kind of week.

A whirlwind week. Two overnight births in three days as part of her work as a doula.

She had been awake since 3 a.m. And finally got home around 1:30 in the afternoon. Exhausted. Emotionally full. Unable to simply switch off.

Before resting, she put on the same meditation recording she had used during our work together.

And something unexpected happened.

She didn’t just relax. She felt.

She began crying. Not from overwhelm alone. But from reflection. From something deeper being stirred.

She found herself thinking about her own early experiences of motherhood. About how vulnerable she had felt. About how little support she had at times.

And then came the realization that stopped her.

With every birth she attends now, something inside her is also being met. Healed. Held in a way it once wasn’t.

She wrote:

“I realized just how healing this doula work is for me… with each birth I am able to support a woman through this incredibly special and vulnerable time.”

And then the line that carries so much weight:

“I get so emotional—it is so beautiful to be part of a woman’s journey.”

She also shared something else that stayed with me. That she now connects more deeply with labor itself because of the inner work she has done. And that the meditation practice we used together didn’t just support her sleep. It changed the way she experiences her life.

What struck me most wasn’t just her improved sleep.

It was what happened outside of sleep.

The way something that began as insomnia slowly unfolded into something much more human. More emotional. More lived.

Sarah still describes herself as a work in progress. But she sleeps more deeply now. She feels more settled. More connected to herself. And perhaps most importantly, she understands herself differently than she did before.

Because sometimes insomnia isn’t only about sleep.

Sometimes it’s about a system that learned, somewhere along the way, that staying slightly alert felt safer than fully letting go.

And sometimes, when that system finally softens…

The changes don’t just show up at night.

They show up in how a person shows up in birth rooms. In motherhood. In life.

Not because we tried to force healing.

But because something finally felt safe enough to release.

Want to catch up? https://www.chevymermelsteinsleepcoach.org/post/why-can-i-fall-asleep-on-the-couch-but-feel-wide-awake-in-bed