6 Causes Of Sleep Onset Insomnia, And What Sleep Doctors Say You Should Do About It

Experts caution this specific type of insomnia can lead to other sleep problems.

Insomnia is often used as a catch-all term to describe a whole slew of sleep problems. Trouble falling asleep, waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall back asleep, and waking up too early in the morning can all be described as insomnia. But what many people don’t realize is that these sleep problems are different types of insomnia — and they don’t always have the same causes.

Sleep onset insomnia, also called initial insomnia, describes struggling to initially fall asleep. This is different from waking up too early in the morning (late insomnia) or waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall back asleep (middle, or maintenance, insomnia). “Often, sleep onset insomnia is how maintenance insomnia begins,” said Dr. Rafael Pelayo, a sleep medicine doctor and clinical professor at Stanford University’s Sleep Medicine division.

Treating sleep onset insomnia can stop the domino effect. But it starts with knowing what causes it in the first place.

What causes sleep onset insomnia?

Typically, it should take between 10 and 20 minutes to fall asleep, according to Dr. Alex Dimitriu, a psychiatrist and sleep medicine doctor. But he added that it depends on what you were doing before you hit the lights. If you were reading in dim lighting, you’re probably going to fall asleep faster than if you were scrolling your phone before trying to fall asleep, he said.