19/06/2026
TEACHERS WHO HAVE BROKEN OR NO SLEEP.....
Over the past few months, so many of my teacher friends and colleagues have told me the same thing: difficulty sleeping. Lying awake running through the day. Waking at 3am with the mind circling. Exhausted, but unable to switch off.
It's so common in our profession, we almost treat it as normal.
I understand it more than most. I lived it.
In 2015 I was teaching in Leeds, with three young children at home. 2am became my most hated hour — bone-tired, desperate for sleep, and the more I wanted it, the further away it drifted.
I remember sitting on my classroom floor crying, simply because I was that exhausted. Fighting to stay awake in a staff meeting. Invigilating a silent exam and feeling my eyelids closing despite everything in me trying to hold them up. I stopped seeing my friends — I had nothing left to give. I was an emotional wreck, running on lost sleep, week after week. By the end, I was utterly desperate.
I tried trying harder. Early nights, forcing myself to relax, telling myself to just switch off. None of it worked — because willpower was never the right tool for this job. Sleep doesn't respond to force. The more we grip it, the more it slips away.
What changed everything was discovering hypnotherapy.
For the first time, someone explained why my mind wouldn't switch off — not a personal failing, but a pattern. My subconscious had learned to stay on high alert, long after the danger had passed, and no amount of willpower could talk it down. Hypnotherapy gave me a way to reach that part of myself directly — to calm the noise and teach my mind it was safe to let go. Session by session, the sleep came back. And so did everything else — my patience, my energy, my enthusiasm for the job I loved.
It didn't just give me my sleep back. It gave me back to myself.
That's why I do this work now.
If any of this sounds familiar, you're not alone — and it's not a failure of discipline. I'm running a free talk on sleep, stress and the subconscious, and what actually helps when willpower hasn't worked. Comment or message me to find out more.
