If you’ve spent any time online this year, you’ve probably seen sleepmaxxing. It usually comes with blackout curtains, magnesium, mouth tape, blue-light glasses, sleep scores, a new mattress, a new pillow, and a confident voice promising that this is finally the thing that will fix your sleep.

Insert ad for mattress here.
Insert ad for probiotic here.
Insert ad for wearable sleep tracker here.

On one level, it’s ridiculous. On another, it makes perfect sense. People are exhausted, anxious, and burned out, and they’re realizing that poor sleep quietly makes everything worse.

At Modern Therapy Alliance, we don’t dismiss sleepmaxxing. We also don’t believe insomnia is a shopping problem. To understand why this trend resonates, you first have to notice something we almost never talk about.

Sleeping is weird.

Sleep is weird, and we forget that it’s weird

Every human being grows up accepting that once a day, we’re supposed to stop what we’re doing, go into a special room, put on special clothes, lie down on a special piece of furniture, turn off the lights, close our eyes, and then… hope we become unconscious.

That’s strange.

You can actively eat. You can consciously breathe. But you can’t force sleep. You can only create the conditions and wait for your brain to cooperate. And your brain doesn’t cooperate because you want it to. It cooperates because it recognizes patterns.

Sleep is learned by the brain, not commanded by willpower

Sleep happens through repetition and ritual. That’s why routines matter. Dimming the lights. Brushing your teeth. Doing things in the same order every night. These aren’t arbitrary habits. They’re signals to your nervous system that sleep is coming.

When people struggle with sleep, one of the most effective starting points isn’t hacks or supplements. It’s dialing up the rituals and dialing down stimulation. Ease your system toward sleep instead of expecting it to shut off on command.

Sleepmaxxing often gets this part half right and then buries it under gear.

What the internet means when it says “sleepmaxxing”

Online, sleepmaxxing usually means optimizing sleep the way we optimize everything else: routines, environments, tracking, supplements, and devices. It’s sleep hygiene, repackaged for social media and paired with affiliate links.

At times, it also feels like sleepmaxxing has become the most socially acceptable excuse of the decade. “I’d love to go bar hopping,” or “pickleball sounds fun,” “but tonight I’m sleepmaxxing.” Is it self-care? Is it optimization? Or is it just a polite way of getting out of plans you didn’t really want to keep? Probably all three. And honestly, that might be one of its more useful features.

Some of what gets bundled into sleepmaxxing is solid. A lot of it is unnecessary. And some of it quietly turns sleep into another performance metric.

Anxiety shows up after you’re awake, not always before

Here’s the cycle we see constantly.

People come in saying they can’t sleep because they’re anxious. They want to unpack every thought they had at 2:00 a.m., convinced those thoughts are the cause of their insomnia.

Often, it’s the reverse.

Something else keeps them awake first: late-night stimulation, poor routines, eating too late, a nervous system that never winds down. Because they’re awake, that’s when the worries show up. Anxiety doesn’t always cause insomnia. Insomnia often creates the conditions for anxiety.

One of the first questions we ask isn’t about the content of the worry. It’s simpler: why are you awake for three or four hours after you go to bed? If we can help you fall asleep sooner, you’ll have far fewer middle-of-the-night thoughts to analyze.

That’s not dismissing anxiety. It’s breaking the loop.

A quick but important medical aside

There are serious medical conditions associated with disrupted sleep. If you’re stopping breathing at night, waking up gasping, snoring heavily, or experiencing extreme daytime sleepiness, you should talk to a physician or sleep specialist. Conditions like sleep apnea are real and dangerous.

That’s not what we’re talking about here. And to be fair, that’s not what sleepmaxxing culture is talking about either.

What we’re addressing is the far more common pattern: people who can sleep, but don’t sleep well, and then assume anxiety is the cause rather than the consequence.

Revenge bedtime procrastination and stolen time

Another pattern that shows up constantly is revenge bedtime procrastination: staying up late scrolling or doing “nothing,” even though you’re exhausted.

This usually isn’t about discipline. It’s about deprivation.

If you spend your entire day doing things for other people, late night becomes the only time that feels like it belongs to you. From the brain’s perspective, resisting sleep makes sense. From a sleep perspective, it’s a disaster.

One of the most effective sleep interventions isn’t at night at all. It’s making sure you’re doing something for yourselfearlier in the day. When the brain doesn’t feel deprived, it’s far more willing to rest.

The boring sleep basics actually work

Here’s the inconvenient truth sleepmaxxing content often skips.

Yes, your body sleeps better when it’s cooler.
Yes, dimming lights matters.
Yes, scrolling or working until the moment you lie down makes sleep harder.
Yes, heavy or spicy food late at night interferes with sleep.

None of this requires buying anything new. That’s why it doesn’t sell particularly well.

Tracking is feedback, not a solution

Sleep trackers can be helpful. They provide feedback. But feedback isn’t the same as knowing what to do.

Seeing poor REM sleep doesn’t explain why. Obsessing over metrics can actually make sleep worse. And while a new fluffy pillow is tempting, it’s rarely the answer to a nervous system that never powers down.

How we approach sleep at Modern Therapy Alliance

We focus on three things.

First, helping people fall asleep faster by addressing routines, environment, digestion, and nervous system arousal.

Second, helping people stop blaming themselves for being awake and instead understand the system keeping them there.

Third, using tracking tools sparingly and intelligently, as information, not pressure.

And yes, we sometimes joke that if we had to choose between spending six months analyzing why your mother was critical or getting you to stop eating spicy food at 10:00 p.m., the spicy food will improve your sleep faster. History matters. Timing matters too.

Why this matters to how we practice therapy

All of this ties back to something fundamental about how we work at Modern Therapy Alliance: we’re focused on being helpful in any way we can.

A lot of what’s out there around sleep, anxiety, and mental health isn’t wrong. But much of it is designed to be helpful because it’s trying to sell you something. A product. A program. A reason to keep you engaged.

That’s not what we’re doing here.

We could easily spend the next six months talking about what keeps you up at night. But if we can help you actually fall asleep sooner, that’s often the more responsible place to start. Once you’re rested, you’re in a much better position to tell the difference between a real problem and a nervous system that’s simply exhausted.

We’re not interested in keeping people on the therapist’s couch for the sake of it. We’re interested in integrating therapy with practical help that actually solves problems.

We’re also not here to create content for content’s sake. If this article felt useful, that’s the point. We’re not going to ask you to subscribe or follow anything. That always feels a little disingenuous anyway.

If you want more useful thinking like this, you already know where to find us.