BruceBlogMiscellaneous: Daniel Erichsen's School of Insomnia Theory and Therapy (aka NATTO)

Here's my two cents. Daniel Erichsen trained in sleep medicine and later founded his own school of thought, based on observation not experiments. Classical sleep hygiene gives you about ten diverse tasks - no bright lights in the evening, no screens before bed, don't worry about insomnia, have a cool room, get up if awake for 30 minutes, keep sleep logs, etc. Erichsen replaces the ten rules with one rule ten times ... (1) don't worry about sleep, (2) don't worry about sleep, (3) don't worry about sleep, etc etc.

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Here is an AI reading of the auto transcript of his book THIS Is NATTO, one of several overlapping books he wrote explaining his sleep theories.

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What the book is trying to do (in one paragraph)

This Is Natto is Daniel Erichsen’s attempt to simplify insomnia recovery into one central move: stop treating wakefulness like an emergency. When the brain labels being awake at night as a threat, it ramps up monitoring and fight-or-flight, which ironically creates more wakefulness—so the usual “do more to sleep” response (rituals, rules, supplements, clock-checking, sleep math, “perfect” hygiene) becomes fuel for the problem. The “NATTO” end-state is Not Attached To The Outcome: you can have occasional bad nights like any human, but you no longer spiral into insomnia.

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Making Peace With the Night

Why Daniel Erichsen’s “NATTO” approach to insomnia works when trying harder does not

Insomnia is one of the few human problems where effort reliably makes things worse. The harder you try to solve it, the more it entrenches itself. Daniel Erichsen’s This Is Natto is built around this uncomfortable truth, and its quiet power lies in how thoroughly it refuses to offer tricks, hacks, or heroic solutions. Instead, it proposes something both simpler and more radical: stop treating wakefulness as a threat.

Erichsen’s central claim is not that poor sleep is pleasant, or even acceptable, but that insomnia becomes chronic only when the brain decides that being awake at night is dangerous. Once that alarm is set, the nervous system does what it evolved to do—monitor, anticipate, intervene—and sleep, which requires letting go, becomes neurologically impossible. Insomnia is not maintained by lack of sleep drive, he argues, but by fear plus effort.

This reframing matters because most insomnia sufferers are not careless sleepers. They are hyper-conscientious. They have optimized lighting, temperature, supplements, routines, bedtime rules, cognitive techniques, and contingency plans. They are exhausted not just by wakefulness, but by management. Erichsen names this directly: anything done with the purpose of producing or protecting sleep becomes a “sleep effort,” and sleep efforts teach the brain that sleep is scarce, fragile, and worth fighting for.

The book’s destination state—NATTO, or Not Attached To The Outcome—is not perfect sleep. It is immunity. You still have bad nights. You just don’t spiral when they happen.

The Mechanism: How Insomnia Feeds Itself

Erichsen’s most persuasive contribution is what he calls the perceived threat model. It works like this:

A period of stress, illness, or life disruption causes some nights of poor sleep. This is normal. But at some point, the sleeper notices and judges the disruption—“This is bad. I shouldn’t be sleeping this little.” That judgment triggers anxiety. Anxiety triggers hyperarousal. Hyperarousal blocks sleep. The resulting wakefulness then confirms the original fear.

At that moment, insomnia becomes circular.

From there, most people respond logically but counterproductively: they try to fix sleep. They monitor it. They protect it. They do math. They build rituals. Each of these actions is intended to restore safety—but to the brain, they signal that sleep is under threat. The alarm stays on.

Erichsen’s insight is that insomnia does not end when you finally sleep well. It ends when the brain stops caring whether you sleep well.

What the Book Actually Asks You to Do

Despite its philosophical tone, This Is Natto is not abstract. It repeatedly returns to a small set of practical moves. Importantly, these are not framed as techniques to induce sleep, but as ways to remove fuel from the insomnia loop.

1. Stop Measuring the Night

Time is the most common insomnia accelerant. Checking the clock, estimating how long you’ve been awake, calculating how much sleep you might get—these behaviors turn wakefulness into a performance review. Erichsen’s instruction is blunt: remove clocks, stop estimating, and actively cultivate uncertainty about how much you slept. Not knowing is better than knowing.

This is not mysticism; it is de-escalation.

2. Make Wakefulness Acceptable

If you wake up at night, the goal is not to fall back asleep. It is to stop fighting being awake. You can stay in bed or get up. You can read, watch something, listen to a podcast. The activity doesn’t matter. The stance does. If what you’re doing is an attempt to “get sleepy,” it’s still effort. If it’s simply something tolerable or mildly pleasant, the threat response softens.

Erichsen is deliberately permissive here, pushing back against rigid stimulus-control rules that can themselves become anxiety rituals.

3. Anchor the Morning, Not the Night

Rather than policing bedtime, he recommends one simple structure: a reasonably consistent out-of-bed time. This reduces compensatory behaviors (sleeping in, chasing lost sleep) without turning the night into a test. Importantly, this is framed as reducing effort, not generating sleep pressure through discipline.

4. Let Anxiety Improve Before Sleep Does

One of the book’s most clinically honest points is that progress often shows up first as reduced fear, not longer sleep. Many people feel calmer about bedtime weeks before sleep duration changes. Erichsen treats this not as failure, but as the nervous system standing down. Sleep follows later.

Why This Appeals to People Tired of “Doing Everything Right”

For readers who have already tried CBT-I, sleep hygiene, supplements, apps, trackers, and therapy, This Is Natto can feel like relief. It articulates why so many well-designed interventions fail in practice: they quietly reinforce the idea that sleep must be managed.

Erichsen’s tone also matters. He repeatedly refuses to promise outcomes. He normalizes partial recovery. He insists that sleeping five or six hours most nights, with occasional bad nights, may simply be a human equilibrium rather than a pathology. For people coming from years of perfectionistic striving, this can be destabilizing—but also freeing.

A Clear-Eyed Critique

The book is not without limitations.

First, the evidence base is implied rather than demonstrated. The framework aligns closely with acceptance-based therapies and elements of CBT-I, but it is not presented as a rigorously tested standalone protocol. Readers looking for randomized trials will not find them here.

Second, “intent matters” is conceptually correct but operationally tricky. Many insomniacs struggle to distinguish between reading because it’s pleasant and reading because they’re secretly hoping it will knock them out. This approach often works best with guidance or coaching.

Third, the book’s emphasis on anxiety as the core driver of insomnia risks overgeneralization. Medical contributors—sleep apnea, circadian disorders, medication effects, mood disorders—still require evaluation and treatment. NATTO is best understood as a framework for psychophysiologic insomnia, not all sleep disturbance.

Still, these are cautions, not disqualifications.

The Bottom Line

This Is Natto succeeds because it identifies the true antagonist of chronic insomnia: the effort to control sleep. Its solution is not another technique, but a withdrawal from battle. For readers who want an insomnia therapy that is conceptually simple, emotionally sane, and practically livable, this book offers something rare: a way to stop organizing your life around the night.

It does not promise great sleep.
It promises peace with wakefulness.
And paradoxically, that is often what lets sleep return.

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Detailed summary of the core framework

1) The Road Map: 9 stages from panic to “immunity”

Erichsen lays out a staged map so readers can locate themselves and know the “next move.” In brief:

0 — “Oz”: bewildered; grabbing at straws. The “action” is to study the perceived threat model (insomnia is anxiety/fear).
1 — “Reverse rabbit hole”: you see fear/anxiety but believe you’re the exception; hopelessness. “Action”: understand the brain’s “type two concern” (the mind’s habit of arguing your case is different).
2 — “Kansas”: you accept it’s “ordinary insomnia,” but not why it persists. “Action”: learn the trouble-and-desire model—your longing/striving for sleep keeps it going.
3 — “Chasing arrows”: you get the desire loop but still blame “circumstances” (life events, supplements, environment). “Action”: learn the gas-and-brake model: sleep drive vs hyperarousal.
4 — “Easy Rider”: strong conceptual foundation but still suffering. “Action”: reduce action—let go of sleep efforts and control attempts.
5–7 — “Cool down → Reward → Post game”: less worry first, then better sleep, then better restfulness; he emphasizes that the first win may be lower anxiety even before sleep improves.
8 — “Immunity”: you sleep well and understand the mechanism; bad nights happen but don’t trigger relapse.

He also draws a bright line: Stages 1–4 are “active learning”; later stages are “reduce action further.”

2) Model A: The Perceived Threat Model (why insomnia sticks)

The book’s engine is the idea that insomnia becomes a circular problem: you have a stress period → sleep poorly → the brain flags “lack of sleep” as danger → fear triggers fight/flight → you try to escape wakefulness → the brain reads that as proof the threat is real → more fight/flight → more wakefulness.

He uses the term “sleep efforts” for anything done “with the intent and purpose of producing or protecting sleep.” Those efforts can include things that look benign (checking the time, soothing sounds, supplements, elaborate routines) if the emotional function is “make sleep happen.”

A related metaphor is the “cave”: sometimes a pill, ritual, or habit seems to “work” because it gives a sense of safety/control; you feel less scared so you sleep more—but you’re still living in a protected cave rather than ending the war.

3) Model B: Trouble–Desire–Circumstances (why “wanting sleep” backfires)

He distinguishes ordinary wanting from capital-D Desire: longing/craving/urging/begging for sleep—“unreciprocated love.”

Circumstances (loss, stress, illness, environment) can create temporary sleep disruption, but if you treat it as normal, things settle. The shift into insomnia begins with the micro-judgment: “I shouldn’t have slept that little.” That sparks Desire, increases monitoring, and escalates trouble night after night.

4) Model C: Gas and Brake (what actually controls sleep)

Here he reduces sleep physiology to two levers:

Gas = sleep drive (sleep pressure), built only by wakefulness.
Brake = hyperarousal, a safety/alertness system often driven by anxiety.

He argues “nothing external produces sleep drive,” and many interventions work (when they do) mainly by changing the brake—e.g., sedation makes complex anxious thinking harder.

The “Ways”: the practical methods (his how-to toolkit)

Erichsen repeatedly returns to a few “ways” (principles/practices) that move you toward NATTO:

1) The Timeless Way: stop clock-time and “sleep math”

He calls time monitoring a control attempt: if insomnia is a perceived threat, measuring it tells the brain it’s worth mobilizing against.
Practical instructions include:

Remove visible clocks, and don’t check the time when awake at night.
The harder part: stop internal estimating (“it’s probably 2:30”). He suggests “deploy doubt”—actively question your estimate until the brain stops insisting.
Apply the same doubt to “how much you slept.” The goal is genuine uncertainty: “I truly have no idea,” which loosens control.
He extends this beyond nights: don’t track “how long I’ve had insomnia” or “when will this end,” because that’s long-range control-seeking too.

2) Befriend Wakefulness: accept being awake and do something okay

If you wake up at night, the move is: don’t turn wakefulness into a problem to solve. He gives a simple sequence:

Resist checking the time.
Acknowledge you’re awake (not “resign” in defeat).
Choose an option that makes wakefulness more acceptable: stay in bed with a pleasant thought, read, watch TV, do something creative, podcast—location matters less than the stance.
He explicitly pushes back on rigid “you must leave the bed” rules, arguing that trying to force associations becomes another sleep effort.
He also tackles the classic objection (“won’t I train myself to be awake?”) as proof of the core issue: you’re still treating wakefulness as unacceptable.

3) The Kind and Gentle Way: self-compassion as a foundational tool

He treats frustration/anger/hopelessness as a major relapse engine—especially after people “do everything right” (sleep hygiene, CBT-I tools, supplements) and still can’t sleep.
His key point: you’re blaming yourself for failing at something that cannot be forced (“Sleep cannot be produced”).
The prescription is not pep-talk; it’s pragmatic: harsh self-judgment keeps you stuck and blocks applying any other “way.”

4) Reducing effort through less opportunity: a careful, slippery “proactive” tool

This is his closest cousin to sleep restriction—though he frames it as reducing chasing/effort rather than “manufacturing sleep.”
He warns it’s “attractive” because it feels like doing something, and “slippery” because doing something can become another sleep effort.

His practical guidance:

Choose a fixed out-of-bed time as the “one and only helpful clock time” (e.g., 6:00am). Be consistent, but not militaristically rigid.
Don’t rigidly schedule bedtime; avoid going early with the intent to catch extra sleep. Intent is the key variable.
He suggests combining this with timelessness (fixed morning anchor, but less measurement/striving overall).

5) “Truce” vs peace: why partial management keeps anxiety alive

He describes a common plateau: insomnia feels paused by rituals/techniques, but there’s persistent low-level anxiety (“what if it breaks?”) and life restriction (avoiding evenings, travel). Peace comes from “disarming unilaterally”—dropping sleep management and letting associations unwind.

How-to guide: doing the Natto approach in real life (simple version)

This is a clean, practical implementation that matches his logic and avoids “complicated program” feel.

Step 1: Identify and list your sleep efforts

Make a quick list of anything you do with the purpose of producing/protecting sleep (rituals, supplements, rules, clock checking, sleep math, “perfect” behaviors). He defines sleep efforts exactly this way.
Goal: see what you’re going to gradually stop negotiating with.

Step 2: Install the two anchor practices

Timeless nights: remove clocks; no checking; when your mind estimates, “deploy doubt.”
Befriend wakefulness: if awake, acknowledge it, then do something acceptable/neutral/pleasant (in bed or out), without making it a “strategy to sleep.”

Step 3: Choose one consistent morning “fixed point”

Pick a reasonable out-of-bed time and treat it as the only clock time you consistently honor.
Key: you’re not proving toughness; you’re reducing “sleep chasing” (sleeping in to recapture the night).

Step 4: Remove “sleep performance reviews”

Stop scoring nights, tracking streaks, asking “how long has this been,” or “when should I be better?”—he frames those as long-range control attempts that increase trouble.
A good progress marker in this model is: less fear + less effort, even before sleep length changes (his roadmap explicitly separates “cool down” from “reward”).

Step 5: Expect the paradox, and don’t litigate it

When you stop trying, you may initially feel exposed (“no cave”). That’s consistent with the perceived-threat loop: the brain has learned wakefulness is danger, and you’re teaching it otherwise.
Your job is not to win a night; it’s to stop feeding the loop.

Step 6: When frustration hits, go “kind and gentle”

He’s explicit: frustration/hopelessness often follows trying everything; but you were trying to force something unforceable.
In practice: treat a bad night as a normal human event, not a referendum on your recovery.

Objective critique / review

What’s strong (why it appeals to people who want “simple and workable”)

It targets the mechanism that makes insomnia chronic: fear + effort + monitoring, not just “insufficient sleep drive.” The perceived threat loop is a coherent explanation of why sleep becomes harder the more you chase it.
It’s operationally simple: timelessness + befriending wakefulness + one morning anchor time + reduce sleep efforts.
It directly addresses a common CBT-I failure mode: turning techniques into yet another control project (“I must do this perfectly or I’ll relapse”). He explicitly critiques how stimulus control/sleep restriction can morph into effort and lingering anxiety.
It normalizes an important clinical reality: many people improve first by being less afraid of the night—even before sleep duration improves (his roadmap builds that in).

What’s weaker / needs caution (where readers should be skeptical or careful)

Evidence framing: The book’s logic overlaps strongly with acceptance-based approaches (and with CBT-I’s behavioral principles), but the transcript itself doesn’t present controlled trial evidence for “NATTO” as a branded protocol. So it may be best read as a clinically plausible framework rather than a fully validated “new therapy.” (This is a critique of the book’s presentation, not a claim it doesn’t help.)
“Intent is what matters” is powerful—but fuzzy in practice. Many insomniacs genuinely can’t tell whether reading in bed is “because I feel like it” or “because I’m trying to sleep.” The model says function matters, which is true, but people often need coaching to apply that cleanly.
The fixed wake time / reduced opportunity tool can be misused. He warns it’s “slippery” because “doing something” can become effort again. In practice, some readers will accidentally recreate strict sleep restriction with the same perfectionism he’s trying to dismantle.
Medical differential matters. A philosophy of acceptance can coexist with sleep apnea, circadian rhythm disorders, restless legs, depression/anxiety disorders, medication effects, etc. The book’s “insomnia is anxiety” lens is often true for psychophysiologic insomnia, but readers should still rule out (or treat) contributing conditions with a clinician when indicated.

Who is most likely to benefit

People with psychophysiologic / conditioned insomnia: lots of monitoring, fear, rituals, “I must sleep,” good sleep hygiene but still wired. The book is basically written for that population.

Who should be careful

Anyone with high-risk sleepiness (e.g., drowsy driving), major mood instability, or suspected primary sleep disorders should use this as adjunct framing and get clinical evaluation.