The Hidden Impact of Sleep Trackers: Are They Making You More Tired?

Do you believe your sleep tracker is helping your relationship with sleep or causing you to feel more stress about your slumber? Wearing a sleep tracking device such as the Apple Watch, Oura Ring, or Fitbit can tell you a lot about what happened between last night and this morning. But how often do these trackers start to shape how you feel about sleep? Let’s explore the impact of using sleep trackers, especially if you are someone who is currently struggling with chronic insomnia or a sleep disorder.

Is This Tracker Telling Me How I Feel?

Here’s a scenario: you wake up this morning feeling pretty rested and positive about the day ahead. Now you glance at your sleep data, and it tells you that you are not going to feel good today. The tracker lets you know that your sleep metrics are off and your sleep score is low, indicating that you had poor sleep quality or insufficient REM sleep. Very quickly your mindset shifts to a negative place and the worry about your day ahead begins. You have basically just been told by your tracker, not your body, that this is not going to be a good day! Without this negative feedback from your device, you might have gone through the day feeling just fine, believing your body got the sleep it needed. This scenario demonstrates the need to ask yourself if sleep trackers are improving your sleep or creating unnecessary anxiety for you.

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Consider these 5 points when deciding if a sleep tracker is right for you:

1. Too Much Pressure to Sleep “Perfectly”

Sleep trackers encourage a focus on data, turning what should be a natural process into a performance-based event. This pressure to achieve “perfect sleep” can lead to an unhealthy obsession fueled by anxiety about sleep quality, exacerbating the insomnia. When you worry about meeting specific sleep metrics, it can perpetuate a cycle of stress that interferes with the very thing you're trying to improve. I find this is particularly problematic for high-achievers and people that struggle with perfectionism tendencies.

2. Your Sleep Data May be Inaccurate

While sleep trackers are becoming more advanced and easily accessible, their accuracy is still limited when it comes to differentiating between sleep stages such as REM and deep sleep. Trackers rely on factors like movement or heart rate, which are really only indirect indicators of sleep quality. This means the data you receive from your device may not accurately reflect what happened while you were sleeping. Putting your trust in data that is likely inaccurate can make you start to doubt your body’s natural signals and weaken your confidence in your own sleep experience.

3. Overanalyzing and Obsessing About Sleep Patterns

The availability of daily sleep reports in the morning can lead to obsessive focus about sleep data. Rather than waking up and assessing how you feel, you start depending on the numbers to tell you whether you are rested. If your tracker gives you a lower sleep rating, you might begin the day feeling tired. Even if your body did get enough rest, it’s hard to mentally challenge the idea of a low sleep score. Lower scores or ratings of “poor” sleep can easily influence your energy levels and mood. You may subconsciously (or consciously) have an expectation about how you are going to feel even if you firmly believe you are not influenced by the data.

4. Sleep Becomes a Task Rather Than an Intuitive Process

Tracking metrics nightly can cause sleep to feel like a task, making sleep one more thing that is measured and outcomes focused. We get a lot of messages each day telling us we are not doing enough - let’s not add the pressure to sleep to that list. When we treat sleep as another item on the task list, it loses its essence as a restorative and intuitive process.  We start to lose trust in our ability to determine our own needs.

5. Ignoring Individual Sleep Needs

Data from sleep trackers often compares your numbers against generalized metrics. For example, if you read that your age group needs eight hours of sleep per night on average, this does not mean that YOU need eight hours of sleep each night. Some people can feel great and function perfectly well on six hours of sleep, while others may need ten hours to feel restored. If you rely too heavily on a tracker’s interpretation and scoring, you may start to believe that you are sleeping “wrong,” even when your sleep patterns align perfectly with your individual biological needs.

So When Are Sleep Trackers Useful?

In certain situations, sleep trackers can play a valuable role in understanding sleep patterns and reducing sleep anxiety. For example, individuals who struggle with paradoxical insomnia can benefit from getting more concrete feedback about sleep patterns. Paradoxical insomnia, which was previously called Sleep State Misperception, is a sleep disorder that causes people to believe they slept poorly when in fact, they may be sleeping quite normally. In this situation, sleep trackers gather objective data, providing confirmation about of the total sleep time you experienced. I have worked with clients who feel 100% certain they are not sleeping and are shocked by the data. The confusion makes sense because this sleep state misperception creates daytime symptoms that closely mimic those of actual insomnia. In these situations, seeing hard sleep data allows the brain to more easily accept that it only feels like you are not sleeping, thereby reducing sleep anxiety and fatigue previously attributed to insomnia.

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Let’s Wrap This Up!

Trackers can be valuable tools for gaining some insight into your sleep habits, but they also have the potential to backfire and cause distress. When we prioritize numbers over our own intuition, it becomes counter-productive. By approaching sleep tracking mindfully and maintaining a focus on how you feel, you can find a healthy balance that supports better sleep.

Sleep is not just a metric. It’s a feeling. Let your body, not your tracker, be your guide in determining whether you got restorative sleep.

If you are struggling with insomnia or anxiety related to your sleep, consider sleep therapy utilizing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I). This protocol addresses the negative thought patterns and dysfunctional beliefs about sleep that become more prevalent as your insomnia persists.  

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For more tips and professional support, visit www.sleep-anxiety.com. Fill out the contact form to schedule a free 15-minute consultation with Anissa Bell, LMFT, and find out if this treatment approach is right for you.