We’ve all heard the advice. Avoid screens before bed. Cut the caffeine. Stick to a schedule. Most of it sounds reasonable enough. But for people dealing with real insomnia, it might be doing more harm than good.

Kirsty Vant, a doctoral researcher in psychology at Royal Holloway University of London, says a lot of popular sleep hygiene advice is built for people who already sleep fine. “Telling someone with insomnia to ‘just switch off’ is like telling someone with an eating disorder to ‘just eat healthy,’” she wrote in The Conversation. It’s oversimplified, and it’s missing the point.

Here are five sleep strategies that could be backfiring.

1. Staying in bed longer

It seems logical to go to bed early or sleep in when rest feels impossible. But the more time you spend awake in bed, the

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