Insomnia - If You Know, You Know
You turn off the light, lay your head to rest on the cold side of the pillow, wrap yourself up in freshly washed bedding, wriggle into your favourite sleeping position, and close your exhausted eyes. You’ve done everything you know you should do before bed, from brushing your teeth (but well in advance, of course, lest the minty freshness proves too mentally stimulating and keeps you up) to avoiding food, alcohol, and nicotine for hours beforehand.
You have done some exercise, but not so much that your heart rate is still high once you climb into bed. You are relatively hydrated, but not to the extent of needing to wake up to pee during the night. The blueish brightness of your phone has been dialled down as far as it will go or swapped for a much warmer and soothing ‘comfort mode’. You set your alarms hours ago, to prevent yourself from mentally calculating how many hours and minutes away the next morning lies. You opted to read a book to ‘wind down’ instead of watching television. You have written down all minor and major worries which popped into your head that day so that they are stored on your phone or in a notebook instead of remaining trapped inside your already overwhelmed brain. You followed all the guidelines, played by all the rules. Time. To. Sleep.
Bang. Thoughts scream into your head and form a swarming, screeching labyrinth of words, memories, forgotten plans, past interests, future intentions, extensive and unfeasible to-do lists, unvoiced opinions, and imagined scenarios. Some leave as quickly as they appear. The day’s conversations cascade through the hundreds of rusty pipes snaking across one another at all angles inside your brain, cackling with glee as they swerve all your common sense and watch you worriedly analyse each and every one of them, checking for anomalies or hidden meaning.
Then, somewhere deeper, somewhere murkier, an unsolvable or unresolved problem, a former fantasy, a sense of uncertainty, or occasionally, a large portion of ice-cold fear, leaps into action like a hunted fish springing out of water. In this swampy, cloying environment, paranoia begins to thrive, and obsessions take their full form. You feel your eyes grow drier, your too-warm skin starts to prickle, your muscles ache, and your head thumps as you watch the heavy blackness of night slowly morph into the terrifying twilight which heralds the arrival of another exhausting, sleepless dawn.
Then again, maybe not. Perhaps the thing that snatches away your sleep is the distant sound of birdsong, or neighbours chatting, or cars passing, or rain pitter-pattering, noises which breed anxiety purely because they are unpredictable and out of your control. You grow to violently loathe every mild disturbance you can identify, feeling pressure in your chest thud every time the wretched source emits its unbearable sound.
An hour later you have watched a YouTube video about soundproofing, read threads on community forums in search of your kindred sleepless spirit, and diagnosed yourself with misophonia, phonophobia, and general noise sensitivity. Other times, you feel smothered by silence, and the quietness of your surroundings seems to swallow you up and imprison you.
On some sweet nights, your cravings for rest are satisfied, and sleepiness soaks over you so smoothly and blissfully, as though your entire body has melted into the mattress. That particular sweetness provides so much pleasure that when you inevitably wake in the dead of night, the bitterness which ensues is enough to make you feel physically sick.
Involuntarily, you feel your mind force you to extract memories from decades ago and investigate them for the first time. Later, you have made thorough plans to make a near-impossible lifestyle change, written down pages and pages of feelings and fears which are usually nonexistent but suddenly became a burning concern at 4 am, and calculated the probabilities of every potential eventuality you can imagine actually happening. A few hours later in the middle of your day, you disregard all of those things completely and have little to no recollection of experiencing those feelings at all.
For those who can’t relate to a word of this, this is insomnia. When chronic, you can find yourself surviving on a handful of hours of sleep per week. This affects people differently, but some of the consequences are headaches, nausea, irregular body temperature, sweating, muscle pain, lethargy and inability to focus, hyperactivity and extreme productivity, loss of appetite, increased appetite, paranoia, apathy, bloating, indecisiveness, anxiety, and finding yourself close to tears at the slightest thing.
Sometimes, insomnia isn’t as bad as described above. It can be nights of lying perfectly comfortably, reading a book, or watching videos on your phone until you feel tired and have successfully strained your eyes to sleep. It can be falling asleep with ease, then waking hourly for no identifiable reason, and then falling asleep again until the time comes to get up and start your day. It can be perfectly normal and simply be triggered by the worries of a long day and unusually early morning ahead of you.
Regardless of how insomnia manifests itself and how it affects the sufferer, insomnia (and I cannot stress this enough) does exist, and especially when frequent and chronic, cannot be easily solved. Sleep disorders are often misunderstood, but comments ranging from the rude (“You’re being stupid, if there’s no reason why you shouldn’t sleep then you should just get on with it and sleep”) to the downright ridiculous (“Just lie down and close your eyes and you WILL fall asleep, I promise!”) are far more of a hindrance than a help.
I always dismissed such reactions, but that's not to say they weren't a source of irritation. I didn’t explore or seek help for my insomnia until I finally reached the point where I physically couldn’t cope with the resulting exhaustion. This took longer than it should have as my ‘coping threshold’ is high and burnout takes a long time to catch up with me (and, I admit, I can be extremely stubborn even when I know I need help). However, for many sufferers, others undermining their condition or expecting them to be able to function normally during periods of extreme sleep deprivation could hinder their progress and cause them to feel embarrassed, ashamed, incapable, inadequate, abnormal, and alone.
Here are the two types of insomnia:
Primary insomnia – not linked to another health issue. Caused by stress, noise, light, temperature, work schedule changes, jetlag.
Secondary insomnia – linked to a health issue. Caused by substance abuse (caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, recreational drugs), mental health issues, certain medications, thyroid issues, other sleep disorders, pain/discomfort.
And, here are two ways insomnia works:
Onset insomnia: difficulty falling asleep (including when tired and ready for sleep)
Sleep maintenance insomnia: difficulty staying asleep, even if falling asleep was not a problem (waking up in the middle of the night, earlier than usual, or even a couple of hours after falling asleep)
All of these can interlink and overlap. Substance abuse is often not the cause of poor sleep but rather a means of knocking yourself out for the night when you’d had a busy week, whereas continuous lack of sleep from a noisy environment can eventually lead to physical and mental pain or discomfort as the body loses its energy reserves. Additionally, onset and maintenance insomnia can occur on the same night (and continue happening consecutively for days or weeks).
If someone tells you they are struggling to sleep, listen to them and do not make wild assumptions before knowing the facts. Insomnia can be unpleasant, unexpected, and the direct result of a negative or traumatic experience. Alternatively, it could be mild, manageable, and temporary due to a recent house move. Some of us just aren’t very good at sleeping when we’re supposed to. There is not an overall response or approach to curing insomnia – do not tell someone they should be on anti-depressants because of it, do not write it off as ‘silliness’, and certainly do not tell them it does not exist. Listen, and learn.
Finally, to my fellow insomniacs, if you are reading this on the first, second, or fifteenth night of poor sleep, know that you are not alone. Be grateful for any good nights you get, because they will help you later (think of the process like topping up an energy bar) and try not to put pressure on yourself to make every night the same.
When things get bad, try to sit down with yourself and identify any obvious causes and work on eliminating triggers. If there aren’t any, then that’s that. Sometimes, we just have to accept that sleep isn’t happening for whatever reason, and if that means wielding insomnia as some kind of superpower and being incredibly productive overnight, then so be it.
Just take care of yourself when it gets close to being unmanageable, and if like me you insist on maintaining an image of being completely invincible, try to give yourself a break. Stop hiding and denying your insomnia and get it out in the open. In my experience, addressing my sleeplessness not only with myself but also making others aware of it has led to reduced frequency and intensity of the problem (at least, for the most part).
Thank you, and good night.
Written by Amy Watson
Amy is a content manager originally from the UK and now proud to call Hamburg, Germany her new home. She is a passionate lover of cheese, literature, languages, modern art, and enjoys all four with copious amounts of red wine.
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