I have had trouble falling asleep ever since I was a child. There are simply too many thoughts in my head and it is so nice finally having time to dream and think of all the different directions my life could move into. I know that this is a more positive account of sleeplessness than a lot of other people would give you: the evening also gives room for fear, worry and overthinking. However, what both have in common is that we lie awake, sometimes for hours until we finally fall asleep and then the alarm rings in the morning and we have not gotten near enough rest for the 275th night in a row. And even if we had hypothetically slept for 8 or 9 hours, we still feel exhausted and as if we hadn’t even slept at all. Because even after falling asleep, our thoughts kept spinning and spiraling into random and diverse dreams we can’t fully recall.
I think everyone has some periods where they just can’t seem to fall asleep, especially during stressful times. However, there are some people (like me) who continually can’t seem to fall asleep. This is then called “chronic insomnia”. Insomnia is defined as chronic if you have trouble sleeping (falling asleep, staying asleep, falling back asleep) at least 3 times per week for a few months in a row. Or years. Or decades.
Aside from the common consequences of insufficient sleep like low energy levels or trouble to concentrate during the day, chronic Insomnia can also have a negative impact on our organs. Furthermore, it can result in higher irritability and mental health issues, such as depression. For women, the list doesn’t stop there: they have a higher risk for developing diabetes and high blood pressure if they don’t get enough sleep, and they are (of course) also more likely to suffer from depression.
But what causes Insomnia? There are some physical causes like sleep apnea (you can’t breathe properly during the night without realising it), an overactive thyroid (leads to an overproduction of hormones that influence your energy levels) or gastrointestinal problems (trouble with digestion, stomach and intestines). In those cases, you should definitely consult a doctor and will most likely need some sort of medication or a sleeping mask that makes you look like Darth Vader on a summer holiday. However, a lot of people suffer from Insomnia simply because they don’t have the right sleeping (or daytime) habits.
A few years ago, I watched a YouTube video about Insomnia (at 2AM, ironically) and it absolutely changed the way I thought about sleep. This video was about CBT-I, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia. This type of therapy focusses on changing habits and rewiring the brain and it is successful 80% of the time. If you can’t sleep because you are constantly thinking, worrying or planning, you have actually trained your brain not to sleep. Since you lie awake all the time in bed, your brain associates the bed with thinking instead of sleeping. This is called a paired association. So the goal is to associate the bed with sleeping instead of thinking. You do that by simply getting up if you cannot sleep for more than 15 minutes. I usually put relaxing music or nature sounds on on my phone and turn on the sleep timer on Spotify, just so I know when the 15 minutes are over. During those 15 minutes, you need to try to relax your body AND your mind in order for this approach to work. Try to focus and control your thoughts a little more, so that you are not just spiraling. After 15 minutes, you get up and do a calm activity like reading, stretching or journaling. Then you can try to sleep again. You will need to get up A LOT of times in the first few days, trust me. But I can guarantee you that your sleep will improve after a week or so if you do make a habit of this.
Another thing I found during my research is that you should not compensate for lost sleep. So if you usually wake up at 8 am, you should still get up at 8 am, even though you don’t have any specific obligations and even if you couldn’t sleep until 4. Taking naps during the day or going to bed earlier at night is also not recommended because it disrupts your natural sleep cycle. So keeping your sleep schedule steady is essential.
Depending on what is the cause for your Insomnia, this might not always work, but with an 80% success rate, it’s definitely worth giving it a try.
Sweet dreams and see you next time!
more on the topic:
sources:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/basics/insomnia?msockid=3a582fa00cd669dd095e3f9a0d04683d
