Falling Awake

Unknown-4Some people I know fall asleep as easily as this laptop I am working on (and just as unpredictably).  This is for the rest of us who have trouble finding the rest in us.

I have long suspected that most of my insomnia has been caused by anxiety, a slightly more syllabic way of saying fear.  Fear, in my view and counter to Frank Roosevelt’s, is nothing to be afraid of and can be our best friend, but just like our best friends, sometimes our fears can talk too much and keep us up at night.   I have used and recommended a few sleep-inducing tricks over the years (see last post), but the most effective one of all is good old-fashioned paradox.

True insomniacs will tell you that staying awake can be just as challenging as falling asleep.  That is because, as I mentioned in the last post, insomnia in its truest form is not really a state of being awake; it is a state of not being asleep.  Different thing.

It is the battle between sleep and wakefulness that itself is the problem.  When the objective of the battle is to fall asleep, the insomniac finds herself failing continually.  The failing becomes a source of tension and self-criticism, and it is all very exhausting, but not sleep-inducing.

The failure to fall asleep is often the body’s way of saying that there are too many unresolved problems, too much that is not quite right in the world that cannot be solved safely enough to allow one to sleep.

So, just as Captain Kirk solved the Kobayashi Maru test by not accepting the parameters of the simulation and then reprogramming the computer, one must change the parameters of the sleep game.   Rather than try to fall asleep and repeatedly fail, try instead to stay awake.   If you succeed at doing this, you may be able to work toward resolving whatever it is that may be keeping you awake, or simply stay awake long enough that sheer exhaustion will eventually overcome you.

The key to staying awake is to stop trying to fall asleep.  It is that shift of focus that eases the burden of the conflict and gives sleep a welcome place to reside.   Get out of bed, fold the laundry, read a book, study a foreign language, or engage in whatever activity is leftover on the grand to-do list.   The worst-case scenario is that you will be up all night and tired the next day.   At work, you might have to fight the urge to fall asleep, but that is an urge you will be happy to have when you are home safe.

Sleep may be “nature’s soft nurse,” but while she may be on call she may be attending to other patients and unavailable.  In that case, try canceling the appointment.   At least for the moment, you may not need her, and trust that she will come when she is needed the most.

Dr. Ira’s Insomnia Cure (in 2 parts!)

Unknown-3I have suffered from insomnia off and on nearly all my adult life, as do a huge number of folks.  If you read what’s going around the internet and other fonts of wisdom on the topic of sleep it could scare you to death, or at least keep you up at night.  Insomnia has been linked to diabetes, weakened immunity, weight gain and heart disease, not to mention accidents in which people fall asleep at the helm of whatever sort of chariot they are driving.   I do like to remind myself though that aside from falling asleep at the wheel, if lack of sleep is going to kill you, it’s going to be a slow death, kind of like life itself.

The first thing a good insomniac should do is get a medical workup.   That turns out to be a productive path in only a very small percentage of cases, but in case you are one of those who suffers from treatable sleep apnea it may be a good idea.

Many books and articles tout the benefits of exercise, timed to occur well before bedtime.   Interval training may be a better way to go than pushing through a single strenuous workout.   This seems to work really well with my dogs, who will sleep through the night if they get a lot of exercise during the day, but frankly it has never helped me much.

Losing weight is almost always a good thing.  That seems to help nearly everything under the sun, and research tells us that people who are thinner also tend to sleep better.   I can tell you, though, I had just as much trouble sleeping when my BMI was 20 than I do now with a BMI of 26.

My first-resort insomnia treatment is making lists.   Transferring annoying things to do from brain to paper tends to ease my mind, allowing me to temporarily put the intrusive thoughts aside and trusting that the paper, if not my mind, will still be there in the morning.  The second thing to do is reading something particularly boring, which, when I am half awake, is practically anything.   The third thing I do is something writers, psychologists and hypnotists call “automatic writing,” which is simply letting your hand write whatever it seems to want to without giving the process any conscious thought.  Sometimes surprising things appear, although I find that most of what I write in this state is indecipherable in the morning.   But when those fail, I go to the surest thing of all, the ultimate, guaranteed insomnia cure: staying awake.

True insomniacs will tell you that staying awake can be just as challenging as falling asleep.  That is because insomnia in its truest form is not really a state of being awake; it is a state of not being asleep.    This, it turns out, warrants its own post.  More on this next week!