What happens/ed when I have/d insomnia — how I’ve come to see insomnia in a positive light
There are articles out there like this one, which enumerates and elaborates on the causes behind insomnia and systematic and science-backed ways to relieve or cure it.
This is not one of them.
The purposes of this piece of writing are simple — to document the pain insomniacs suffer, and to compare and contrast how I used to combat insomnia and how I do so now.
This article is written in the hope that it will empower those who suffer just as I have done to understand this:
There are simple ways to put insomnia into the right perspectives, and when this is done, sleeplessness doesn’t have to feel as debilitating as it could.
What used to happen when I had insomnia
I used to dread having insomnia like I dreaded having my period.
During days when I couldn’t sleep, I felt like shit and I absolutely hated every waking second when I could have been sleeping but for insomnia.
Here was what I felt:
I felt forced to deal with all the thoughts racing in my head alone when my partner was asleep.
I felt grumpy that I needed to slow down and quieten down any movements I make so as not to wake my partner up.
One part of me feared waking my partner up, the other part of me wanted to wake him up so that he would have to suffer this together with me.
Because the insomniac in me hated him for being able to fall asleep so much more easily than me.
It wasn’t until around half a year ago when it dawned on me that one of the best ways to relieve insomnia is actually to stop obsessing. It dawned on me that dreading insomnia doesn’t make it go away. When this realization hit me, insomnia suddenly stopped feeling so scary. Almost magically, this paradigm shift has caused me to have had so much fewer bad nights since.
What I found out about how to cope with insomnia
I found out that one of the best ways to battle insomnia is to stop obsessing over having this problem itself.
When you stop TRYING so hard to fall asleep, sleep comes to you.
“Happiness is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will evade you, but if you notice the other things around you, it will gently come and sit on your shoulder.”
― Henry David Thoreau
This applies to sleep too. The less you’re bothered by your temporary inability to sleep, the less you’ll be affected by it.
Now, these are what I do whenever I come to be faced with insomnia these days.
I feel grateful that as someone who works for myself instead of a company or a boss, I don’t actually have to wake up early for work. My lack of sleep isn’t going to impair my work performance to such an extent that I get fired, unlike many of my fellow insomniacs who are less unfortunate in this respect.
I get the chance to watch movies which I was too busy to watch during daytime (I just finished Too Hot to Handle Reunion Special on Netflix and incidentally, it felt really weird: TMTH seems to be sending us a weirdly uplifting message: even exceptionally hot couples like Francesa and Harry could stay together for a long period of time without being seduced by other hot people. At the same time as one ordinary-looking member of the show’s audience, I couldn’t help wondering if surreally hot people like Francesa and Harry only ever fall in love with surreally hot people like themselves.)
I get new ideas about how to push the needle at work — new contacts that I have to try to put myself in contact with and new ideas that I have to execute.
I get to delete the emails that I didn’t have the chance to and clear my overstuffed inbox currently standing at 230 unread emails. I get to unsubscribe to newsletters that don’t give value, which I normally don’t have the time to do.
I get to write this Medium article for you guys. Yes, I write slow when I’m having insomnia because my brain feels like an incapacitated lump and my thoughts are foggy. But writing slow is still so much better than not being able to write.
What I do goes to show that while it is true that suffering from insomnia isn’t ideal, chances are if you’re able to make the best use of your unexpected waking hours, you might be able to make use of the extra waking time to get ahead of the curve at work.
I have gleaned from my experience battling insomnia that how I should and shouldn’t think about insomnia.
The right perspective when it comes to thinking about insomnia
DO’s
Think of insomnia as giving you a few extra hours to entertain/educate yourself or get long-neglected tasks done.
Think ‘Thanks to insomnia, you get to…’, not ‘You have to…’
DON’T’s
Try to play smart and be intentional. Pick films or books to watch or read that you think will make you feel sleepier, in the hope of falling asleep quicker. Chances are when you INTEND these books to get you to sleep quicker, they will fail you because you’re reading these books the wrong way. You’re supposed to get into a flow concentrating on reading; you’re not supposed to read for the sake of falling asleep.
Stare outside the window, fear the dawning of the sky and the chirping of the birds and blame yourself for wasting another night. Insomnia could have hit anyone and it was never your intention that your body should suffer.
The final words that I have for my insomniac friends are simple:
Even though your partner might be sound asleep, insomniacs, we’re alone in this together. Fear not the sleepless nights, for
“The only thing to fear is fear itself.’ — Franklin D. Roosevelt
As explained by Kate Edgley in her Guardian article, sleep is supposed to be something that you do naturally, not something that you have to do.
It is the very notion that you have to fall asleep that’s stopping you from getting the much-needed shuteye that you yearn for.
And it is by shifting to the right perspectives that you will triumph against it.
Photo by Gregory Pappas on Unsplash
