First thing, your friend Yumi is spot on with her advice, which I do often, and secondly, her message response to you made me crack up laughing first thing of a morning, which is the best start to any day, so cheers Yumi.
I've tried a lot of things but nothing has ever really hit the mark.
Push-ups till collapse, making scones, music, star gazing, podcasts.
I do totally relate to the theory of being secure or cuddling up with somebody helping.
Being content in not being content is what I tell myself. Busy brain asking more why's than how's at 3am is a hard thing to shut down.
All fellow insomniacs marvel in wonder at friends they know that just go to bed at 8:30 and sleep right through.
And it's funny that most insomniacs always seem to find partners to sleep with who can do that.
For years I'd joke I wanted to open a volunteer bakery where all insomniacs could wander in at 2am and knock up some Danish pastries or a baguette just to let our minds focus on that one task and with the smell of fresh bread, wander back home to bed.
Perimenopause sucks. My cortisol is sky high at the wrong time. I take so many pills, mostly natural, to sleep but they don't see me through. Some days it's 2am mostly 3am. I'm expected to drive to work and back, maintain focus at an office job and pretend my tired eyes are not burning. At 2am I ponder how other women make peri look like no big deal. I've tried HRT but it didn't help. I was a good sleeper till around age 40. Now at 45 it's been 2 solid years of insomnia. Hugs to you x
I think I was 12 before I realised that it didn’t take everyone at least 3 hours to fall asleep as night. I thought everyone lay, thinking, for hours 😅
Absolutely agree with de Botton... when I was living in the van full time and had time to day dream and let the brain wander, I slept great (mostly). I’d thought all my thoughts and had spent my energy exploring... and I was sleeping near nature.
Love the frankness of your post. Fellow Hashimoto's sufferer here and I have had lengthy struggles with insomnia at various times in my life, despite knowing and trying all the best sleep hygiene tips. I fully resonate with what you say about rawness, when we are unslept our emotional landscape is much closer to the surface, we are more real, more sensitive and more in tune with all of life. This is overwhelming, but there are gifts somewhere in it if we can lean in. Of course, if you have a job and commitments this is not easy to do. Deep body work helps me the most, connecting with my nervous system on a physiological level, dropping into sensation and simply being with that with some tenderness for myself. And it's always good to know you're not alone! Thanks for voicing this.
What a raw and honest share. I too am an insomniac. I also have a six month old baby, which has added a whole new layer of challenges as when I do manage to finally get to sleep, often that's right when bub will wake up! I have, as you have suggested, learned to embrace the time in the night. I have learned to love the peace and quiet- no messages popping up, no noise (I live in a really quiet place), and (hopefully!) bub is sleeping; and I will listen to a podcast or audiobook, or watch a show I've been wanting to watch. I often also do some yoga or stretches. I don't try to bring on sleepiness or force it, I do things that I want to do and wait until sleepiness arrives. When I feel so awful physically (I have chronic illness so normally feel absolutely rotten at the same time), I use some mindfulness practices to make peace with the sensations and my experience in life with them. I think I am reverting to the historical practice of splitting the nights into two periods of sleep!
My way of coping is to consider the time I spend awake as "staring off into space," time. I'm not supposed to sleep. I'm just supposed to day dream. This usually works even if it takes a while.
Menopause has been the death of my 8-9 hour sleep patterns. It honestly nearly killed me when disturbed sleep patterns and insomnia started. 10 years later and I can say I’m mostly used to it now. I try to have regular sleep/settling patterns, use meditation and mostly just lie there using my imagination to think about all sorts of creative things. I try not to get up and have not resorted to any medications. Sometimes it works but a good night sleep for me is now 5-6 hours. And yes I have a partner who sleeps like a log regardless of what stress he’s under! Sometimes I find his sleeping peacefully enough for me to get back to sleep. So yes, I fully endorse your friend, Yumi, just give into it!!
Insomnia has been one constant in my life since childhood, and in the midst of a recent, exacerbated bout with it, I nearly cried when I saw your email. It is, indeed, such an incredibly lonely and frustrating battle. Sleep seems like one thing that should just come easily, and yet even in that I fail. This is the message my tired brain tells myself after weeks and weeks of maybe getting three to four hours of (interrupted) shut eye each night. Other than also having been diagnosed with Hashimoto's several years ago (could the insomnia have contributed to this??) my body seems to manage decently; my brain is another story. Intense emotion is always bubbling just under the surface, and I'm already an empath, so that makes for a scary combination. Like others, I've tried EVERYTHING imaginable to help with this, and even when something helps, it is usually very limited and temporary. Currently, I'm relying on melatonin and magnesium just to get two to three hours of sleep, but I know their effectiveness will soon be no more, as it has been with everything else. Your theorem around either not learning or unlearning to self-settle as children really resonated with me, and it's something about which I hadn't previously considered. Having been raised in a very tumultuous home, never sure what the next day would bring and constantly feeling anxious, I now wonder if my child brain used the quiet of nighttime to process it all, and it just became my habit. Now just to figure out how to overcome and quiet that night monster. Sigh....
Ah insomnia, my old friend too. Trying to also make friends with it and not stress. I know on a Tuesday and Wednesday night, it’ll hit. On occasion, very very late to bed can help but not always.
I love this method of Alain’s to view as an opportunity to reflect on me and chat to myself.
Love your openness, Sarah and your France adventure!
Loved the new podcast with Tim, very important ground you covered and especially loved the modern colonised aspect re fossil fuels corporations. Such a great parallel to draw and one I'll try to remember to bring up with people.
Re insomnia. I feel you on this. I have been one since I was about 8 years old. Something happened which caused me to fear going to sleep and so I trained myself to stay awake to a certain point by telling myself stories. But then by the time I realised it was a problem to lie awake for hours every night, this habit was so ingrained in me that I couldn't stop it. I have wondered if sub consciously I sometimes like having that time to let my mind wander and mull and muse the way it can't do during the day.
I have been to a sleep psychologist, sleep doctor, had a sleep test, taken melatonin, anti-depressants, cut caffeine, used lavender, ear plugs, eye masks and sleep teas, meditation and even Sleep phones (which are soft headphones in a headband to play zen music), all to not much effect. I also can't sleep in the same bed as anyone else so now I sleep in separate bedroom to my partner some nights, which feels like a woefully shameful and failure of a thing to do. It was such a relief to read about another person who also finds this difficulty about sharing a bed with someone.
Fortunately my insomnia days are behind me , though sleep is still a facet of life which I am exploring. Sleeping next to people 😋 that is an interesting process in itself. Though it is wonderful to feel the trust and closeness build as the electricity discharges.
My way through was as Allain suggests, it was a glorious meditation in what was screaming through my system to be heard. Which required a complete relaxation into trusting my body to do exactly as it felt necessary. The places I ended up as a result taught me a lot. To place my face just below the surface of sleep, while laying with my body and mind. As they learnt to trust each other. And resolve the things that could and should be spoken, and the things which do not have words. I sympathise with you though Sarah on the Hashimoto’s front, I have seen it at work.
Heavy blankets !!!! Sooo good, that I started to use mine when I am able to sleep, as a way to bank up sleep. And to add another layer of pleasure to the process of drifting off.
Hi Sarah, I feel you. In fact it was something you wrote many years ago that was the first time I felt someone truly understood the torture of chronic insomnia. I’ve experienced it on and off for years. I agree with Alain’s advice although I’d make one small change - I don’t think our body is craving more chance to THINK at night, but to FEEL the experiences we’ve avoided during the day. Avoiding feelings creates loops of overthinking in my experience. So looking after myself better during the day (quiet time, meditation, nature - time to process, etc) is often helpful. But it’s not always possible and it doesn’t always help. I’ve done lots of mindfulness around it which is fairly helpful - it’s a chance to practice acceptance, etc etc. But that wears a bit thin at 4am 🙄. Hell for me is chronic nightly insomnia and I really appreciate everyone’s comments reminding us we aren’t alone because that’s the worst part of it.
Thanks for this post, Sarah, and I hope your sleep improves soon.
As a lifelong insomniac, I think Yumi’s advice is great. Apparently, before the invention of electricity, many humans slept in two cycles, so would often go to bed at sunset, then wake in the early hours of the morning to do some work by candlelight, and then go back to bed for a few hours – or have a daytime nap, and then a second sleep at night. I’ve tried this myself on nights when I’ve been lying in bed trying to will myself to sleep, growing ever more anxious as the clock ticks away… I find that even just reading a book can help, especially if I try to push away the anxiety of wondering how long it will take for me to feel like I can sleep.
The Alain de Botton quote you shared made me reflect on the fact that my insomnia hasn’t been nearly as bad since my family and I started our travels around Australia, even though we’re regularly sleeping in different beds and different sleeping configurations (separate rooms / all in one room / all in one bed / all in a tent etc). I think this may be because our travels have bought me a lot of extra time that I didn’t have before, so even though I’m probably worrying about the state of the world more than ever (because I have more time to read and absorb news and information), I’ve let go of a lot of everyday worries, have more time and headspace to process my thoughts and worries during waking hours, and am spending much more time surrounded by nature.
I just want to share a warning to anyone reading this about the dangers of sleeping tablets. My sister was killed as a result of taking Stilnox (zolpidem) and Imovane (zopiclone), both extremely dangerous drugs that have been linked to countless accidents and deaths and should not be on the market. These drugs are still widely prescribed and I continue to hear horror stories about them on an almost daily basis.
This is a piece I wrote for Mamamia a few years ago, sharing the story of my sister’s death, for anyone interested in learning why these drugs are so dangerous:
Thank you so much for this. I have suffered from insomnia practically my entire adult life. I take comfort in thinking there are other ways of thinking about it beyond feeling sorry for myself. I mostly have it under control at the moment, eliminating alcohol has done wonders for me, but I still suffer from time to time and plan on taking a new perspective when insomnia inevitably returns for a visit :)
Def relate to how hard it is lying beside someone who drops off to sleep in minutes and the torture of listening to their constant sleeping noises like snoring , snorting and deep breathing....for hours!
First thing, your friend Yumi is spot on with her advice, which I do often, and secondly, her message response to you made me crack up laughing first thing of a morning, which is the best start to any day, so cheers Yumi.
I've tried a lot of things but nothing has ever really hit the mark.
Push-ups till collapse, making scones, music, star gazing, podcasts.
I do totally relate to the theory of being secure or cuddling up with somebody helping.
Being content in not being content is what I tell myself. Busy brain asking more why's than how's at 3am is a hard thing to shut down.
All fellow insomniacs marvel in wonder at friends they know that just go to bed at 8:30 and sleep right through.
And it's funny that most insomniacs always seem to find partners to sleep with who can do that.
For years I'd joke I wanted to open a volunteer bakery where all insomniacs could wander in at 2am and knock up some Danish pastries or a baguette just to let our minds focus on that one task and with the smell of fresh bread, wander back home to bed.
Perimenopause sucks. My cortisol is sky high at the wrong time. I take so many pills, mostly natural, to sleep but they don't see me through. Some days it's 2am mostly 3am. I'm expected to drive to work and back, maintain focus at an office job and pretend my tired eyes are not burning. At 2am I ponder how other women make peri look like no big deal. I've tried HRT but it didn't help. I was a good sleeper till around age 40. Now at 45 it's been 2 solid years of insomnia. Hugs to you x
I think I was 12 before I realised that it didn’t take everyone at least 3 hours to fall asleep as night. I thought everyone lay, thinking, for hours 😅
Absolutely agree with de Botton... when I was living in the van full time and had time to day dream and let the brain wander, I slept great (mostly). I’d thought all my thoughts and had spent my energy exploring... and I was sleeping near nature.
Love the frankness of your post. Fellow Hashimoto's sufferer here and I have had lengthy struggles with insomnia at various times in my life, despite knowing and trying all the best sleep hygiene tips. I fully resonate with what you say about rawness, when we are unslept our emotional landscape is much closer to the surface, we are more real, more sensitive and more in tune with all of life. This is overwhelming, but there are gifts somewhere in it if we can lean in. Of course, if you have a job and commitments this is not easy to do. Deep body work helps me the most, connecting with my nervous system on a physiological level, dropping into sensation and simply being with that with some tenderness for myself. And it's always good to know you're not alone! Thanks for voicing this.
What a raw and honest share. I too am an insomniac. I also have a six month old baby, which has added a whole new layer of challenges as when I do manage to finally get to sleep, often that's right when bub will wake up! I have, as you have suggested, learned to embrace the time in the night. I have learned to love the peace and quiet- no messages popping up, no noise (I live in a really quiet place), and (hopefully!) bub is sleeping; and I will listen to a podcast or audiobook, or watch a show I've been wanting to watch. I often also do some yoga or stretches. I don't try to bring on sleepiness or force it, I do things that I want to do and wait until sleepiness arrives. When I feel so awful physically (I have chronic illness so normally feel absolutely rotten at the same time), I use some mindfulness practices to make peace with the sensations and my experience in life with them. I think I am reverting to the historical practice of splitting the nights into two periods of sleep!
My way of coping is to consider the time I spend awake as "staring off into space," time. I'm not supposed to sleep. I'm just supposed to day dream. This usually works even if it takes a while.
Menopause has been the death of my 8-9 hour sleep patterns. It honestly nearly killed me when disturbed sleep patterns and insomnia started. 10 years later and I can say I’m mostly used to it now. I try to have regular sleep/settling patterns, use meditation and mostly just lie there using my imagination to think about all sorts of creative things. I try not to get up and have not resorted to any medications. Sometimes it works but a good night sleep for me is now 5-6 hours. And yes I have a partner who sleeps like a log regardless of what stress he’s under! Sometimes I find his sleeping peacefully enough for me to get back to sleep. So yes, I fully endorse your friend, Yumi, just give into it!!
Insomnia has been one constant in my life since childhood, and in the midst of a recent, exacerbated bout with it, I nearly cried when I saw your email. It is, indeed, such an incredibly lonely and frustrating battle. Sleep seems like one thing that should just come easily, and yet even in that I fail. This is the message my tired brain tells myself after weeks and weeks of maybe getting three to four hours of (interrupted) shut eye each night. Other than also having been diagnosed with Hashimoto's several years ago (could the insomnia have contributed to this??) my body seems to manage decently; my brain is another story. Intense emotion is always bubbling just under the surface, and I'm already an empath, so that makes for a scary combination. Like others, I've tried EVERYTHING imaginable to help with this, and even when something helps, it is usually very limited and temporary. Currently, I'm relying on melatonin and magnesium just to get two to three hours of sleep, but I know their effectiveness will soon be no more, as it has been with everything else. Your theorem around either not learning or unlearning to self-settle as children really resonated with me, and it's something about which I hadn't previously considered. Having been raised in a very tumultuous home, never sure what the next day would bring and constantly feeling anxious, I now wonder if my child brain used the quiet of nighttime to process it all, and it just became my habit. Now just to figure out how to overcome and quiet that night monster. Sigh....
Ah insomnia, my old friend too. Trying to also make friends with it and not stress. I know on a Tuesday and Wednesday night, it’ll hit. On occasion, very very late to bed can help but not always.
I love this method of Alain’s to view as an opportunity to reflect on me and chat to myself.
Love your openness, Sarah and your France adventure!
Loved the new podcast with Tim, very important ground you covered and especially loved the modern colonised aspect re fossil fuels corporations. Such a great parallel to draw and one I'll try to remember to bring up with people.
Re insomnia. I feel you on this. I have been one since I was about 8 years old. Something happened which caused me to fear going to sleep and so I trained myself to stay awake to a certain point by telling myself stories. But then by the time I realised it was a problem to lie awake for hours every night, this habit was so ingrained in me that I couldn't stop it. I have wondered if sub consciously I sometimes like having that time to let my mind wander and mull and muse the way it can't do during the day.
I have been to a sleep psychologist, sleep doctor, had a sleep test, taken melatonin, anti-depressants, cut caffeine, used lavender, ear plugs, eye masks and sleep teas, meditation and even Sleep phones (which are soft headphones in a headband to play zen music), all to not much effect. I also can't sleep in the same bed as anyone else so now I sleep in separate bedroom to my partner some nights, which feels like a woefully shameful and failure of a thing to do. It was such a relief to read about another person who also finds this difficulty about sharing a bed with someone.
Fortunately my insomnia days are behind me , though sleep is still a facet of life which I am exploring. Sleeping next to people 😋 that is an interesting process in itself. Though it is wonderful to feel the trust and closeness build as the electricity discharges.
My way through was as Allain suggests, it was a glorious meditation in what was screaming through my system to be heard. Which required a complete relaxation into trusting my body to do exactly as it felt necessary. The places I ended up as a result taught me a lot. To place my face just below the surface of sleep, while laying with my body and mind. As they learnt to trust each other. And resolve the things that could and should be spoken, and the things which do not have words. I sympathise with you though Sarah on the Hashimoto’s front, I have seen it at work.
Heavy blankets !!!! Sooo good, that I started to use mine when I am able to sleep, as a way to bank up sleep. And to add another layer of pleasure to the process of drifting off.
Hi Sarah, I feel you. In fact it was something you wrote many years ago that was the first time I felt someone truly understood the torture of chronic insomnia. I’ve experienced it on and off for years. I agree with Alain’s advice although I’d make one small change - I don’t think our body is craving more chance to THINK at night, but to FEEL the experiences we’ve avoided during the day. Avoiding feelings creates loops of overthinking in my experience. So looking after myself better during the day (quiet time, meditation, nature - time to process, etc) is often helpful. But it’s not always possible and it doesn’t always help. I’ve done lots of mindfulness around it which is fairly helpful - it’s a chance to practice acceptance, etc etc. But that wears a bit thin at 4am 🙄. Hell for me is chronic nightly insomnia and I really appreciate everyone’s comments reminding us we aren’t alone because that’s the worst part of it.
Thanks for this post, Sarah, and I hope your sleep improves soon.
As a lifelong insomniac, I think Yumi’s advice is great. Apparently, before the invention of electricity, many humans slept in two cycles, so would often go to bed at sunset, then wake in the early hours of the morning to do some work by candlelight, and then go back to bed for a few hours – or have a daytime nap, and then a second sleep at night. I’ve tried this myself on nights when I’ve been lying in bed trying to will myself to sleep, growing ever more anxious as the clock ticks away… I find that even just reading a book can help, especially if I try to push away the anxiety of wondering how long it will take for me to feel like I can sleep.
The Alain de Botton quote you shared made me reflect on the fact that my insomnia hasn’t been nearly as bad since my family and I started our travels around Australia, even though we’re regularly sleeping in different beds and different sleeping configurations (separate rooms / all in one room / all in one bed / all in a tent etc). I think this may be because our travels have bought me a lot of extra time that I didn’t have before, so even though I’m probably worrying about the state of the world more than ever (because I have more time to read and absorb news and information), I’ve let go of a lot of everyday worries, have more time and headspace to process my thoughts and worries during waking hours, and am spending much more time surrounded by nature.
I just want to share a warning to anyone reading this about the dangers of sleeping tablets. My sister was killed as a result of taking Stilnox (zolpidem) and Imovane (zopiclone), both extremely dangerous drugs that have been linked to countless accidents and deaths and should not be on the market. These drugs are still widely prescribed and I continue to hear horror stories about them on an almost daily basis.
This is a piece I wrote for Mamamia a few years ago, sharing the story of my sister’s death, for anyone interested in learning why these drugs are so dangerous:
https://www.mamamia.com.au/stilnox-killed-my-sister/
Thank you so much for this. I have suffered from insomnia practically my entire adult life. I take comfort in thinking there are other ways of thinking about it beyond feeling sorry for myself. I mostly have it under control at the moment, eliminating alcohol has done wonders for me, but I still suffer from time to time and plan on taking a new perspective when insomnia inevitably returns for a visit :)
..maybe write a book about it and help us all out 🤣
Find out how to stop the nasty cortisol surge / 3am liver glucose dump. We beg you x
Def relate to how hard it is lying beside someone who drops off to sleep in minutes and the torture of listening to their constant sleeping noises like snoring , snorting and deep breathing....for hours!