Has anyone else been an insomniac your entire life?
I can't remember a single instance in my life where I didn't have insomnia. Even as a kid, I had insomnia. I think it got worse with age, but it has definitely always been there.
I think I slept okay as a baby, but I have no memory of that. Has anyone else always had insomnia for pretty much as long as you can remember? Some of my very first memories ever are of laying in my bed all night staring at the wall. Ever since I was very young I can go days without sleeping or only sleeping 2-3 hours a night. To the point where I start having hallucinations from sleep deprivation. I’ve been through all the basics: developing a sleep routine, meditation, stretching, daily exercise, not eating after 6:00pm or alternatively having a small protein snack before bed, not drinking alcohol, reading, CBT, acupuncture to activate my parasympathetic nervous system, reiki, using my bedroom for sleep only, waking up at the same time each morning, exposing myself to sunlight before 7:00am, journaling before bed, not touching my phone or watching TV after 8:00pm, taking a warm bath in the evenings, guided meditation, hypnotherapy, white noise or soft noise like rainfall, turning the lights off at 9:00pm and just using candlelight, sleepy time tea, sleep supplements like Passion flower, etc. I also tried not “trying” to sleep and just letting my body do what it does. A big part of the problem is I never feel “sleepy.” I feel tired constantly from the insomnia but I never feel sleepy. I’m currently on a ridiculous amount of medication to give me about 5-6 hours a night which is better than nothing. Doctors think that because this has been such a chronic issue since childhood that my brain/body are now hardwired to just live with the insomnia but they don’t know how to reverse it. I see a lot of posts where people have had insomnia for the last few years or the last few months. Has anyone had this issue since early childhood? If so, has anything worked? I made an error last night and forgot to take my pills before climbing into bed. Yet I was certain that I had gulped them down. When I got up an hour later, unable to sleep, I found myself having mild panic as I considered: were the pills no longer effective? Was my insomnia triumphing over the pharmaceutical antidote to my chronic sleeplessness?
The discovery that I had simply sidestepped that essential step for decent sleep - putting the pills in my mouth and downing them - was reassuring. But sleep is an elusive country for me at the moment - and I find that part of me which so wants to surrender to the temporary oblivion of sleep and the other part of my psyche that cannot turn off.
Novelists are notorious insomniacs. The narrative mind rarely turns off. And there are always more pages to be written in the middle of the night when sleep is simply not part of the equation. I am used to functioning on fractured 'nuit blanches'. It is not how I prefer to live - but it is now part of my ongoing weather system. The great English short story writer and essayist VS Pritchett once noted that, in the United States, there was no concept of tragedy... 'Something just went wrong'.
There is more than a degree of truth in this comment. In the US we tend to think of life as a grand project, and one where we can bend the contours of fate to our own purposes. The truth is: life has the tendency to deal all of us deeply unexpected cards. How we grapple with life's inequities, its difficulties (and, at time, its tragedies), speak volumes about how we also confront difficulty. I have no time for people who judge others because they themselves would have reacted differently to a crisis. I have a friend who is very sick right now - and is about to undergo major surgery and is showing immense calm and control. I know someone who fell apart when a romance lasting less than a month bottomed out. Is this individual weaker than my friend facing the inequities of illness? Not at all - and I get very cross at those who believe that there is a proper way of reacting to crises. Empathy is essential - because underscoring it is the understanding: never tell another person how to react to bad news.
I think I slept okay as a baby, but I have no memory of that. Has anyone else always had insomnia for pretty much as long as you can remember? Some of my very first memories ever are of laying in my bed all night staring at the wall. Ever since I was very young I can go days without sleeping or only sleeping 2-3 hours a night. To the point where I start having hallucinations from sleep deprivation. I’ve been through all the basics: developing a sleep routine, meditation, stretching, daily exercise, not eating after 6:00pm or alternatively having a small protein snack before bed, not drinking alcohol, reading, CBT, acupuncture to activate my parasympathetic nervous system, reiki, using my bedroom for sleep only, waking up at the same time each morning, exposing myself to sunlight before 7:00am, journaling before bed, not touching my phone or watching TV after 8:00pm, taking a warm bath in the evenings, guided meditation, hypnotherapy, white noise or soft noise like rainfall, turning the lights off at 9:00pm and just using candlelight, sleepy time tea, sleep supplements like Passion flower, etc. I also tried not “trying” to sleep and just letting my body do what it does. A big part of the problem is I never feel “sleepy.” I feel tired constantly from the insomnia but I never feel sleepy. I’m currently on a ridiculous amount of medication to give me about 5-6 hours a night which is better than nothing. Doctors think that because this has been such a chronic issue since childhood that my brain/body are now hardwired to just live with the insomnia but they don’t know how to reverse it. I see a lot of posts where people have had insomnia for the last few years or the last few months. Has anyone had this issue since early childhood? If so, has anything worked? I made an error last night and forgot to take my pills before climbing into bed. Yet I was certain that I had gulped them down. When I got up an hour later, unable to sleep, I found myself having mild panic as I considered: were the pills no longer effective? Was my insomnia triumphing over the pharmaceutical antidote to my chronic sleeplessness?
The discovery that I had simply sidestepped that essential step for decent sleep - putting the pills in my mouth and downing them - was reassuring. But sleep is an elusive country for me at the moment - and I find that part of me which so wants to surrender to the temporary oblivion of sleep and the other part of my psyche that cannot turn off.
Novelists are notorious insomniacs. The narrative mind rarely turns off. And there are always more pages to be written in the middle of the night when sleep is simply not part of the equation. I am used to functioning on fractured 'nuit blanches'. It is not how I prefer to live - but it is now part of my ongoing weather system. The great English short story writer and essayist VS Pritchett once noted that, in the United States, there was no concept of tragedy... 'Something just went wrong'.
There is more than a degree of truth in this comment. In the US we tend to think of life as a grand project, and one where we can bend the contours of fate to our own purposes. The truth is: life has the tendency to deal all of us deeply unexpected cards. How we grapple with life's inequities, its difficulties (and, at time, its tragedies), speak volumes about how we also confront difficulty. I have no time for people who judge others because they themselves would have reacted differently to a crisis. I have a friend who is very sick right now - and is about to undergo major surgery and is showing immense calm and control. I know someone who fell apart when a romance lasting less than a month bottomed out. Is this individual weaker than my friend facing the inequities of illness? Not at all - and I get very cross at those who believe that there is a proper way of reacting to crises. Empathy is essential - because underscoring it is the understanding: never tell another person how to react to bad news.
