Insomnia

It’s Halloween today and I’m a zombie. Not because I’ve got blood dripping from my mouth but because this past week I’ve had the worst insomnia I’ve ever known. Last night I slept briefly for a time between the hours of 4am and 6am. The rest of the time was spent twiddling my thumbs and getting increasingly anxious about my inability for fall asleep. The same things happened on Sunday and also a night last week, although not so bad.

I’ve tried drinking a hot drink, yoga, contracting then relaxing all my muscles, watching tv, emptying my head of thoughts, thinking nice thoughts, stretching and focussing on one thing in the room and staring at it. But still, sleep eludes me.

It is fair to say I am anxious, although I don’t start the night that way. I start off relaxed and ready for bed, then when sleep doesn’t come, I begin to get stressed about being tired the next day and then I get anxious and so on and so forth in a vicious cycle.

I do not want to take sleeping pills so today I went to a psychologist under the guise of post-traumatic-stress disorder, which I undoubtedly have, but I’m not convinced this is the cause of my sleeplessness. It was a waste of time and money. I’m not lying awake terrified the volcano is going to erupt. I simply don’t want to live on an active volcano and I see nothing wrong with that.

Tonight I’m going to try a different tactic. I found this article from The Listener about getting a good night’s sleep which describes a bed-time restriction strategy: deprive yourself of time in bed so that your body becomes thirsty for it.