Insomnia

First, there’s the stressor. Whatever it is, be it work, money, relationships, school, or being dumped, it occupies your mind. You can’t let it go, no matter how much you want to. You are obsessed with it and it is a part of you now. You go through every aspect of it, backwards and forwards, left and right, up and down, until you’ve torn the whole thing apart and yourself as well. You know you need to stop, but you can’t and that scares you. Worse, your subconscious works against you, often bringing you dreams of your obsession because your conscious mind has been working on the obsession too much.

The best thing I have found so far is substitution, but that only goes so far. You try to imagine another world, another place, and you substitute this for your obsession. I have mixed results falling back into sleep from here, because of the following:

Then, there’s crazy legs. For some reason, all my joints tighten up, when I’m obsessing, like I’m naturally tense. I stretch my muscles only to have them tighten again as my mind is occupied by my obsession. I stretch, take deep breaths and try to ease back into bed. I’ve found thrashing just makes me more nervous and awake. Once I get into a comfortable position, fully stretched, I’m fine for a bit and may even drift off to a light dream or into my substitute, but then comes the next issue.

Any random noise or movement in the bed awakens me like lightning. My cats are notoriously good sleepers, often not moving a muscle all night (which can often create backaches for me), but when I’m obsessing about something, they seem to twitch and eat and drink and nuzzle me for comfort all night. Just those slight movements are enough to jolt my mind back toward the obsession as if my obsession was some sort of misplaced ground state. I know my boys do it to comfort me, but often it has the opposite effect. Noises are worse. The cats figure the house is awake, so they eat and drink. The little licking sounds from the water dish and the crunch of munching kibble sends me right over the edge and back to my obsession. I’ve moved the bowls because I know this is going to be a problem for a while. The rest of the house is another matter...

Right now, I live with my parents and they don’t help the situation. In fact, I think they are worse than the Chanting Monk I had living next to me in Austin. He only chanted 5 times a day and was usually pretty rhythmic sounding a bit like an out-of-whack ceiling fan through the walls. My insomnia tends to hit me about 4AM, when I dream. So, by 5 or 6 AM, I’ve usually gotten up and peed a couple of times, stretched out and might even be ready to sleep a couple of hours before getting up and meeting the day. However, they get up at 5 or 6AM, even on the weekend. So, about the time that I’m mentally ready to try to finish out a good 8 hours of sleep, I get the noises of them waking up: the startup of the coffee maker, the plink of glass as they empty the dishwasher, the squeal of their pantry doors and, of course, the inevitable conversation or cat scolding. Every little noise they make is like someone poured cold water on me. I wake from whatever half-dream, near-sleep I was having and go back to my obsessing.

I know I’ve slept through these little noises many times before. I know I’ve slept with cats moving all night long. I know I’ve slept on the airplane with children crying, flight attendants moving and everyone around me eating (yes, I’ve slept through both meals on a flight to Europe, once). I know none of these things are causing me to lose sleep, but that doesn’t help me sleep any better and it doesn’t prevent me from getting grumpy with everyone and everything “keeping me awake”. I know what I need to do is deal with the root cause of my sleeplessness: me and my obsession. I know I need to talk to friends, family and probably a counselor because when I’m not anxious about something I sleep 10, 12, 14 and, yes, even 18 hours at a time, like a bear hibernating.

I feel for Sara because I know she struggles to get sleep and I know she struggles with all sorts of anxieties, that I’m sure are at the root of her insomnia. I’ve been awakened by her thrashing around looking for a comfortable position. I’ve seen her lash out and been lashed out at when things move or make noise and it jostles her awake. I know that some of her anxieties about me and “us” were about her sleep with me and my cats. And, it pains me to say that I probably was not as supportive as I should have been with her insomnia. I regret that, because I never meant to push her away and I really am willing to take the cats and go sleep elsewhere when her insomnia is at it’s worst. I understand her pain and I want the best for her. I am happy that she’s looking into ways to deal with her anxieties and I think that will help her sleep better.

Now, if I can just let my anxieties about her go, I might get some sleep...

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Copyright: 2009-11-29 08:30:43