Inexplicable wakefulness
Hi there! This letter is mainly for those who can’t seem to find any reason why they don’t sleep great.
I called such wakefulness “inexplicable“ because at times it may feel like there is no excuse for a poor night – we aren’t worried or stressed, we don’t have anything to wake us up, yet we still aren’t sleeping.
For example, I often hear this from parents of newborns: “I don’t understand. My baby has slept through the night but I couldn’t sleep well anyway!“
Or from someone with stressful work: “I’ve been hoping I will get more sleep when I no longer have the pressure of the project. But here I am, no project, no pressure to sleep, nothing to worry about, but my sleep is just terrible.“
The common reason why wakefulness persists without any apparent sleep disruptor is because there is an expectation that we must sleep when circumstances are ideal. And that is a mind trap.
The curse of perfect sleep conditions
We can do our best to make the room comfy, remove all distractions, have no external stress, yet, we can still be too wired to sleep peacefully. This is what I call the curse of perfect sleep conditions. And of course I don’t mean it in a scary way, because there is no real curse. It is just our expectations that play tricks on our sleep.
We feel like we have no right to experience a night of less sleep when there is no reason for it.
👉 “I have no anxiety whatsoever, but I still can’t sleep! Why is that??“
👉 “My husband went to another room so I won’t be disturbed by his snoring, but I had one of the worse nights in a long time!“
Hyperarousal can be subtle and sneaky and it may hide in the place we would never have thought to look for: our expectations.
Simple notion “I’m not supposed to have THAT type of night IF all the right conditions are met“ is what can make us a bit more curious, a bit more vigilant, impatient… which is a form of hyperarousal too!
The antidote
Well, there is no point in fighting with that subtle hyperarousal because it may get stickier. But what we can do is to see our “mysterious” situation with clear eyes:
“Aha, I’ve been pushing myself to have a great night, and that’s all that is!“
When I stumbled upon this type of resistance in myself, what helped me the most was giving myself the right to not have any reason for a sleepless night. To my worried mind that kept asking me “why didn’t you sleep well?“ I would respond: “Just because. I don’t need to have an excuse to have that experience. I just CAN have that experience. Period.“ Being unapologetic surprisingly payed off. My mind would often go quiet about that because I didn’t support its quest to go down another rabbit hole.
I also realize that there might be some people who would say: “but I must investigate the reason, what if there is something wrong with my health?” and if that’s your concern, by all means - go and check it. I also had a phase of fearing for my health and I did go to my GP when my insomnia has started, only to find out that there was nothing physically wrong with me – that brought me some peace of mind. So I’m not saying that we should ignore our health, I’m saying that if there is actually no apparent reason, we can look into our expectations – and that could be the missing piece of a puzzle.
Hope this letter has brought to you some clarity ❤️
Take care!
Ali