Insomnia: a curse or a blessing in disguise?

Hi there 🙂

Last week I realized that there are already a bit over 100 of you who read Sleep Talks Letters – this is so wonderful! A hundred unique and deep-thinking individuals who in spite of the turmoils of insomnia are still willing to stay on the path of understanding themselves and their fears – I’m proud of you!

What I want to write today about might make some of you want to throw stones at me and some of you – to agree, but I will take a shot.

So…

Insomnia is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

Here, I said it. But let me elaborate.

At first, I hated it. For the whole journey (that lasted over a year) I thought it was a nightmare that should have never happened. So many troubles I have gone through, just because I started fearing sleeplessness. I thought: “how is it possible that one day you just forget how to sleep?? I wouldn’t wish it to my worst enemy!”

But what I didn’t see at that time is that insomnia uncovered hidden unresolved issues I had with myself way before insomnia started. All the unhelpful coping strategies and beliefs that I had my entire life revealed their uselessness with insomnia.

I’ve been always dealing with anxiety. Every day my mind would just come up with a new topic to be worried about. And I would deal with that just like I tried with insomnia: I would try to fight it, avoid it, cover it up, pretend its not there, and even though it didn’t help to make anxiety go away once and for all, these strategies kept giving me some false sense of control and peace.

But as I met with insomnia, I realized that all these coping mechanisms were utterly useless. In fact, my biggest find was that they were the reason why my suffering was persisting.

While you can escape for a while the object of your worry (and my coping mechanisms were great at that), get some quick fix (that was never a final solution) – you can’t do that with insomnia. Let’s say, I’m worrying about the relationship with my parents, I can find ways to not confront it – the problems is still there, but I can get some distance from it. I can’t do the same with the fear about not sleeping. Night happens every night and you are kind of forced to meet with your fear.

Insomnia is like the entrance to self-exploration. During the recovery you begin to understand a lot about yourself. I see it when I talk to people. Eventually, with some of them, we stumble upon a broader issue than just sleep.

– I am afraid about how I will feel during the day if I don’t sleep.

– But what exactly do you fear?

– I’m afraid I will not be productive.

– But if you happen to be unproductive that day, what would it mean to you?

– It would mean that my boss can fire me, my colleagues will think less of me.

– Can you really control how the boss or colleagues see you and what they do? Do you think once you get control over sleep you also get control over your boss?

– No, I don’t think so.

Or

– I’m afraid that if I don’t sleep, I will not enjoy my day, people will see how grumpy I am.

– What’s wrong will feeling grumpy?

– But I was always perceived as a cheerful person! I am not supposed to be pessimistic.

– So that means that less positive emotions don’t have place in your life? What would happen if you give yourself permission to feel grumpy?

– It’s scary, but I think I would feel more relieved that I don’t have to pretend…

Now we are facing a different dimension – the issue of self-perception that keeps people away from accepting the uncontrollable nature of sleep and letting go of sleep efforts. People begin to feel how the old image of themselves has been limiting them – way before insomnia!

• The belief that you always have to be productive no matter what

• That you have no right to have the feelings like sadness, frustration, anger, etc.

• That you have to always be on top of things

Just like in the beginning of insomnia journey we feel like we can control sleep, we also believe that we control other things: like what others think of us, how lucky we get, how successful we are at work/in relationship. But the truth is, we have very little control in life. Most of the things are beyond that, but that doesn’t mean they are inaccessible. In fact in many situations when we let go of the attachment to the result and just do our thing beautiful things happen! This is what happens with sleep and this is what can happen in other areas of life!

That’s what I’m exploring now. Insomnia is behind, but I see how the teaching I derived from it keeps resolving other problems I had. I’m not nearly done with my other anxieties but the change is very noticeable. So if someone would offer me to erase my memory about the whole insomnia story, I would go like: “Are you nuts?? I will never give it up!”

Have you felt the transformative power of insomnia? Share in the comments!