Romanticizing our pre-insomnia sleep
Today’s letter is about that melancholic state and the longing for our good old sleep during insomnia. It’s understandable to feel sad about not having the same ease and effortlessness in our nights as we used to. But even in this memory, our brain manages to play its tricks on us. I call it “romanticizing sleep.”
It's not uncommon to hear people say:
“I used to be such a great sleeper. How could this happen to me?”
“I want my old happy self back.”
I understand this feeling completely. I felt the same way when suddenly one of the most basic “abilities” seemed to vanish in me.
However, holding onto the ideal picture of our past sleep can prevent us from moving forward. Here’s how it works:
We think that before insomnia, our sleep was perfect and life was easy. This thinking makes us want to have perfect sleep and a worry-free, easy life (which is understandable). This ideal picture creates pressure on our current nights, which can lead to rough nights. We then feel even further from our ideal, and the pressure grows even more, resulting in more sleepless nights.
This is why I find it valuable to look realistically at our pre-insomnia sleep and remove the “decorative” parts that our brain has added since insomnia started.
Were the “good old days” really that good?
Often, we see our past as the “good old days” and tend to omit the hardships we experienced back then. I believe that our life contains both hardships and beauty simultaneously, at any given moment.
I remember my childhood with such nostalgia and warmth, but if I zoom in and recall the details, I remember how real my problems felt at the time – getting a bad grade, having conflicts, dreading exams. Those problems now seem silly and innocent, and it’s easy to label them as "not that bad." But if I were to relive those experiences, knowing only what I knew back then, I would feel bad again about these problems! There was nothing to compare my problems to yet.
A similar thing happens when we look back at our pre-insomnia days. Suddenly, the problems we had back then seem less significant and our nights seem perfect. But here's the thing: most likely, we also had worries and discomforts back then – we just didn’t have much to compare them to at that time.
Of course, I’m not speaking for everyone, as we all have different past experiences, and I’m just sharing mine. But I do think our brain often over-idealizes our sleep before insomnia.
If we look closely, we can recall that our nights weren't perfect all the time. I bet we all had nights when it took ages to fall asleep, or nights when we woke up in the middle of the night and tossed and turned for hours. There were probably nights when we woke up early and couldn't go back to sleep, or nights of very disturbed, shallow, and unrefreshing sleep.
The “Sleep = Happiness” Illusion
It’s also common to think that the reason why our life before insomnia looked so amazing is solely because of sleep. This leads us to the illusion that “sleep means happiness.”
No doubt, having a rough night and feeling sleepy and tired is unpleasant, and I’m not minimizing that at all. But we didn’t think our life was doomed because of a rough night.
We need to look into that illusion to see that more sleep doesn’t guarantee a happy life.
Consider people who are severely depressed and sleep 10-15 hours a day. Does sleep cure their depression? Hardly. Or think about people who passionately work on a project. They may sleep very little but feel amazing about their work, even if they’re tired. Again, I’m not glorifying sleeplessness or saying that not sleeping has no impact on how we feel, but our thoughts and responses to not sleeping might be adding much more to our suffering!
This isn’t to say that there is no difference between our pre-insomnia sleep and how we sleep now – of course there is a noticeable difference, otherwise we wouldn’t be here trying to resolve this situation.
But, in my opinion, it’s helpful to de-romanticize sleep because it often sets an unrealistic goal that keeps us battling. We’re not working towards perfect nights for the rest of our lives; we’re working towards breaking the vicious fear cycles that launch us into a spiral after every imperfect night.
Human sleep is anything but perfect.
I think what we are longing for isn’t the specific amount of hours of sleep. We long for peace of mind and needing to do absolutely nothing about our nights. And that inner state can be reached independently from the specific sleep outcome. ❤️
See you next time!
Ali
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