The last Sleep Talks letter
In case anyone got worried about the title of this letter, I am not “retiring“ and this isn’t the last time you hear from me 🙂 (unless you choose to unsubscribe of course! And I hope that the reason for that would be that you are doing much better on your journey!)
So…
I’m just changing the name.
Some of you who follow me on social media have probably noticed the new name of my accounts – Fearless Sleep. For quite some time I’ve been a bit pondering whether Sleep Talks was the right name.
“Sleep Talks” came up too quickly and lazily when I was just starting my Youtube channel. “What should I call that? Sleep insights? Sleep Talks? Sleep Talks! I talk about sleep, so… Sleep Talks will do.”
Although I still love this name – it is short and sweet – it seemed a bit too broad.
“Is she talking about people talking in their sleep? Does she have some sleep hacks and optimization tools? Does she read bedtime stories?”
But as you know, what I am talking about is very specific, very intimate and vulnerable. Something that only a few have experienced in their lifetime – the fear of not sleeping and the self-perpetuating cycle of insomnia.
I found it so tiring to talk about sleep with anyone who never experienced something like this and who thinks sleep is a solution to all life’s problems and must be controlled through special routines and different hacks. And I needed to filter out people who were clearly not my audience. So hence, Fearless Sleep. To an average person this name most probably would make no sense, and that’s the goal. But for a few this will hit the right chord, and these are my people.
So the next time you hear from me, I will be under a new name, perhaps “Fearless sleep letters“ or something. Just so that you wouldn’t get too surprised to see it in your inbox, “Who the hell is that??“
Anyway, here is the thought I wanted to share with you today:
The form of the night isn’t an indicator of how far we are in this process.
People sometimes think that when they begin their recovery journey, they are not supposed to experience nights that are as bad or even worse than what they had in the beginning. Particularly it happens when a person started the journey, saw some improvement but then hit some rough patch where sleep got very rocky.
I had only one all nighter in the very beginning of my insomnia! And now, three months into recovery, I had more all-nighters than in the beginning… what is happening? Why did I regress so much?? What recovery is this if I am not feeling that I am recovering??
For others, it could be insomnia changing its shape – from onset turning into maintenance insomnia and vice versa. The form doesn’t matter.
It is understandable that we feel super frustrated and scared after going through a worsening phase. We might think that recovery journey must not include “regress“ and definitely shouldn’t make things harder than before.
But here is the thing: recovery process highlights the existing hidden fears, and when they surface, we experience turbulences. This is expected!
Recovery is not a walk in a sunlit valley,
but a hike somewhere deep in the jungle,
at night,
with a flashlight,
pointing at things that are yet to be looked at.
(And at the end, when all the dark corners are seen, we realize that it was not a jungle, but a city park.)
I like saying “it gets worse before it gets better“. This encapsulates my journey so well!
So how the night actually looks, objectively, isn’t an indicator of where we are on our journey.
Here’s my example:
I had all-nighters when I just started struggling with sleep. Then I had them here and there during my learning process. Then I had a blast for a few months with perfect sleep and everything. And then I got them again. And until the last part of my journey I could have an all-nighter. But as my nights looked all sorts of things, my perceptions were changing, like tectonic plates shifting slowly. These perceptional movements were, for the most part, very, very subtle – and that was the indicator of my recovery, not how it looked on the surface!
So my perception of an all-nighter was changing as I was going through them. I needed those all-nighters to learn that I don’t have to be afraid of one. And if they wouldn’t happen so fricking often, my journey would probably lasted even longer.
This is why never judge the progress by how the nights look on the surface. All the measurable criteria of our sleep like duration, solidity, depth, quality – are only the by-products and beyond our control. And they can fluctuate throughout the journey, one way or another. But what’s under is our deep beliefs, fears and perceptions that run the show – and these are what’s worth investigating.
Leave no stone unturned, look into every corner where the mind may harbour the seed of fear. Don’t be afraid of getting triggered. Triggers are good, they highlight the stuff that otherwise would be hidden and quietly would rule our life.
Lots of courage and strength to you on this path ❤️
Alina