When can we consider ourselves "recovered"?
I feel like before we embark upon the journey of setting ourselves free from insomnia’s sticky hands, we need to be in line where we are all going. As I talk to people at first, I see how our definitions of recovery differ a lot.
In fact, I don’t like the word recovery, but for the lack of a better word, I keep using it (btw, if you know of the better one, let me know in the comments!). How can we call something a recovery if there wasn’t even a disease in a traditional sense? Insomnia is all about fear and “recovering“ from fear sounds a bit strange, don’t you find it? 🤔
Anyway…
I used to think that recovery is about:
becoming a good sleeper
learning how to sleep
improving sleep, so that it is better and more secured than before insomnia
knowing how to sleep anywhere anytime
building sleep confidence
In reality, however, sleep recovery is none of that and I will try to explain why.
We cannot become a “good“ sleeper simply because there isn’t such a thing. Even those who are given that identity have no idea how they do it. In a way, their blissful ignorance of the uncontrollable nature of sleep allows them to not block sleep by worries and efforts. In other words they don’t know that they aren’t in control.
We can’t learn how to sleep because we have always known how to do it – unconsciously of course. It is not a “lost“ ability. It just happens that hyperarousal temporarily overrides our sleep drive and we become awake. It’s not forever anyway. The body knows how to do that and we don’t have an access to that knowledge and possibly will never have. It still doesn’t mean that we can’t sleep without that knowledge!
Improving & optimizing sleep is also one of the things that makes my blood boil. Sleep is sleep, it works without our conscious intervention. I have nothing against a healthy desire to take care of sleep, but when people without insomnia or major sleep problems start to “optimize” and “hack” their sleep and they invent extra efforts on top… oh man…. how many insomniacs appeared from that rabbit hole! One woman wrote me that her diet coach advised her to improve sleep to help digestion and encouraged her to get black out curtains.. you guess what happened next :) And of course the diet coach didn’t know what to do with that freshly acquired fear around sleep. 🤦♀️
Making sure we sleep anywhere anytime is unrealistic goal even for the “good“ sleepers (you know the meaning of the quotes) – sometimes sleep disruption happens and no one is secured from that.
Sleep confidence is another myth like “you need 8 hours“. No, you don’t have to be confident in sleep. In fact, if one acquires such confidence, it is usually short-term and is a by-product of having a good stretch of nights. Any innocent (and normal!) sleep disruption will shaken that sleep confidence in no time. If you want to have confidence, bet not on sleep confidence but on confidence that you are going to be okay no matter what the outcome is. That will help you in all sorts of situations.
Okay, ranting is over 🙂 but what is then a recovery, if none of the above?
In my view, recovery is about getting your old sleep back – not better, not worse, exactly where you left it. Think about your past – that is the blueprint of the recovery. Those who always enjoyed naps resume napping - not as a way to show that you can nap, but because you feel like doing it! Those who never napped, will probably not see much sense in it (unless they want to). And so on and so on. With that comes the acceptance of night’s imperfections. Was your sleep occasionally disrupted before insomnia, for whatever reason? Then why that disturbance has no right to be after you recover?
As you see, the recovery also removes the boundaries that we created during insomnia and sets us free. Now, your day-to-day decisions don’t have sleep as a part of the equation. Sleep happens on its own rules and we just let the body do that job while focusing on more meaningful things – living your life!
Would love to hear your thoughts on that!
(Read today’s instagram post on a similar topic)
See you next week :)
Ali