Dread Sigh At Night

One snag about writing this blog is that the time when I think an article would be relevant, and the time when I get round to writing it, may not coincide much.  For example, a few weeks ago when we were having a heatwave and I was barely sleeping, I thought it would be a good idea to write an article on insomnia.  After all, there must be lots of people having the same problem, either because of the weather, or because they were worrying about their or their children’s exam results.

I didn’t write it, for two reasons.  One was that I was too exhausted.  The other was that I was aware that any advice I might give about what to do if you can’t sleep, wasn’t actually working for me right now. 

Still, with hindsight, I’d like to say a little about the notes I have made on this condition over the years.  If any of them are helpful for you next time you can’t sleep, that’s brilliant.  Alternatively, if you’ve found something that works better, I’d be grateful if you could tell me.

Firstly, taking medication is a last resort – but last resorts have their place.  I have antipsychotics which I am advised to take as and when I really need them, when my mind is racing round the same circuit like a hamster in a wheel, and refusing to let me either think rationally or stop thinking and go to sleep.  However, they can be addictive, and using them frequently lessens their effect, so it makes sense to avoid taking them too often.

Since one side-effect – or, from my point of view, a desirable main effect – is to cause drowsiness, a good time to take these is when I can’t sleep.  When I was working, I did this fairly often in order to be well rested for work the next day.  However, this required enough self-awareness to know by 10pm that I was becoming too agitated to sleep.  If I left it until the small hours of the morning, taking a pill then would probably leave me too dopy to be much use at work the next day.

Now that I’m not working, I could theoretically take tablets at any time.  However, it doesn’t matter too much now if I fail to sleep all night and catch up on my sleep the following afternoon, so I prefer to avoid them if possible.

If I’m not too wound up, it’s worth finding something that either relaxes me enough to sleep, or relaxes me enough that I don’t mind lying in bed awake.  Listening to gentle music – something like a Classic FM compilation CD of smooth classics – on my personal stereo, with the sound turned down to a soft volume that wouldn’t even be audible during the day – can help, and I have sometimes fallen asleep with the headphones still twittering away.  However, this does seem rather disrespectful to the music.

Alternatively, I might just tell myself stories, or imagine a peaceful scene.  As a teenager, I found that telling myself, ‘You are loved,’ reassured me enough to let me fall peacefully asleep.  However, turning the sentence around and saying, ‘God loves you,’ just made me feel terrified.  In retrospect, this was because my idea of God was badly distorted, far from the protector whom the writers of the Psalms praised.  At the time, though, I assumed that it was because I was so wickedly self-centred that I couldn’t bear not to be the subject of every sentence.

So, instead of focusing on my idea of a spiteful, manipulative ‘God’, I invented a peaceful island called ‘the Rock’, partly based on a visit to the Breton island of Mont-Saint-Michel.  This is a refuge to which characters from any novel, play, or film, can come to rest from whatever troubles their author was putting them through.  If they are ill in body or mind, various healer characters who live there, particularly Cheiron the centaur, nurse them back to health.  Later, they might move on to new stories, or decide to stay.

If I’m too upset to focus on music or fantasies, I might get up, make myself a hot drink, and switch the computer on.  People say staring at screens too close to bedtime makes insomnia worse.  I say, if I’m already not sleeping, any distraction is worth it.  I used to play Tetris, until I rashly deleted all games from my computer so that they couldn’t distract me from writing.  I’m beginning to think I should reinstall it.  Something about the simplicity of the game, combined with the need for rapid hand-eye co-ordination, doesn’t leave time for worrying.

Alternatively, I might face my fears, by researching on the internet whatever I’m worried about.  Given that most of my fears are irrational, 90% of websites on the subject will reassure me that I have nothing to worry about.  This may not be encouraging, if it just makes me shout, ‘Liar!  There is no hope!  Kill yourself!’  However, the fact that the 10% of sites that do support my position are so obviously insane that I can see the chasms in their logic helps me realise that the writers of all the other sites might be right after all.

Then, when I’ve calmed down slightly, I write.  Maybe a diary, written with tears of gratitude at the new position of hope that I’ve reached.  Alternatively, I might write stories, often fanfiction.  This is an extension of my fantasies, and it gives the characters I identify with in books (usually, the ones I think might face problems similar to mine) a chance to resolve them.  It’s also less demanding, on a sleepless night, than writing proper books of my own.  It’s a way to celebrate the books I love, and to make friends with other fans elsewhere in the world.  Then, when I’ve posted a chapter of my saga, I’m ready to go to bed for the day.