Insomnia -- the brain's enemy

If you have never had insomnia, count your blessings. By adulthood, most of us have experienced insomnia at least once, and it was torture. I'm a pretty good sleeper, but one night, for reasons I have never discovered, I was continuously awake with my brain going full-speed. I was composing a letter to my grandmother, telling her all kinds of things about me, thanking her for being such a cool person, on and on. I kept telling myself to get up and write it down, but the words were just pouring out so fast I could hardly move. Now and then through the night I would think "oh, no, I'm not getting any sleep at all," but my brain would go right back to the waterfall of words. This has never happened to me again. Thank goodness! I have the much more common, occasional nights where I'm thinking about a few too many things. But I always fall asleep eventually.

People who have real insomnia, what would be called chronic, are few and far between. But if you do have insomnia, your life is different from the average. Chronic insomnia might be from medications, a medical condition, or it might be learned. With learned insomnia, a person has come to associate the bedroom with wakefulness. Having your office in the bedroom could contribute to learned insomnia. As the symptoms continue, a vicious cycle is set in place. Anxiety regarding the insomnia makes it worse! Fears about sleeplessness keep the machine going.

The brain has to have its sleep. Depression, lassitude, memory lapses, and lack of coordination are just a few of the ways the brain responds to a lack of sleep. The first thing to consider if you have insomnia is how to change the behaviors surrounding it. Carefully evaluate your habits as you approach your sleep time. People often find that spending less time in bed ends up promoting more sleep. This can be the beginning of changing the cycle. Rather than tossing and turning for hours on end, restrict time in bed to five to seven hours. Once you have begun to sleep, you can start adding time.

Also, don't use the bed for anything but sleeping (and sex, which is another excellent sleep aid!) Some people bring their work to bed and spread it out all over the bedspread, with the TV going in the background, doing stressful, demanding tasks in the very place they need to sleep. Not a good idea.

Other possibilities include learning biofeedback, working with a sleep specialist, exploring light therapy, and trying chamomile tea which is mild and has been used for generations as a sleep aid. Melatonin is still somewhat controversial in this country, but has been used in Europe for decades with success.

Approach sleeplessness like you would any health challenge. Keep exploring your options, and leave the stressful thoughts out of it. They only compound the problem. If you can detach from your own concerns about the outcome, you have a much better chance of successfully changing the mental habits which may leading to your insomnia.