WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU CAN’T SLEEP
Here it is, 3:30 in the morning. I have been awake for more than an hour. Where I had been sleeping was dark and cool. My mind wasn’t on overwhelm, nor was it ruminating. Meditation and mindful breathing, my usual middle of the night activity, helped relax me, but still no sleep. (Photo by Harles-Deluvio on Unsplash)
I prayed for world peace and a friend in the hospital. And then I got up, dragged my pillow to the sofa in my study just in case sleep should want to revisit my wide-awake self, and I began writing this article.
There are many reasons sleep can vanish and leave us feeling abandoned in the night. Doctors have made a living studying sleep, and practicing medicine solely focused on the inability to snooze. The causes can range from apnea, alcohol, depression or anxiety, blood sugar fluctuations, and many common lifestyle choices.
After addressing the medical issues, we are counseled to keep the room dark, avoid ‘screen time,’ develop rituals around going to bed, and, oh yes – there are the drugs.
IS FAILURE TO SLEEP AT NIGHT REALLY A PROBLEM?
Aside from physical interferences like apnea or too much pizza the night before, I wonder if failure to enter the land of nod and stay there all night is the problem we have been led to believe it is. Inconvenient maybe. But not pathological.
The idea that we need eight continuous hours of sack-time is embedded from the time we are born. Weary parents celebrate the first time we leave them undisturbed all through the night. (Photo by Cleo-Heck on Unsplash)
We can thank the industrial revolution for the eight-hour workday, which demands we sleep in one stretch at night, so the factories can churn out the goods we enjoy when awake. Before punching time clocks, people slept more like dogs and cats, i.e. when they were tired. Even today, a complete cycle of sleep is only 90 minutes.
When early humans, lions and rhinos were tired, they slept. When they woke up, they hunted mastodons or gathered bananas or whatever. But I don’t think they ever worried they weren’t getting ‘enough’ sleep. They were able to respond to the rhythm of the day, and the rhythm of their bodies, in a way we no longer remember. (Photo by Jeff Griffith on Unsplash)
So when we find ourselves awake at 2 AM or asleep at 3 PM, we worry. Something must be wrong. Or not.
If we were to be guided by natural rhythms instead of the clock’s societal obligations, we would have very few problems getting enough rest. I wonder if the trend of working online from home might lead to a shift in our anxieties about ‘not enough sleep’ because there will be freedom to nap during the day.
WHAT COUNTS ?
Would you consider rocking in a chair with your eyes closed as you slowly pat a cat in your lap to be sleep? Or stretching out on the sofa with soft music for 20 minutes?
Of the five stages of sleep, rest is one of them – and as necessary to our well-being as deep sleep. When asked how many hours we sleep at night, don’t we most often report only the totally unconscious hours?
I stretch out on the sofa or lean back in my recliner two or three times a day, shut my eyes, yawn, and catch forty winks. Seldom more than fifteen or twenty minutes, but sufficient to maintain my alertness during the day. (Photo by Sophie Elvis on Unsplash)
I learned this from my dog!
According to the American Sleep Association, of the five stages of sleep, the average adult spends only one to two hours in ‘deep sleep’…or that ‘unconscious’ stage that we seem always to want more of. And it is this stage which gets shorter and shorter the older we get.
I chuckle when I realize that one of my mantras I quoted to myself for years having to do with mindset and awareness – “I want to wake up before I die” may come true in a way I hadn’t expected.
WHEN IS IT TIME TO WORRY?
I do not give medical advice – I am not a doctor. If you already worry, it makes sense to see a sleep specialist who may do any of the following several things.
A quick and easy ten-question scale identifies the impact of your sleep and may indicate a need for a sleep study. The doctor will indeed counsel you on good ‘sleep hygiene’ – lifestyle changes that optimize sleep. Occasionally they prescribe medicine. Thankfully, that is not as common as it used to be.
The Bible (Ephesians 6:13) counsels at a certain point, “Having done all, then stand…”
Once you have eliminated possible physical and emotional interferences, it is time to hang sleep-worry up with your bathrobe at night. Worry and or thinking about sleep guarantees our eyes won’t close. How do we “not think?” Ahh, again, a good topic for another article.
In the meantime, take comfort in the knowledge that all sleep counts…including daydreaming and rest, naps, a few hours at night, a few hours of siesta. And enjoy the fullness of life that comes with living in rhythm with your own body and lifestyle. And sleep like a cat.
A happy cat! (Photos by Wade Lambert (lion) and Dan Gold (cat) on Unsplash)
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