Mindfulness over Matter

One thing I've heard from several recovered insomniacs is that their sleep only improved once they stopped caring about their sleep. That's something I really struggled with.

In my last post, I addressed how I stopped (or at least reduced!) my worry about sleep by acknowledging that my fears about insomnia were disproportionate to the actual harms of insomnia. But not worrying is a step below not caring. Only by not caring could I truly break free of my attachment to sleep and avoid the pitfall of simply finding a new aspect of sleep to fret about.

For me, not caring was probably the hardest thing about recovering from insomnia. Even armed with an arsenal of reassuring facts, I would still go to bed many nights and be subsumed by a wave of performance anxiety. Because I still really, really, really, wanted to sleep! And because sleep is a contrarian little cat, that of course made it really, really, really difficult to actually sleep!

To address this issue, my sleep training introduced seven principles of mindfulness for sleep, which I could use to become more calm about my situation and consequently make sleep more likely. 

 

To ensure I would remember them, I made a big, ritualistic production of writing them all out in colorful calligraphy inks onto a piece of cardstock. Then I leaned them up against the back of my medicine cabinet, so I could look at them every night as I was brushing my teeth.

In an apropos twist, I was so eager to finish my work of art that I left off the final principle – patience – but I don't think I was harmed too much by its absence.

On my difficult nights, I would try to recite them all by heart, to remind myself to LET GO of my frantic desire to sleep and TRUST that my body would sleep when it was ready. And even if that wasn't to be that night, I should be able to ACCEPT my sleepless state and avoid working myself up into the kind of despair that I experienced in the past.

For a while there, during my insomnia's darkest days, "I'm at the end of my rope!" was basically my catchphrase. But I learned  to approach insomnia with equanimity, and that has made all the difference! I can't always control my sleep, but I can control how I react to it. 

If you choose to dwell on the positives rather than the negatives, you find that even when you do have insomnia, it's really not that bad. And if you truly believe that, your mind can relax and finally give you the sleep that you finally stopped striving for.

It's paradoxical, but it works!