What does insomnia feel like?

"It's ___ A.M. and you're staring at the ceiling."

Insert any random hour between 1 and 3 in the blank, and you'll have the most clichéd line in the history of insomnia literature. Clichéd and completely untrue—at least in my experience!

When my insomnia was at its peak, I definitely spent many a 1-3 A.M. period painfully, miserably awake. But never, in all my sleepless nights, did I occupy my time staring at the ceiling. My eyes stayed firmly shut most of the night.

"Am I some weird freak of nature?" I wondered. "The only insomniac in the world who keeps her eyes shut?" My experience was so contrary to the stereotypical presentation of insomnia, that I began to wonder, To get a sense of what other people were going through, I asked Google what insomnia feels like. But I came up with almost nothing (except this one discussion from Quora, which was more about how people feel about their condition, rather than how the condition itself feels).

So here's how my condition feels to me! I'm sure everyone's not the same, but at least it's a glimpse into the life of one insomniac.

Nighttime

Every sleepless night starts about the same way. I usually crawl under the covers, turn to my side and roll up into a cozy ball. It's very pleasant and just right for falling asleep...except that never happens! This is the point where a lot of insomniacs report "racing thoughts." I have just the opposite problem—no thoughts at all!

If you're a normal sleeper and you're aware enough, you can usually tell you're falling asleep because your thoughts change from an internal narrative to a more dream-like quality—you hear voices that aren't your own, and see scenes play out in your mind's eye. When I'm trying and failing to fall asleep, these things don't happen. It's like as soon as I shut my eyes, my brain shuts off too! It is an absolute blank.

Sometimes (in better times), I play a game to help myself sleep, wherein I think of things in alphabetical order that fit into a given category. It's a simple game, just interesting enough to keep me focused, but just boring enough to easily drift away from into sleep. When I'm having an insomnia night, this game does not work! I am too tired to think of anything, categorizable or otherwise! I am struggling to form a thought, but nothing happens! I will lie there in a semi-comatose state, and after a half-hour to an hour, will realize I'm still awake and have nothing to show for it.

Sometimes I get tantalizingly close to sleep. It's at times like this that I feel sleep is an iced-over river. It's flowing just beneath me. I'm skittering along on the surface, so close, but I can't break through the ice! The moment I feel I'm about to fall into the stream of unconsciousness, I'll become aware of what's happening, and come fully awake with a jolt! I know at least in this I'm no weirdo; it's one of the most common topics of discussion in my insomnia forums.

Anyway, after several episodes of this, checking the clock each time and seeing the hours march relentlessly onward, I start to get anxious. My heart starts to pound, my entire body will get hot. I begin to feel trapped, like I have to escape! It's my fight-or-flight response kicking in, and once that happens, it is actually terrifying to stay in bed. I'll get up and try to do something physical – squats or pushups, laps around the kitchen – to release some of the tension.

The funny thing about this late-night wakefulness is that even though my mind is fully alert, my body most definitely is not! Some people supposedly do constructive things when they're unable to sleep at night: cleaning, or reading, or art. Most of the time I'm way too tired to do any of those. The best I can manage is to just sit on the couch and zone out. I'm slow and clumsy when I move; I can barely keep my eyes open. If I try, they burn with the fire of a thousand suns! Late enough into the night, not only are my eyes hurting, they're also rolling all over the place because I can't even get them to focus. Whatever I'm doing, I am definitely NOT staring at the ceiling!

Daytime

The amount of sleep I got on any given night actually has very little bearing on how I feel during the day. Some days I feel very tired; others, only a little tired. But yes, always some tired! 

 

The day after a night of bad sleep (which was, for me, for a while, every day), I always feel dazed and a little disconnected from the world. I want to constantly lie down and close my eyes. I feel run-down, unmotivated, and a bit stupid. My memory is like a sieve. Creativity is almost nonexistent. This is pretty much the same for every insomniac everywhere, so I don't feel the need to go into a lot of detail about those symptoms here.

One thing that felt a little unique, at least to me, was the anxiety. I've always been a mildly anxious person, so no stranger to the occasional panicky moment, but the early insomnia days were very intense. The slightest thought or startling sound would set off a cloud of butterflies in my stomach. Sometimes I'd even feel the shock like a kick in the head. I was always on edge and felt nauseated pretty much all the time.

While the constant nerves calmed down after a couple of months, I still to this day have a symptom that I have labeled "twitchiness." Sometimes I just get hypersensitive to the sounds that are around me. It feels almost like there's a direct line from my eardrums to my stomach, and whenever I'm in a quiet place and there's a sudden sound—even one as inocuous as a door opening down the hall, or my dog sighing—My stomach lurches, or sometimes my eyes blink or my head jerks involuntarily. It's as though I'm about to leap out of my skin but just don't have the energy for so much action. There are moments when I'll feel suddenly startled, and I won't even know why...until I review the past few moments and realize it was triggered by a sound that I wasn't even paying attention to consciously. I've asked other insomniacs about this and they say that it's relatively common. I've heard it varyingly labeled hyperacusis, misophonia, or even myoclonus, but it doesn't seem to be well documented as an insomnia symptom, aside from anecdotal accounts. 

This twitchy feeling can get quite irritating, especially when there are several incidents within a few seconds of each other. But the good news is, I've gotten pretty good at just ignoring all the other symptoms of insomnia and powering through my day!

 

The even better news is that lately, insomnia has barely bothered me at all! While I'm by no means achieving the amount of sleep I used to get before insomnia, I am sleeping much better than I was back in May and June. There's hope for insomniacs yet! Stay tuned—in the next posts, I'll be sharing how I finally started to turn my abysmal sleeping situation around.