I used to think that insomnia was all in the mind. That you tell yourself that you suffer from insomnia and therefore you cannot sleep. Except for people that watch TV in bed, I used to scoff at them too. (even though I was one of them for a long time)
Well.
I have known for the last 2 years or so that this is not the case. I’m not talking about when your kids keep you awake at night and you sleep in 15 minute increments and take shifts. Then insomnia is NOT a problem. You go from bedraggled to fast asleep in 0.2 seconds.
I’m talking about when you are woken up or wake up in the middle of the night and you can for all the friggin love of being productive the next day not go (the fuck) back to sleep.
Take last night for example:
The kids must have been fiddling around with the docking station in the kitchen as the alarm went off at midnight, much like it did the night before. Because I did the sprint down the passage the previous night in a state of sleepfulness I completely forgot to sort it out before we went to bed last night. So when the bloody thing went off again at midnight Etienne did the sprint and just unplugged the whole thing. I was in quite a deep sleep, so I just turned over and off I went to dreamland.
At 02h00 Isabel wanted to go pee. She was pulling at me from the one side and Etienne was pushing me out of bed from the other as it was now my turn to get up and eventually I managed to drag myself up and off we went. For why I don’t know as she is more than capable of switching on the light, but anyhoo. (yes, yes, grumpy, I know). She did her thing, we switched off the light and I tucked her back in.
I get back into bed.
I toss.
I turn.
I sigh.
I worry.
I work myself up into a flat panic about stuff I have no business worrying about at 02h00 in the morning, much less in broad daylight.
I give up, take out my kindle and eventually managed to fall asleep again. (but only after I woke Etienne up with the light)
I am not pleased.
Do you suffer from insomnia? How do you deal with it?