The curse of insomnia and how to free ourselves from it for good. Blog #11
When it comes to looking after ourselves at any level one of the most common, basic and important thing we often overlook is our sleep.
Why do we sleep ?
Sleeping is the operation of recovering from the physical and mental stress occurred in the day so we can process all those informations, adapt to them and progress into our personal and professional life the following day. The restoration and reset process provides physical energy and mental clarity to optimise anything we do.
When we don’t sleep enough we don’t allow ourselves to complete processing informations (physical and mental) from the previous day, the cell regeneration mechanism is jeopardised and we start the new day on a deficit. A prolonged accumulation of lack of sleep keep us into a sympathetic state (fight/flight/freeze) as we are overwhelmed by an information overload and that throws us into a downward spiral of stress, reactivity and mood swings, that affects our performances, hormonal balance and health in the long run. It has been somehow researched that we can die of lack of sleep before we die of starvation, such is the importance of sleeping.
Why can't we sleep ?
Insomnia is a widespread condition that I know personally very well as I have suffered heavily from it most of my life and only managed to finally free myself from few months ago. I will ignore the drugs as they are a NO GO option, and will skip the CBT aspect of it as this is already widely documented and common-ish knowledge. This article focuses on what I know have worked very powerfully for me and my clients, the secret elements that no one talks about.
We all understand there is a connection between stress and sleeping disorders, but just like with traumas, phobias and PTSD the thing is not thing. Although there seem to be a clear culprit for a reaction, the reason we react the way we do is actually the root of our problem. When it comes to insomnia the problem is not the stress per se but our coping mechanism and why we deal with stress the way we do.
So as with all imbalances we want to address the cause of them as opposed to the symptoms. We want to update our subconscious habits in regards to stress, sleep and nighttime, and create new habits of thoughts that help us find sleep and stop sabotaging our efforts at it.
Nighttime= Safe place= Insomnia
In my case for instance I recollected in my own regression through RTT how I have associated nighttime with homeliness and safety. When I was a child my parents owned a restaurant and routinely came home late after work. Every night they would spend time relaxing, cooking, washing, watching TV… Although I had to pretend I was asleep as I had school the following day I could hear and feel them near, and remind myself that there was one place in my life where I was neither bullied or feeling lonely...
As an addicted young adult I have reinforced that association as soon as I had my own place, fuelling endless nights with alcohol, drugs and my artistic obsession through the medium of painting and music, on the pretence that nighttime somehow owned some magic enhancing properties in relation to my creativity, when in fact it was always about me creating an emotional sanctuary from a world I never felt I fitted in.
Even though I don’t paint, play music or surrender my conscious mind to substances anymore, I have been still using the haven of the nighttime to write and order my thoughts, often until dawn up till only 6 months ago.
Change the associations subconsciously AND consciously
Once we have removed our emotional blockage we want to learn how to deal with our conscious thought process leading to sleeping. Everything we do is down to how we believe we should react in regards to anything. So for instance if someone get stressed out by the snoring of their partner or the sirens outside the house that is because they believe at a subconscious level that they must react to such noise. Some people grow up in a house next to a train station. For them the sound of the trains is imperceptible, they barely notice them. Put them in a different set up, in the countryside for instance and they might find the sound of an howl or a cockerel extremely disturbing. To dissolve stress factors in the formal scenario all we need to do is create a different association with the snoring and turn them into a lullaby, a soothing and comforting vibration that will transport us straight into the arms of Morpheus…
Mindful versus Mind Full
We tend to develop the poor habit of chasing sleep in exactly the same way as we chase inner peace and calm in vain. We can't force ourselves into serenity and tranquility. The tools required to find something must reflect its nature. So to find balance, we must let go of whatever creates imbalance at the first place. Mindfulness and Meditation teach us how to let go. And the moment we realise that sleeping is a natural process we all are entitled to, we cease resisting, and we can finally yield to it, welcome it, invite it, sink and drift into the land of Nod effortlessly as we should be...
RTT + MBCT = The Ultimate Equation To Fix Insomnia For Good
There are of course protocols to follow for real changes to happen and myriads of possibilities to address, but when we understand how the mind works it is relatively simple to trick it to create the hormones we want to feel in our body such as Melatonin in the context of sleeping, as opposed to suffering the disruptive presence of Cortisol. As with everything there is always a next level, which implies that we can elevate our hormonal control to no boundaries. And since there are no more potent drugs than the ones the human brain can create, it makes sense to ditch addictive drugs that only make things worse and learn to regulate our homeostasis through the power of our own mind.
Everyone deserves a good night’s sleep
If you or someone you know suffers from insomnia know that because nothing worked so far doesn’t mean nothing will ever work. I am the living proof of it. We must stop recycling the same weak and outdated informations and fix problems at their origin with modern and efficient protocols such as RTT (Rapid Transformational Therapy) and MBCT (Mindfulness Based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy).