Thoughts on Sleep

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Thoughts on Sleep

Around 8 years ago, when my kiddo was a toddler, I endured a long period of horrible insomnia. Much of this was rooted in my relationship to being a working mom. It was tough. The hardest part, I think, was what I’ll call the “insomnia meta-stress.” I’d have a rough night of sleep, and then get so worked up about not sleeping that I’d be worried about whether I’d sleep the next night. Like many, I was well aware of the impact of stress on sleep quality, so I’d get worried about my worrying, which would add to my already high level of gripped thinking, and the whole thing would compound. I’d go days and days with very little sleep.

Yikes.

Luckily, at some point, I had an insight. I clearly remember the night it happened. As usual, I was lying awake in bed, frustrated and scared. A bright, full moon was casting a trapezoid of light on my bedroom wall.

As I stared at the moonlight, a new thought came out of nowhere: “My brain and body already know how to fall asleep. I’ve fallen asleep tens of thousands of times in my life. And I’ll be okay tomorrow even if I don’t sleep tonight.”

This insight, albeit simple, allowed me some space from my fretting, and insomnia hasn’t looked the same since. When that thought came through, I felt my body relax, and as it did, I edged away from worry and towards trust in the natural intelligence of my system. Lo and behold, over the next few days, I started sleeping better. It’s important to note that my workload and parental responsibilities remained high. My bedtime routine didn’t change. Thanks to my insight, I simply began to trust my body’s built-in capacity for balance. And I was reminded of my mind’s powerful capacity to deliver something new, seemingly out of nowhere.

This is what insight does. It releases the grip of our thinking and gives us a fresh start. The capacity for new thought is present in all of us. It’s always the most powerful place to look. For example, there’s tons of advice about sleep available on the internet. I tried it all – melatonin, sleep routines, reducing blue light, etc. None of it made a major impact. My insight, however, which came from within, released the grip of my worried thinking. The outcome? Drastically better sleeping from that moment forward. Thanks to my mind’s ability to create a new reality on a tired (pun intended) topic, I leveled up.

As is normal for most folks, I still have an occasional night of insomnia. But my new thought was so deep that it stuck to my bones, so to speak. Rather than lean into worry, which would result in much fretting and filling my mind with frustration (and my body with cortisol), I know my body will eventually course correct. I also know I’ll survive my day, which allows me to be much more relaxed about the whole thing.

Because I’m more relaxed, I usually fall back asleep. And if I don’t, I trust that the next night will be better, and it usually is. It’s funny how such a simple thought shifted everything. The mind’s mysterious ability to deliver new, helpful thoughts is one of life’s greatest gifts. A dream, really.

Nikki Platte