As such, having insomnia has shown me the dangers of non-visible illnesses.
Not ‘getting enough sleep’ is only excusable so many times when you can’t meet work deadlines or have to cancel plans because you physically, mentally and emotionally cannot be present. Insomnia is always there, in the background, even when you are doing all your everyday tasks going to work, replying to emails, and balancing a social life made all the more difficult while running on zero or little sleep. More than anything, it's wondering how long your life can go on like this. It wasn’t just staring at the ceiling waiting for sleep to come, it was doing all that is usually advised: getting up if you don’t fall asleep in 15 minutes to do an activity only to settle again to tire and reset your body clock reading a book at all hours of the night that felt more like a chore than pleasure mentally planning any extra plans in the week and wondering what’s worth your energy praying for sleep over and over again while also trying not to care at all so it would distract and lull your brain into sleep making sure you take all your herbal remedies but don’t drink too many liquids before bed. What happens during insomniac periods?Įnduring insomniac periods where I hadn’t properly slept for four days (the longest stretch at a time so far) turned me into a zombie. Plagued with this feeling that a sleepless night will also mean what feels like a less life-full body the next day not to mention offsetting the next few days of poor sleep patterns. In fact, going away or staying over at friend’s houses after parties or the occasional night in became something I dreaded.
This wasn’t exactly the perfect recipe for winding down and relaxing for the night. The anxiety around not sleeping had become all too common in my everyday life but the thought of doing so in a different environment could also be paralysing. Yet two years into my diagnosis – a disorder that effects 1 in 3 adults in the UK and is defined by the NHS as being unable to fall or stay asleep more than three times in a week – it had become life-altering.īefore I had got into bed, the thoughts around my sleep pattern when planning the sleepover in a friend’s house had left me spiralling. In my mid-twenties, I never thought insomnia would be part of my life. Lying awake in a friend’s bed, while she lay fast asleep beside me, I realised this monster – otherwise known as insomnia – had yet not left me.
0 kommentar(er)
