Forget all this nonsense

Tip #33 - SLEEP

This post is part of a series I’m writing from mid-June to the end of 2024 or whenever it ends, on things that helped me rebuild my confidence, sense of self, and increased my delight in my life after massive difficulty in multiple areas. For full details and post links to all 110 things, go to this post here.

Tip #33 - SLEEP

If there’s one thing about me, like really ONE thing, maybe even in the top one percent of all the singular things it’s that I love sleep.

I LOVE sleep.

Sleep is so important to me.

When I read My Year of Rest and Relaxation for the first time (by Otessa Moshfegh) about a woman who has the means and opportunity to spend a year sleeping her life away to the best of her abilities in order to pass the time and hopefully reap the benefits of all the time passing as that happens, I was like yes, babe, I understand this desire.

I couldn’t do it, I don’t think, but I have felt the want to do it.

I understand that. I don’t think I have ever truly wanted to exit my situation in my own way, but I have – it was an often thing during the hardest times – wanted to sleep through the awful, and to sleep so much that the awful would then be far behind me when I woke up. Healed, rested, with perspective that comes from a solid rem cycle’s benefits and that I would be somehow made new from getting enough sleep.

Which would take at least a year.

Anyway I really loved that book and I really love sleeping.

Upgrading my sleeping situation and knowing the bedtime rituals that work best for me means that the potential for great sleep is always there, and always something I long for.

My bed is so cozy and I often succumb to it. Sometimes more than I really need to or more than I should. Even sleeping can become something dysregulated.

We need sleep, so I don’t ever really feel too guilty about it. I don’t get the opportunity to sleep too long very often, and my body will scream at me - in an overanxious way not a painful joints way - if I am truly avoiding my life or trying to by choosing to languish in the bed.

In which case I get up and live and then come back to bed later and that’s been a good thing I’ve learned how to do only recently.

Sleep, as a thing, fascinates me anyway.

It’s something essential to us, and to me specifically, I start to unwind at the core of my reality if I approach 24 hrs. without sleep.

Even when I was younger I was not able to do all nighters. I’m just not built for that.

Once I was trying to pull one to cram some for an art history final in college and I remember slumping over my thick textbook at 7 am in the hall of the dorms - where I’d sat for the light so my roommate could sleep and in the hopes the uncomfyness would keep me awake and it was horrible. I think I did fine on the final though, but I don’t think that all night study sesh contributed much.

In this article it’s detailed and explained how brain waves help flush waste out of the brain during sleep - “Individual nerve cells coordinate to produce rhythmic waves that propel fluid through dense brain tissue, washing the tissue in the process.”

Sleep is a brain bath.

Good sleep is a cleansing.

Talk about self-care…geeze.

Being able to sleep around certain people is a good thing too and I think that’s really nice too.

Sleeping next to someone you love can reduce anxiety, improves your sleep quality and your happiness (idk if this accounts for snoring but may all your airways be unrestricted).

It’s said to be a good thing that when you’re in a good relationship you might feel sleepy around that person because the oxytocin levels that alleviate stress and promote calm are higher and that might make you snoozy. This therapist opinion links to a few studies and is an interesting read about it all.

I think this is an underlying or like an emphasizing thing. An encouraging.

When we start to heal things in our internal lives and in our tangible lives, start doing the difficult work of examining traumas, looking at our emotional health and choosing better things, our sleep eventually will improve.

I’m sure I’m not alone in how when my relationship was in it’s worse moments I slept terribly. I would wake up often, did not feel relaxed at all sharing the bed, and was not getting actual rest.

Surely that impacted how tense the rest of the days were.

While I know sharing a bed isn’t the right answer for everyone’s situation, it can be a really good thing too. All I mean by that is that if you feel comfortable around the people you love and who you trust with your heart, that’s a really good thing and sleep is one of many indicators that you’re happy in your situation.

That’s always nice to know.

When I was first on my own, in that I was divorced but the kids were still home, it was hard for a while for me to sleep.

My son is diabetic and sometimes has a low blood sugar in the middle of the night that will require giving him some sugar to get his levels correct and then retesting and retesting to make sure they do get back to a safe number.

I thank all the technology for the advancement of health supplies and continuous glucose monitors that will make loud beeps when we’re headed towards those areas and will recheck him also so that we both can get better sleep and have less anxiety about the situation as a whole.

I was also, for a while, VERY aware that I was now the only full adult in my home. Having a big dog has helped with that, but there were months and months and months where it felt like I was getting only diet sleep – sleep lite, because my ears were half open all night long every night for anything I needed to look out for and hear.

Once my anxiety about the relationship was solved (or at least soothed in the immediate situation), I needed to learn how to feel comfortable, competent, and secure in being the adult in the house.

I’d think through what I’d do in a multitude of situations (hi, this was anxieties and a life of being taught to prepare for all the worst case scenarios), learned how the house sounds how the neighborhood sounds, what it all looks like, and sometimes got very scared and overwhelmed. But I got through it.

My anxiety was killer back then, but it was nice that at least the bed and the home was all mine.

It pops up every now and then these days, but back then it was thick and difficult and brutal.

It took a while to get out of that.

After a while I learned it and was able to gain confidence and competence in who I’ve always been and who I have also grown into being. That helped. Having a dog also helped.

Did you know also that having a dog sleep near you can help you slip into a deeper rem cycle even faster and better?

Anyway.

Sleep is so important.

It helps everything.

Sometimes/most of the time if I’m feeling in a state of angst, frustration, a stuckness or a blob-ness, I just need some sleep (and some water). It’s the likely solution for me nearly every time.

Sometimes my need for sleep is frustrating.

But after so much time with my system on high alert for decades, I finally have created a place safe enough to rest and so my body is no longer subtle about it anymore.

I’m trying to honor it.

I’ve been going to bed early lately which makes a very big difference – early being before 11, before 10 even and it’s great.

Here’s the other very important thing - sleep is the medicine for a lot of things and it can be soooo hard and soooo frustrating when it’s not something that comes easily.

I’m sure this particular tip, along the journey here will be tough for folks who struggle to find that type of rest that is restorative and helpful and consistent.

My ask here is to do what you can with your resources, give yourself and your situation patience, and keep working at it however you’re able to.

It’s only been in the last 2 years that the majority of my sleep has been without anxiety, without nightmares or tense dreams, and has started to feel less like a catch up.

There were years I was afraid to go to sleep every night, my anxieties and nightmares were so intense and so consistent and felt so real. I would wake up like my body had gone through all of the things I had dreamed and feared and been worrying about. It was exhausting and scary.

When the sun would go down I would get a feeling of panic, almost paranoia but I was the source of it and knew that, and I felt like crying having to get into bed and would put it off and put it off because I was afraid to let my brain just be there without my wakeful attempt to control it.

I used to wake up every night at 4 am. For weeks and weeks and weeks. No matter when I went to sleep, no matter how much I’d done the day before, 4 am I was awake in the brain and it was so frustratingly difficult to get back to sleep.

I honor my body’s asking for sleep now partly because I’m a little afraid of denying it and then ending up back in that loop of constant anxious wakefulness and losing my ability to sleep again all together.

There was so much unsolved, so much I didn’t know, so much felt and was up in the air, there was so much pain about so many things back then.

It has improved.

I don’t take that for granted, and I know it is something that is a difficulty for a lot of people for a lot of reasons.

Do what you can.

Whenever you’re able to follow that prompting to rest from your body, even if full sleep isn’t available to you yet, honor that rest to the best you’re able to.

Have good dreams.

ILYSM - Marian