![]() ![]() Now, I’m prepared to do that, with the help of the Sleep Pack, 10 minutes at a time. Mindfulness has brought me to a realistic place of understanding that it takes time to work through the worries I feel about sleep, and that persistence and time are the only ways to unbreak 15 years of poor sleep habits. I wanted to move past this sleepless phase of my life and onto more energy-filled days. I’ll be the first to admit that I was hoping for a quick fix. Above all else, meditation is teaching me patience. Simply learning the technique of body scanning has been transformative for my evenings, and is a tool I come back to if I am feeling anxious or simply overstimulated after coming home from a social activity. I have tools at my disposal, taught to me through the sleep meditations, for the roughest of nights. The meditation exercises put the power in my hands to slow down the day and take the time to recognize when I am spiraling into a cycle of sleeplessness perpetuated by my anxiety. It hasn’t been a simple fix, but mindfulness has given me an awareness of some baggage I have about going to bed at night. Throughout the day, I was preoccupied with sleep and how I could orchestrate my schedule to get the most rest. I had begun to expect insomnia, anxious about the outcome of a night before my head even hit the pillow. I wasn’t just struggling to fall asleep-sleep had become a source of anxiety in my life. I began working through the ten-minute sessions in the afternoon, hoping for a new tool to help me fall asleep, but I found something more. When I learned that Headspace had a meditation pack specifically for sleep, I jumped at the opportunity to find a solution. I was struggling to parent well, having to cancel social plans to stay in and try to grasp at a few hours of sleep. I was dangerously tired, caught in a cycle of sleeplessness I couldn’t break. I couldn’t fall into bed and sleep for twelve hours to make up for two nights of insomnia because my third child was still waking every three hours to nurse and my toddlers would climb into my bed at sunrise, whispering requests for Cheerios and blueberries. Unlike my childhood, there was no time to catch up. ![]() Much like my childhood, I would sleep poorly for a few nights, then just fine for the nights that followed. Some people also have a distinct phobia, or fear, about sleep called somniphobia. You may be apprehensive about not falling asleep or not being able to stay asleep. What I hoped was merely any adjustment to motherhood transformed into a serious sleep problem. Overview What is sleep anxiety Sleep anxiety is fear or worry about going to sleep. Other nights, I would avoid bed altogether, settling onto the couch to engage in my old habit of binge-watching to pass the time. Some nights I would lie in bed, unable to sleep because I was waiting for a child to cry out for me. ![]() It wasn’t long before sleep became a major issue in my life. Two nights of insomnia a week became a much bigger deal when every other night was being interrupted by the three back-to-back babies I had given birth to over the course of four years. A night or two of sleeplessness would be followed by a long, hard sleep so I never made it an issue. As a pre-teen, I would wander the house once or twice a week while everyone else slept. ![]()
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