Sleep is an Act of Trust

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Image: lemono - Getty Images

Insomnia illustration

Insomnia is common but, sometimes, its causes are not. Janice was a bonafide insomniac. She struggled to get to sleep, and if she woke in the middle of the night, returning to dreamland proved exasperatingly difficult, if not impossible. Consequently, she became chronically sleep deprived, a debilitating condition affecting up to 40% of adults at any time.   

In the absence of adequate repose, the mind loses its capacity to exercise sound judgment, solve problems, manage emotions, communicate effectively and concentrate on tasks. One’s mood becomes erratic, reactive and irritable, and the body suffers from diminished immunity, weight gain and a general inflammatory response that catalyzes a host of other physical ills. Basically, it makes you crazy and sick.

Janice tried a potpourri of medications with little benefit, and she learned to practice good sleep hygiene (mental and physical preparation for bedtime), but none of this stopped her from becoming a blurry-eyed night owl. A sleep study failed to identify any magic bullets, and self-hypnosis and guided meditations fell flat. 

“When I can’t sleep, I try to trust . . . I mean relax, but it rarely works” she lamented.

“I’m not a big subscriber to Freudian slips, but I think you just made one,” I told her, keying in on her use of the word “trust.”

Having Faith?

In an existential sense, falling asleep is an act of trust. When we do it, we have faith that we will be safe while unaware and helpless, and then wake up unscathed in the morning.   

“What’s on your mind when you’re trying to fall asleep?” I asked her.

“Usually, I think about how I’m going to be unconscious all that time, you know, just lying there without a clue, and that scares me some,” she replied.

While it seems irrational, Janice equated being unconscious with being dead, which isn’t surprising. While in deep sleep, the conscious mind (which is what we experience as “me”) shuts down — the psychological equivalent of nothingness. When falling asleep, we surrender to this temporary oblivion and trust we will emerge intact (reborn, if you will) when the night is done. But Janice didn’t feel safe enough to let go and slip into unconsciousness. The act of cognitive surrender proved too anxiety provoking.

“It’s more than just having trouble nodding off,” I told her. “It seems you are actually afraid of being asleep.”

This realization reframed how Janice viewed her problem. It allowed her to move away from a mechanical fix-it approach—medication, improved sleep hygiene, relaxation techniques, etc.—and toward addressing the underlying issue, which was fear of losing control. Falling asleep is one of those activities that works best when we don’t think about it too much. Intentionally striving to conk out is usually self-defeating. The harder one works at it, the more likely one will fail. After all, sleep is about releasing one’s grip, not tightening it, so the easiest way to make it more difficult is to try too hard.

So, rather than attacking the issue head-on, we used a side door approach. Janice identified several areas in her life (other than sleep) where she had trouble letting go and trusting matters to take their course. Often, she obsessed over small decisions, micromanaged her daughter’s behavior and struggled to go with the flow. By surrendering in these situations unrelated to sleep, she gradually learned how to relinquish control when her head hit the pillow. 

Thankfully, when a cluster of different behaviors intertwine through a common theme, changing one of them often ripples out to influence the others. For Janice, several of her behaviors were thematically linked, sleep being among them. And the operative theme was “trust and surrender.” By altering some of these other behaviors to reflect greater trust, she influenced her ability to drift off into dreamland.

Janice didn’t learn to fall asleep. She learned to let go, and then the sleep followed.