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Negative
Sleep Thoughts
Once I realized that chronic insomnia is, in my opinion, a phobia,
I began to study phobias.
The most important thing that I found
out about phobias is that they are basically caused by negative
and irrational thoughts. For example, a phobia of flying develops
mostly from a person believing on some level that plane travel
is inherently unsafe and, as a result, he will die a horrible
death if he gets on plane.
Chronic insomnia, too, is caused largely if not entirely by
negative and irrational thoughts. Chronic insomnia, in my opinion,
is ultimately a fear of being unable to sleep that is caused
by thinking that attaining sleep is difficult and agonizing.
Thinking such negative thoughts about sleep causes stress within
a person because it conflicts with his knowing that sleep is
critical to properly function and live life fully. At bedtime
especially, the stress causes increased alertness, blood pressure,
brain waves, and heart and breathing rate, which makes sleeping
difficult, if not impossible.
Identify negative thoughts
Once I realized that negative, irrational sleep thoughts were
the central problem, I knew that I had to deal with them. And
the first step was to identify what they are.
Negative sleep thoughts filled my head for the better part of
any day, but they were often shrouded in emotion and lacked
clarity. So to see them clearly and identify fully what they
are I wrote them down. By the way, I found that the thoughts
can enter and play around in my mind very subtlety so I had
to train myself to become aware of them.
My most common negative sleep thoughts were the following:
- I know
I won’t sleep well tonight.
- I’m
going to toss and turn and be wide away like I usually do.
- It’s
going to take me forever to fall asleep.
- If
I wake up in the middle of night, I’ll never get back
to sleep.
- I am
powerless against my insomnia.
- Sleep
is very difficult for me.
- Having
to sleep is a terrible thing.
- I’ll
be a wreck tomorrow if I don’t sleep.
Analyze
the thoughts
Now that I knew exactly what the thoughts were, the next thing
I did was to analyze them by asking this question about each:
Why do I believe this to be true? In other words, what in
reality supports this idea?
For example, let’s take my thought, “I’ll be
a wreck tomorrow if I don’t sleep.” After carefully
thinking about it, I realized there was not much that supported
this idea. First, there have been countless nights in which
I have not slept well and have functioned adequately the next
day. Sure, I would prefer to get good sleep, but if I don’t
sleep well, then that’s not a very big deal. I always
manage somehow. I probably would not be a wreck.
Second, and more importantly, I realized there is no good
reason for why I would not be able to sleep in the first place.
There would be nothing physically wrong with me. There would
be no escaped convict in my bedroom threatening me with a
chain saw. My pillow would not be filled with spiders. I would
not be sleeping on a bed of nails.
Doing the above exercise for each of my sleep thoughts clearly
showed me that there is essentially no rational basis for
them.
The subconscious and negative
sleep thoughts
If there is no rational reason for me to not be able to sleep,
then why did I, in fact, have so much difficulty sleeping?
As strange as the explanation may sound, I realized that it
was my irrational, negative thoughts about sleep—and
they alone—which kept me from sleeping. That’s because
thinking those thoughts would stress me out, leaving me unable
to sleep.
In other words, the insomnia had a life of its own and it
lived in my head. There was no actual source in reality that
was causing my insomnia.
This “life of its own” characteristic is true, however,
of any phobia, not just chronic insomnia. Again, take a person
with a fear of flying. His fear is not tied to the facts of
reality. The facts are that flying is undeniably safe. His
chances of dying on a plane are extremely remote, yet he believes
that death is imminent if he gets on a plane. In other words,
the reason he thinks he will die if he flies is merely because…
he thinks he will die if he flies.
I wondered why such baseless and irrational negative thoughts
about sleep could automatically fill my head day and night,
leaving me worried and stressed. It seems that part of me
was convinced that the negative sleep thoughts were well-founded.
And, indeed, while my conscious mind may have known my negative
thoughts to be nonsense, my subconscious believed the opposite.
How can this be?
The role of the subconscious is to automatically evaluate
things we come into contact with based on previous thoughts,
experiences, evaluations and emotions. This keeps us from
having to relearn everything all the time.
For example, if you meet someone who is nice and pleasant
towards you, you likely think, “That person is nice.”
The next time you see this person your subconscious will automatically
evoke positive thoughts and emotions based on your previous
evaluation.
On the other hand, if you meet a person who is cruel to you,
you likely think, “That person is mean.” Then the
next time you run into him your subconscious will recall this
evaluation and automatically send out negative thoughts and
emotions to tell you that this person is a danger or threat.
In my opinion, a person with insomnia, such as I, has a subconscious
that, over time, has been filled with countless negative thoughts,
experiences, evaluations and emotions related to sleep. For
example, every time I thought, “I’ll never get a
good night’s sleep” or “Having to sleep is
a terrible thing,” the thought got sent off to my subconscious.
Based on the accumulation of such thoughts and the poor sleep
that resulted from them, my subconscious came to regard sleep
as a danger and threat.
As a result, my subconscious automatically evoked negative
thoughts and emotions to warn me of the perceived danger.
And since sleep is a daily requirement, my subconscious was
constantly evoking such thoughts and emotions, but it was
especially active at bedtime when I came face to face with
the perceived threat.
The above shows that conscious thoughts primarily determine
what the subconscious believes. For me personally, I had unintentionally
“programmed” my subconscious to regard sleep as
a danger by persistently thinking negative sleep thoughts.
Once I understood this, I knew that my urge to obsess, worry
and think about sleep was the result of bad programming of
my subconscious. Likewise, I now understood fully that the
thoughts and emotions that my subconscious urged me to think
were not real in the sense that they represented a genuine
threat or danger, and I felt less of a need to take them seriously.
The thoughts were like mirages in a desert. They seemed real,
but, in fact, where ultimately illusions, and I would be foolish
to regard them as anything more.
Knowing this was important for me because it helped to de-fang
my negative thoughts (and insomnia itself) and put them in
their proper perspective: They are not big and strong, but
rather essentially baseless and even silly.
Avoid negative sleep
thoughts
Now I understood that I needed to reprogram my subconscious
if I was to stop the chronic sleeplessness. To get started,
I needed to stop the bleeding, so to speak. I needed to stop
filling my subconscious with negative sleep thoughts. In other
words, I needed to stop thinking them as much as I possibly
could.
I found that there were some basic rules to follow if I was
to have any success in avoiding thinking negative sleep thoughts.
First, I had almost no chance of succeeding if I said to myself,
“Don’t think negative sleep thoughts.” This
is like saying, “Don’t think of a pink elephant.”
By mentioning the very thing I wanted to avoid thinking about
in my instructions to myself, I put that very thing in my
mind, making it virtually impossible to not think about.
Instead, I found the proper way is to keep my mind actively
occupied on thoughts and activities not related to sleep.
In other words, it works much better to stay focused on pursuing
a positive rather than avoiding a negative.
To help me do this, I created a detailed schedule for each
day that took into account virtually every minute. I filled
the schedule with activities related to work, hobbies, chores,
etc. Living by this schedule helped me to stay focused on
the activities instead of worrying and thinking negatively
about sleep.
Not repression
For a time, I thought that avoiding negative sleep thoughts
may be denial or psychological repression. This is not true
and is not a valid reason to keep thinking negative sleep
thoughts.
Denial
or repression is when you avoid thinking thoughts or experiencing
feelings that will ultimately benefit you. There is no benefit
whatsoever to think negative sleep thoughts except for the
purpose of identifying them, analyzing their irrationality
and replacing them with positive
sleep thoughts.
Not letting being
tired stop me
Keeping my mind away from sleep and on other things was not
easy, to say the least. Thanks to the insomnia, I was tired,
stressed and did not feel at all like exerting effort on anything.
Here are some ways I managed to keep my alertness high so
that I felt more like putting forth the needed effort to stick
with my schedule:
-
If
possible, I tried to be physically active, since doing
so would increase my alertness and wakefulness.
-
I
spent time outside if possible during the day because
the bright light would increase my alertness.
- I
did new things, met new people and went to new places if
I could. Novelty stimulated me and increased my wakefulness.
Limit
these thoughts and worries to twice a day
The daily schedule that I kept was one important tool I used
to keep from thinking about sleep. Although it helped, it
was not enough. Throughout the day, my urge to think and worry
about sleep was for me extremely powerful, and I would too
often give in.
So in addition to my schedule, I started using another technique.
I basically made a deal with my subconscious. I designated
two 10 minutes sessions each day in which I could freely worry
about insomnia and think negative sleep thoughts. However,
I would not think such thoughts outside of these time periods.
By and large, this technique worked. Even though I was allowing
myself time to think negatively about sleep, by restricting
it to a 20 minute total each day, the total amount of time
each day I found myself thinking about sleep dropped significantly.
I’m not sure exactly why this technique largely worked
for me, but it did.
Soon, however, I was not using these sessions just to think
negative sleep thoughts. I also started to use this time to
formulate and say positive sleep thoughts.
Next:
Positive sleep thoughts
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