Insomnia and disturbed sleep

Insomnia comes in three forms and it is worth telling them apart. Some people cannot fall asleep and lie awake for an hour or two. Some wake at half past three and never get back. And some sleep an acceptable number of hours and get up as though they had not slept at all.

What the three have in common is thinking. In the daytime the day covers it; at night nothing covers it, and whatever was left unfinished comes back with a clarity it did not have at eleven in the morning.

The circle that forms

After a few weeks the problem is no longer only sleep. It is the bed, which becomes the place where you lie awake. It is the evening, which starts to feel frightening around nine. It is the following day, faced on reserves you do not have. Sleep is the one thing you cannot get by trying to get it, and the effort of trying is already part of the problem.

What we can do with it

The work looks at what arrives in those hours: it is almost never random. It is the open accounts, the unspoken conflicts, the postponed decisions. Treating insomnia as a technical problem works for a while; understanding what those nights are talking about lasts longer.

If insomnia has gone on a long time, or comes with snoring and marked daytime sleepiness, it is worth raising with a doctor too: some forms have a physical cause that should be ruled out.