A tad late this morning, and I skipped meditation. I slept in till 6:30 – which is quite remarkable because I slept through the alarm. My first thought was that I must have forgotten to set it, but I have a distinct memory of doing so. Then I remembered dreaming about hearing an alarm. Possibly I even switched it off in my sleep.
Anyone who isn’t familiar with my weird sleeping patterns might be wondering why I would set an alarm on Sunday morning anyway – and no, I’m not a vicar, my post from yesterday should make that fairly clear. But I suffer from chronic insomnia, and to deal with it I have a very strict bedtime and waking routine, with the alarm going off at 6 every morning, seven days a week. Most days I am awake long before that. A few weekends recently, when I’ve had long periods awake in the night, I’ve switched the alarm off and allowed myself to sleep in later in the mornings, but this is not really a good idea.
I have tried just about every remedy you can think of, and for 15 months I attended the sleep clinic at Papworth hospital outside Cambridge, where one of the things I was taught was this business of having a strict routine of sleeping and waking times.
I’ve recently acquired some new sleep tapes, which I haven’t said anything about before because I’ve been waiting to see how effective they are. There is one which you play in the daytime, one for just before you go to sleep, and another one which, when the pattern is established, you are supposed to play continuously through the night. I’m not sure that I can manage this last one, because I only have an old-fashioned tape Walkman, so I can’t set it to play continuously, and I can’t play it without headphones because of Hubby. But I’ve been using the other two.
The last few nights I’ve been sleeping through till 5, which is pretty good. Last night, though, I was awake at 3:30. However, I suspect that this might be because my period started yesterday, and I had to get up to change my tampon. Afterwards I got back into bed and played the falling asleep tape again. Usually once I’m awake I’m awake for a couple of hours at least, but I don’t remember anything of that sort last night, obviously I was awake for a while, possibly an hour or so, but that’s all. And when I went back to sleep, I evidently slept deeply enough to sleep through the alarm.
So, cautious optimism. If I can crack this problem, it will be a huge thing for me, but I’ve tried so many things which haven’t worked, and anyway, I’m a born sceptic (comes of having an over active brain which always wants to understand things from first principles). Part of me wonders, if this technique really does work, how come they didn’t know about it at Papworth?
But faith and attitude play a big part in anything to do with the brain. How many times have I been told ‘If you expect it not to work, it won’t’? But how do you break out of that vicious circle? Nothing works, so you don’t expect it to work, how do you make yourself believe it will?
But, on recent evidence… cautious optimism.