The Benefits of Insomnia

Insomnia is something I have written about in the past many times, so rather than focus on the condition itself and how to overcome it, I want to focus on something else, that is the benefits of Insomnia which as it happens I have concluded do indeed exist.  I've had a hate-hate relationship with Insomnia throughout my life having suffered with it since I was a child.  Whilst I always focused on the negative aspects of the condition, I am trying to find more positives in life now even in places where you would not think to find them.  To that end I have been thinking about my Insomnia and some of the ways it actually helps me as a person.

I've mentioned the debate about introversion and extroversion before, and how it defines our behaviour.  With regards to my social life and how involved I get in social activities, I would consider myself introverted.  I am low energy and low maintenance.  Some people like that and others really don't.  Regardless, when I am around a lot of people for a long period of time, I feel myself getting restless, physically and emotionally I feel drained but with a desire to run away and be alone for a while to recharge.  One of the things Insomnia helps me do is to find time to myself.  The world is a quiet place at 3 in the morning.  There are few distractions, everything is calm, and most importantly, everyone else is asleep.  Over extended periods of time that can encourage loneliness and that is something which you can find ways to tackle, but there are times when being alone is the one thing you want more than anything else.  Insomnia enables you to do that by giving you time, and to an extent, energy, to do things for yourself when there's no-one else around to bother you.

Creativity too is something which you might immediately assume would flounder when you can't sleep, however, like Catherine Zeta-Jones character Theo in the 1999 classic 'The Haunting' - I have some of my best ideas when I can't sleep.  When you lie in bed and try to fall asleep, but can't and your mind races, some of the best ideas come to you.  Things pop into your head from nowhere as distractions, all manner of visions and endless possibility arises.  There was a time when I would fight this, when I was so consumed with getting to sleep that this would be an annoyance to me.  Instead, now I write them down, every idea that comes into my head I take a few moments to actually entertain the thought, and if I think "that could work" I write it down, usually as a memo on my phone which usually isn't far from reach.

The irony here is that both of these things are in many ways positives that other people actually go out of their way to try and achieve, through meditation and isolation, and various other methods of trying to reach a point of inner Zen.  I and many other Insomniacs should take a few moments to stop and reflect on what we are actually achieving without effort and without thinking.  If other people struggle to do this so much then perhaps we shouldn't be so opposed to it?  You can argue that you do indeed need sleep and that you can't afford to go without.  However I would make a point I realised long ago - there's no difference lying in bed for 4 or 5 hours unable to sleep versus being up and about for 4 or 5 hours doing something else you actually like to do.

There is no doubt you do need sleep, however the body responds to its own needs and we are all different in terms of what we can and cannot do physically.  There is a fixation on the notion that you must have 8 hours of sleep a night and that they must be from 11 until 7 in order to live a healthy and balanced life.  I would ask you however if that is what you focus on when it comes to Insomnia, how many other areas of your life do you actually conform to what is prescribed to be ideal?  Do you have a diet that is perfectly balanced, includes every vitamin and mineral and each of the food groups you are supposed to eat every day?  Do you drink the right amount of water you are supposed to drink every day?  Do you exercise the amount of time you are supposed to exercise every day? - a pattern should be emerging here, if the answer to any of these questions in all honesty was "no" then perhaps you should stop and think about why you actually fixate on sleep so much as something which has to conform to what others say.

If you feel like you won't have the energy to do what you have to do every day by forgoing sleep, I would simply argue that lying in bed all night unable to sleep you already forgo that sleep and you already continue with your daily routine.  In the end one of the biggest arguments made to overcome Insomnia is that the more active you are the more you will sleep or the easier it will be to sleep - so maybe stop fighting it and get up and do something in the middle of the night and sleep might actually become easier to achieve over time.