Sweet Dreams

We tend to like things that we're good at, and I've always been good at sleeping. I fall asleep on airplanes before takeoff and wake up as we touch down. When I get emotionally overwhelmed, I get tired. When I faced my first real professional disappointment about a year ago, I overcame it by sleeping 10-12 hours a night for a week. Sleep hits me like a ton of bricks when other things in life are getting me down and I'm always grateful to seek solace in its chubby, lazy arms.

Last night, I slept for 10 hours, passing out fully clothed on my bed at 8:30pm and waking up groggy at 6:30, dozing for another hour. Today, I felt so sad and depressed at work that I took two small breaks to cry, for no apparent reason, in the bathroom. I felt overwhelmed by the smallest of problems and had dark, scary thoughts. Looking back, my desperate need for sleep was a harbinger of my depression, an indicator of the switch from one mood cycle to another.

Sleep is one of the most reliable predictors of my moods, and one of the best ways I have to regulate them on my own. Last week, I slept an average of six hours a night, and this week I will average ten and crave more. Inexplicable, during both weeks, I will be tired most of the time. I'm staying up tonight because I know that if I limit my sleep, I'll feel more awake tomorrow, that adrenaline will kick in and help avoid those bathroom breakdowns. This is arguably not the best long term strategy, but it's tremendously effective.

I was motivated to write about this somewhat mundane topic because of two articles in my fancy new BMED Kindle blog.  The first stated that "Group Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia Can Reduce Suicidal Thoughts," and asserted that a shocking 21% of those who suffer from insomnia have had suicidal thoughts. The other concluded that "Good Sleepers Have Better Quality of Life and Less Depression," identifying good sleepers as those who sleep between 6 and 9 hours per night (interestingly, those who got more sleep had similar problems to those who got too little).

When we think about mental health treatments, we think about medication, therapy, and dramatic changes in our points of view, from radical acceptance to forgiveness to reaching back to past wounds and patching them up or putting ourselves back together. But sometimes, it's the little things that can make a huge difference: getting a run in after work or snoozing for an extra hour if your mind and body need it. Today's a perfect example: I had a half hour between dinner and work, and without thinking, I put on my running shoes and went on a quick, hard 15 minute run. I felt like I pushed the reset button. At dinner, I commiserated with a friend struggling with a serious chronic illness and was impressed by the fact that she precisely understood the amount of rest her body needed, as well as the necessary substitutes when she didn't get it. We left the restaurant at precisely 9pm so that she could get home and go to bed. While I may have the same insights about myself as she does, I'm not great at turning them into action.

It takes more willpower to tell a friend that it's time for bed than it does to take a few white pills each day; setting limits on my daily routine is something that I still struggle with. It's much harder to cut social plans short or cancel them altogether because you need to catch up on your sleep than it is to sneak off to take a few pills at work. As usual, there's a paradox here: the seeming "quick fixes" are often the hardest to implement. On that note, what am I doing publishing this blog at 11:19pm? Why do I think this is a better use of my time than sleeping, than letting my body get the rest it obviously needs? The battles our mind rages against our bodies might be the subject of another post, but now, it's time for bed.