The Emergency Insomnia Plan

I had a horrible bout of insomnia the other night.  I woke up at twelve-thirty to the sound of my cat running madly around upstairs, and somehow I didn’t manage to go back to sleep until about five in the morning.  This is not a new problem for me.  I’ve been an insomniac for much of my adult life – I remember having a long run of early-morning insomnia during the 1980s, when I tried to solve the problem by getting out of bed at three or four or whatever time I woke up and going for long walks in my neighborhood.     

My insomnia has actually gotten a lot better since then and I do manage to sleep through most nights. (I always feel like a baby when I say that.)  Still, I do sometimes have times when I wake up in the night, I start thinking about something, and pretty soon my think button is stuck on and I’m lying there for hour after hour thinking, thinking, thinking, though not necessarily bad thoughts – I often solve creative problems, or I think affectionately about the people I love, or I have insights about my own psychology.  It’s actually quite enjoyable, or it could be if I could stop worrying about how awful I’m going to feel the following day, obsessing about how hard whatever I’m supposed to do the following is going to be on so little sleep, and trying to make myself go back to sleep.   Over the years I’ve tried various solutions and other people have suggested various solutions, but the truth is, as I’ve learned over the long run, I’m mostly powerless over my insomnia, and the more I try to manage or control it the worse it is. 

But I’m not powerless over what I do on the day after I’ve had insomnia, when I invariably feel awful as a result of lack of sleep.  I need a lot of sleep compared to most people.  I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I need nine hours but it’s true, and if I get less, even seven hours, which is supposed to be the norm and which some people consider a lot, I feel grumpy, unhappy, and seriously unmotivated.  Even bending over to pick up a paperclip off the floor can feel like an unmanageable chore – it’s not that I can’t do it or think I can’t do it, but that I don’t want to do it.   

In the old days, I tried to push my way through a normal day’s work no matter how little sleep I got the night before, and/or I would feel guilty if I didn’t. This was a bad combination with the I-can’t-even-pick-up-a-paperclip-off-the-floor feeling.   I invariably ended up getting overwhelmed or frustrated or making myself sick or having a fight with my partner or something worse.   Now that I’m harnessing time, I don’t try to make myself have a normal day after I’ve had too little sleep.  I’m a lot more realistic about what I can and can’t do these days, and I work with time to try to feel as good as I possibly can at all times, to be nice to myself instead of mean to myself.  I harness time to get past the feeling that I must hurry all the time, that I should be doing such and such; I harness time to let go of guilt and stress, to get to a place where I can relax and rest, and where I’m super-productive.

So what I do now, on days when I’ve had insomnia the night before, is institute my emergency insomnia plan.  I make the decision to scale way back on what I’m going to do on that day.  I look at my list and ask myself what the bare minimum is that I can get away with doing, and then I plan to do that.  And I postpone everything else.  I plan when I’m going to do whatever I postponed, finding spots when I can fit it in during the rest of the week, and sometimes sending emails or making phone calls to arrange alternative meetings or tell people when I’m going to do what. That way I can rest during my emergency insomnia day without worrying that something’s falling through the cracks, that someone will be mad at me, or that I’m getting hopelessly behind.

Of course, not everyone has as much flexibility in their jobs or their lives as I do, as a self-employed writing coach with no kids.  But I’m convinced that there are ways to create emergency insomnia plans no matter what your situation is.  If you have a full- or part-time job, instituting an emergency insomnia plan may mean calling in sick for a day.  Or it may mean going to work and cutting down on what you expect yourself to accomplish that day, if you have the kind of job where you can do that.  It may seem like you simply can’t afford to call in sick or scale back at work, but that may be your guilt talking to you more than reality.  In my experience, doing less or taking time off when you’re really tired or feeling burned-out can pay off enormously, whereas forcing yourself to keep going under those circumstances can end up costing more than what would’ve been lost if you’d simply taken a bit of time off.  

            There are all sorts of variations on insomnia as the reason for making an emergency insomnia plan.  You may be sick or feeling slightly under the weather, or you may be just plain tired after a long work week, or have guests staying at your house or whatever.  When one has kids the possible reasons for emergency insomnia plan days are endless:  A sick child may be at home needing special attention, or all of your kids may be home for spring break or for a snow day.  When kids are involved, it may be relatively easy to institute an emergency insomnia plan because we have to be there for them, but it may be harder to do when it’s just ourselves who needs extra care and attention.  And the more people who are counting on us to do everything on our list and then some, who might get upset or be inconvenienced if we don’t, the harder it may be. 

Still, I’ve noticed that often all it takes, at least mostly, is making the decision to take a day off or scale back.  It may take a bit of work to arrive at the decision – we may need to struggle a bit with our inner should-saying voice, consider whether any real bad thing will happen if we postpone the items on our to-do list for one day or a few hours – but once we do make the decision most of the work is done.  Now all we have to do stick to the decision and, if it’s appropriate, tell others involved what we’ll be doing or not doing (although not necessarily why).  

And, most importantly, we have to take the time off or scale way back without feeling anxious or guilty, without torturing ourselves with shoulds.  We need to rest our minds as well as our bodies when we’re taking time off.  This too will probably take a conscious decision, a decision to put aside for the moment all thoughts of what we should or could be doing instead of resting.  As with most things in life, what you do or don’t do is less important than how you feel while you’re doing it.  If you let them, emergency insomnia days can turn into lovely opportunities for resting, catching up on your reading, and taking care of yourself in other ways.

That’s what happened to me the other day, the day after I had my twelve-thirty to five a.m. insomnia.  I postponed my two coaching dates (it so happened I had a couple of openings on the following two days and it all worked out perfectly for everyone), and I spent the day resting, reading my novel, raking a few leaves on my lawn, and watching three episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs on my laptop.  I had a thoroughly enjoyable day.  And – since one of the main things that keep me awake at night is the fear of how badly I’m going to feel tomorrow because I’ve gotten so little sleep – I believe I actively decreased my chances of having insomnia in the future.  Next time I’m wide awake in the night I’ll just think about what a good day I’m going to have the next day after I cancel everything I have to do, and then I’ll probably go right back to sleep.

                                                               -- Mary Allen