How often it is that the silence of the night is shattered by an insomniac’s activity. Tossing and turning, a trip to the washroom, a glass of water, more tossing, more turning, the clock only gradually eats up those precious few moments to relax.
Roughly a third of the people living in North America share, at some point, the discomfort of insomnia.
It comes from any number of sources. Depression and anxiety are prime ones, as are poor nutritional habits such as grabbing a bedtime snack or an extra cup of coffee before turning in.
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The pressures of daily living, not to mention the fear that the hailstorm will strike home, can keep you awake as do the excitement of new prospects, various medications or the fear that personal illness is close at hand.
Despite the hopeless feeling in the middle of the night that nothing can be done to help with insomnia, in fact, some changes in habits will go a long way to challenge it.
The most important is to treat bedtime as a moment of respect in your daily routines. Just hopping into the sack is probably not going to be useful.
All of us need bedtime routines similar to those we insist on for our children. We need regular times to start slowing down the day. We need to reduce our activity levels, perhaps just reading or listening to calming music before retiring to a bed, and then to retire to a bed that is neat and inviting, in a room that is less than cluttered.
Hopefully the television set will have been turned off long before the ritual begins.
I know that various responsibilities run interference with nighttime routines. Calving time is never predictable, harvesting and seeding are demanding, and who knows when you are going to have to haul a load to the elevator?
If the sleep struggle sets in and settling down is too difficult, it is best to get right out of bed and sit in another room. Once the routines have been established, the number of times you are unable to fall or stay asleep should diminish.
Meditation and relaxation exercises are available on your computer, and mental health counsellors have various techniques to teach you to overcome insomnia. Your physician can help, should you want a medication to help you sleep.
Whichever method you choose, remember that these are simply supplements to your routines, not replacements for them.
A quiet evening at home is important for all of us. Sleep brings with it the strength of the optimist, and life looks so much better when we are rested.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor, living and working in west-central Saskatchewan who has taught social work for two universities. Mail correspondence in care of Western Producer, Box 2500, Saskatoon, Sask., S7K 2C4 or e-mail jandrews@producer.com.
