Right there with you. Dreading bedtime every night. Averaging 4-5 hours of sleep at the most. Zombie-walking through my afternoons from fatigue. I love learning that it's not abnormal! Maybe the wellness sleep shamers can get on board...
I think I'm just going to embrace it lol. Just get up and not lie there agonizing over sleep. Coincidentally, I am sleeping better the last few nights.
I blogged about the 4 steps described within that changed me from a life-long insomniac to a person that never mentions insomnia anymore, because those 4 steps really work. You already touched on it: It's about changing our minds and judgments about sleep. And its fabulous.
The key starter for me was realizing that I've never died or was unable to function from a lack of sleep, so ... not getting sleep must not be that big of a problem. How I thought about it, though, was. So, I followed the steps and changed it up, and I'm no longer an insomniac.
Thank you for this link, Paula. It was helpful and hits on what I'm slowly realizing and actualizing. My mom has the most extreme insomnia I've ever seen and so it's always been present in my mind, especially as my sleep patterns gets closer to hers as I age. I think my anxiety also stems from the cognitive decline that research saids is accelerated through lack of sleep. My dad has alzheimers, so it's a big fear of mine.
I can understand the fear. For nearly 20 years I've been concerned about heart problems as my deeply loved grandmother died of heart failure, as did my biological father. I was always out of breath, couldn't walk even slight inclines, heart was always racing over one thing or another, including foods. My concern really ate up some mental real estate, which is not good for health. Turned out I never had a heart problem, despite being genetically predisposed. I had a lung problem, but also a magnesium deficiency and polyneuropathy that is being treated with gabapentin. Between that video I shared, taking magnesium, and gaba, all sleep problems have mostly vanished. The latter two also slowed down my speedy brain.
I share this stuff about magnesium and gaba, for you. It's really helped tone down the anxiety that was also growing over time.
I'm glad I discovered these things in the order that I did, so that I could see how my judgment about sleep was affecting me. And once that was clear, I could see how magnesium was affecting my sleep. It was so impactful, I wrote a PSA that I'll share for that reason: https://www.paulasbodyshop.com/blog/quality-of-health-depends-on-magnesium. Then, I got to experience the wow of gaba slowing my brain down, which told me that it had gotten too fast as I aged. Aging does funny things to us.
This is all a bit personal to be sharing, but on the other hand, if it helps others, it is more than worth it.
You're too good of a person and a very good writer with important insights to share with the world, it's more than worth it if I can help you sleep better with less anxiety about your future. And if I may ... (((hugs)))
I really appreciate that, Paula. Thank you for so much for sharing. We do really need to compare notes, share and/or commiserate with each other because the medical community can give us so little information. I am taking magnesium, among other supplements. This year has really been the year where I am having to confront health issues, so much of which is exasperated by stress. I think I've turned a corner on sleep this week though. Not really stressing about it! A big step.
Silly me ... my point in communicating about the gabapentin was key to sleep, too: I started sleeping deep for the first time since my teens! Kind of blew me away. I looked up foods high in gaba, only to discover that I don't tolerate them very well, but the medication, which is synthetic, I do. Go figure. (These things amuse me.) And yes, the stress of these particular times is outrageous and can very much interfere with sleep, especially if one happens to be empathic, hence feeling the stress from others, too.
No, I mean, it actually has been really helpful; for a long time I didn't stress about getting back to sleep the way I used to. It's just that now I have gotten myself into a pattern (not unrelated to having a favorite table in a coffee shop that opens at 6:30am) in which I am really dependent on having a couple of super-productive hours first thing in the morning in order to get certain kinds of work done. Probably I just need to retire hahahahaha...
I recommend retirement or semi retirement hahaaa. Sleep anxiety, since I don't have a set start time or meetings to attend to anymore, has lessened, as bad as my stress about sleeping still persists. I need to still work on it more. I'm just going to embrace my sleep interludes and not fight it anymore. I think this is the way.
I know what you mean. On nights before work, the witching hour often intrudes on my sleep. Sometimes as a proper worker bee I just head out ridiculously early. After all, as a Project Manager, the only time I get any focused time is when noone else is in the office.
Well, I used to do that until my liver infection. Given how much other people overwork more than I do, I'm not sure if that was the cause, but it #capitalism (even when you enjoy the work) didn't help.
Absolutely! I'm getting better at triaging work and letting things slide into tomorrow. FFS, I took a government job for a better work life balance...and it IS better...but frankly my current overwhelm proves that things are utterly horrific in private practice!
Julia, a reader upthread linked to this Ted Talk and I found it reconfirming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3hAOIAfD6c. Of course, I don't know how long it will take last, but I'm starting to sleep better this week. I hope it gets better for you too.
yes yes yes. Very common. We lose melatonin, estrogen, and progesterone. I wish I can say it gets better after menopause but it hasn't. It's a new era of sleep(lessness).
Ah yes, the witching hour of 3am-ish to 5am ish. I'm curious, do you also get extremely sleepy around 3pm? That has always been the time when I suddenly get the most tired and in need of a nap, especially if I haven't been getting enough sleep at night. My normal sleep rhythm would be to stay up late, wake up at sunrise, and then nap in the late afternoon, but as you stated, the world has specific times designated for sleeping and waking, so I've always had to go against this.
Another challenge for me with the middle of the night waking, is having a partner that just wants you to go back to sleep. I find that if I read long-form articles or stories, I can fall back to sleep sooner, but I can only do that if I hide the fact that I'm awake from my husband, so either I lie there in the dark thinking thinking thinking and hoping to fall back to sleep, or hide the phone awkwardly under the covers, and try not to get caught, which isn't all that relaxing.
I'm not sleepy at 3am that's the problem. I have this bad habit of falling asleep on the couch many nights at 10ish and then waking up at 1:30. Then I'll go back to bed, but most times this is when I'll be up for hours. I was always a late sleeper with bedtimes at 2am (I always worked up until then because it was the quietest), so the falling asleep on the couch thing has been happening the last couple of years (I've turned into my mother lol).
I can get a more consolidated sleep if I'm still awake and go to bed at 1:30. The partner thing is hard. We've talked about sleeping in separate beds like our parents did just so I could read or yes...I do the same as you, check the phone sometimes under the covers. He sleeps solidly like a rock, and then there's the cat who sleeps on the bed with us. It's so frustrating when everyone is blissfully asleep but you.
I love the idea of second sleep. Easier if a person doesn't have to be functional 9-5 though. I find repeat listening to my favorite podcast helps immensely, it's strangely comforting and relaxing. But so has letting go of any "should" with regard to sleep schedules. We're so hard on ourselves sometimes.
Oh, totally. I think I can really only begin to let go of the anxiety now that I don't work a 9-5 and the kids are gone to college. I used to have a ridiculous morning schedule where I'd wake up with the first kid who had to be out the door by 5:45 am, then go back to sleep and wake up at 7:30 to make sure the 2nd kid was up and getting ready.
It’s a good time. Now that I’m retired, I can indulge the second sleep. Being an auto immune person (RA) I need to be careful about rest. I have rarely had trouble sleeping. Our boys the same. My wife has some of the most jacked up night sleep patterns of all time, an outgrowth of her nursing career (and other stressors I won’t go into.)
The single worst casualty of the pandemic is the death of the 24-hour grocery store. I would save grocery trips until the middle of the night, when I was wide awake between 2-4ish. Now, the only ones open are the over-priced, badly stocked gas station stores. So, I stare at the ceiling most nights during the Devils Hour.
With any luck, I will be in Europe all next year working remotely. My days will be six hours ahead and I can work in the between hours when America is still in the daytime. 😀😀🇩🇰
The whole time I was reading, I thought about how our 9-month old seems to always wake up between 3-4am to toss around before falling back asleep, and then I got to the bit about the newborn sleep cycle...! There are times when I'm also randomly awake at those hours, and I still can't figure out if it's my body responding differently to sleep itself, or if it's just parental instinct ("my baby's probably up so I should listen for cries"). It's interesting to think about how industrialization has changed so many things about our daily lives including how we rest. Thank you for sharing - wishing you peaceful nights ahead.
I think it's a combination of all of it! I was really floored when I read how industrialization changed so many things but it makes sense. I just never put two and two together. And I hope better sleep ahead for you too - 9 months old is still so tiny! Congrats!
For me, Gabriel Orozco’s “3 de Diciembre 2024, 14:06 hrs, Paris, 2025” exhibits organisational principles similar to those that might govern an architectural facade or a town plan.
I was reminded of R. Murray Schafer’s graphic notation.
“R. Murray Schafer (1933–2021), a pioneering Canadian composer and acoustic ecologist, used graphic notation to transcend traditional music scores”, says my AI friend.
I loved this! I stumbled across the segmented sleep concept a while back (I want to say it showed up in Katherine May's 'Wintering' but not 100% sure) and it was so interesting to me! The idea that maybe it's not so weird to be awake for a bit in the middle of the night. In my life as a parent I sort of love / hate the 4am call from my kids' room. It's so hard to pull myself out of bed but laying there with them in that quiet hour — sometimes talking a little, sometimes not — feels really special, and maybe perfectly normal, too.
Wintering has been on my list of books to read! As Ekirch described, having knowledge of this sleep pattern does indeed ease my anxiety a bit. Makes me realize that my sleep isn't *too* dysfunctional. I've always loved late night hours. It started when I had kids too because it was the only time in my day where I had quiet all to myself.
Right there with you. Dreading bedtime every night. Averaging 4-5 hours of sleep at the most. Zombie-walking through my afternoons from fatigue. I love learning that it's not abnormal! Maybe the wellness sleep shamers can get on board...
I think I'm just going to embrace it lol. Just get up and not lie there agonizing over sleep. Coincidentally, I am sleeping better the last few nights.
I've been trying to do that as well. I greet 3am with "hello old friend, what shall we read about on the internet for the next 30 minutes?" 😏
Same. And I think it helps!
I was where you are at. Then I went one step further thanks to a TEDx video that is hard to come by, so I'll share here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3hAOIAfD6c
I blogged about the 4 steps described within that changed me from a life-long insomniac to a person that never mentions insomnia anymore, because those 4 steps really work. You already touched on it: It's about changing our minds and judgments about sleep. And its fabulous.
The key starter for me was realizing that I've never died or was unable to function from a lack of sleep, so ... not getting sleep must not be that big of a problem. How I thought about it, though, was. So, I followed the steps and changed it up, and I'm no longer an insomniac.
Thank you for this link, Paula. It was helpful and hits on what I'm slowly realizing and actualizing. My mom has the most extreme insomnia I've ever seen and so it's always been present in my mind, especially as my sleep patterns gets closer to hers as I age. I think my anxiety also stems from the cognitive decline that research saids is accelerated through lack of sleep. My dad has alzheimers, so it's a big fear of mine.
I can understand the fear. For nearly 20 years I've been concerned about heart problems as my deeply loved grandmother died of heart failure, as did my biological father. I was always out of breath, couldn't walk even slight inclines, heart was always racing over one thing or another, including foods. My concern really ate up some mental real estate, which is not good for health. Turned out I never had a heart problem, despite being genetically predisposed. I had a lung problem, but also a magnesium deficiency and polyneuropathy that is being treated with gabapentin. Between that video I shared, taking magnesium, and gaba, all sleep problems have mostly vanished. The latter two also slowed down my speedy brain.
I share this stuff about magnesium and gaba, for you. It's really helped tone down the anxiety that was also growing over time.
I'm glad I discovered these things in the order that I did, so that I could see how my judgment about sleep was affecting me. And once that was clear, I could see how magnesium was affecting my sleep. It was so impactful, I wrote a PSA that I'll share for that reason: https://www.paulasbodyshop.com/blog/quality-of-health-depends-on-magnesium. Then, I got to experience the wow of gaba slowing my brain down, which told me that it had gotten too fast as I aged. Aging does funny things to us.
This is all a bit personal to be sharing, but on the other hand, if it helps others, it is more than worth it.
You're too good of a person and a very good writer with important insights to share with the world, it's more than worth it if I can help you sleep better with less anxiety about your future. And if I may ... (((hugs)))
I really appreciate that, Paula. Thank you for so much for sharing. We do really need to compare notes, share and/or commiserate with each other because the medical community can give us so little information. I am taking magnesium, among other supplements. This year has really been the year where I am having to confront health issues, so much of which is exasperated by stress. I think I've turned a corner on sleep this week though. Not really stressing about it! A big step.
Silly me ... my point in communicating about the gabapentin was key to sleep, too: I started sleeping deep for the first time since my teens! Kind of blew me away. I looked up foods high in gaba, only to discover that I don't tolerate them very well, but the medication, which is synthetic, I do. Go figure. (These things amuse me.) And yes, the stress of these particular times is outrageous and can very much interfere with sleep, especially if one happens to be empathic, hence feeling the stress from others, too.
Ah, yes, I remember the relief I felt when I first learned about "second sleep." Enjoy it while it lasts...
well that doesn't sound too promising!
No, I mean, it actually has been really helpful; for a long time I didn't stress about getting back to sleep the way I used to. It's just that now I have gotten myself into a pattern (not unrelated to having a favorite table in a coffee shop that opens at 6:30am) in which I am really dependent on having a couple of super-productive hours first thing in the morning in order to get certain kinds of work done. Probably I just need to retire hahahahaha...
I recommend retirement or semi retirement hahaaa. Sleep anxiety, since I don't have a set start time or meetings to attend to anymore, has lessened, as bad as my stress about sleeping still persists. I need to still work on it more. I'm just going to embrace my sleep interludes and not fight it anymore. I think this is the way.
Absolutely! Those bookshelves are not going to rearrange themselves.
I know what you mean. On nights before work, the witching hour often intrudes on my sleep. Sometimes as a proper worker bee I just head out ridiculously early. After all, as a Project Manager, the only time I get any focused time is when noone else is in the office.
Well, I used to do that until my liver infection. Given how much other people overwork more than I do, I'm not sure if that was the cause, but it #capitalism (even when you enjoy the work) didn't help.
It didn't help! It was a wakeup call. Take care of yourself, Justus. I've learned that after a certain age, I am not as invincible anymore.
Absolutely! I'm getting better at triaging work and letting things slide into tomorrow. FFS, I took a government job for a better work life balance...and it IS better...but frankly my current overwhelm proves that things are utterly horrific in private practice!
Fellow insomniac here. I haven't found a good solution for this, but I do enjoy the second sleep when it happens!
Hello fellow insomniac 😀. I hope better sleep finds you, but if not, you are in very good company.
A beautiful entry. Your photos evoke an Edward Hopper-esque eternal twilight, the witching hour, etc.
My sleep has been more troubled over the past few months and, for many reasons, these revelations are deeply comforting
Julia, a reader upthread linked to this Ted Talk and I found it reconfirming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3hAOIAfD6c. Of course, I don't know how long it will take last, but I'm starting to sleep better this week. I hope it gets better for you too.
Amazing, I will watch. Relieving the guilt from not sleeping through the night might be enough benefit alone
The waking at 3am started when I started going through perimenopause, I’m just so tired! 😴
yes yes yes. Very common. We lose melatonin, estrogen, and progesterone. I wish I can say it gets better after menopause but it hasn't. It's a new era of sleep(lessness).
Ah yes, the witching hour of 3am-ish to 5am ish. I'm curious, do you also get extremely sleepy around 3pm? That has always been the time when I suddenly get the most tired and in need of a nap, especially if I haven't been getting enough sleep at night. My normal sleep rhythm would be to stay up late, wake up at sunrise, and then nap in the late afternoon, but as you stated, the world has specific times designated for sleeping and waking, so I've always had to go against this.
Another challenge for me with the middle of the night waking, is having a partner that just wants you to go back to sleep. I find that if I read long-form articles or stories, I can fall back to sleep sooner, but I can only do that if I hide the fact that I'm awake from my husband, so either I lie there in the dark thinking thinking thinking and hoping to fall back to sleep, or hide the phone awkwardly under the covers, and try not to get caught, which isn't all that relaxing.
I'm not sleepy at 3am that's the problem. I have this bad habit of falling asleep on the couch many nights at 10ish and then waking up at 1:30. Then I'll go back to bed, but most times this is when I'll be up for hours. I was always a late sleeper with bedtimes at 2am (I always worked up until then because it was the quietest), so the falling asleep on the couch thing has been happening the last couple of years (I've turned into my mother lol).
I can get a more consolidated sleep if I'm still awake and go to bed at 1:30. The partner thing is hard. We've talked about sleeping in separate beds like our parents did just so I could read or yes...I do the same as you, check the phone sometimes under the covers. He sleeps solidly like a rock, and then there's the cat who sleeps on the bed with us. It's so frustrating when everyone is blissfully asleep but you.
I love the idea of second sleep. Easier if a person doesn't have to be functional 9-5 though. I find repeat listening to my favorite podcast helps immensely, it's strangely comforting and relaxing. But so has letting go of any "should" with regard to sleep schedules. We're so hard on ourselves sometimes.
Oh, totally. I think I can really only begin to let go of the anxiety now that I don't work a 9-5 and the kids are gone to college. I used to have a ridiculous morning schedule where I'd wake up with the first kid who had to be out the door by 5:45 am, then go back to sleep and wake up at 7:30 to make sure the 2nd kid was up and getting ready.
It’s a good time. Now that I’m retired, I can indulge the second sleep. Being an auto immune person (RA) I need to be careful about rest. I have rarely had trouble sleeping. Our boys the same. My wife has some of the most jacked up night sleep patterns of all time, an outgrowth of her nursing career (and other stressors I won’t go into.)
Can relate to your wife. My sleep patterns are so ridiculous. Meanwhile my spouse sleeps 8 hours a night, every night.
The single worst casualty of the pandemic is the death of the 24-hour grocery store. I would save grocery trips until the middle of the night, when I was wide awake between 2-4ish. Now, the only ones open are the over-priced, badly stocked gas station stores. So, I stare at the ceiling most nights during the Devils Hour.
With any luck, I will be in Europe all next year working remotely. My days will be six hours ahead and I can work in the between hours when America is still in the daytime. 😀😀🇩🇰
I'm really all about embracing this "watch" period but I can't imagine actually leaving the house, let alone go shopping lol!
The whole time I was reading, I thought about how our 9-month old seems to always wake up between 3-4am to toss around before falling back asleep, and then I got to the bit about the newborn sleep cycle...! There are times when I'm also randomly awake at those hours, and I still can't figure out if it's my body responding differently to sleep itself, or if it's just parental instinct ("my baby's probably up so I should listen for cries"). It's interesting to think about how industrialization has changed so many things about our daily lives including how we rest. Thank you for sharing - wishing you peaceful nights ahead.
I think it's a combination of all of it! I was really floored when I read how industrialization changed so many things but it makes sense. I just never put two and two together. And I hope better sleep ahead for you too - 9 months old is still so tiny! Congrats!
Your closing sentence is everything
☺️
For me, Gabriel Orozco’s “3 de Diciembre 2024, 14:06 hrs, Paris, 2025” exhibits organisational principles similar to those that might govern an architectural facade or a town plan.
I was reminded of R. Murray Schafer’s graphic notation.
“R. Murray Schafer (1933–2021), a pioneering Canadian composer and acoustic ecologist, used graphic notation to transcend traditional music scores”, says my AI friend.
For example, Epitaph for Moonlight: https://tinyurl.com/Epitaph4Moonlight
I am writing this just after 4am. No, it’s now just after 5am. Maybe I’ll just get up early.
Some of Schafer's graphic notation is wild, and they are all beautiful from a graphic standpoint. And 5am is absolutely a respectable time to wake up!
I loved this! I stumbled across the segmented sleep concept a while back (I want to say it showed up in Katherine May's 'Wintering' but not 100% sure) and it was so interesting to me! The idea that maybe it's not so weird to be awake for a bit in the middle of the night. In my life as a parent I sort of love / hate the 4am call from my kids' room. It's so hard to pull myself out of bed but laying there with them in that quiet hour — sometimes talking a little, sometimes not — feels really special, and maybe perfectly normal, too.
Wintering has been on my list of books to read! As Ekirch described, having knowledge of this sleep pattern does indeed ease my anxiety a bit. Makes me realize that my sleep isn't *too* dysfunctional. I've always loved late night hours. It started when I had kids too because it was the only time in my day where I had quiet all to myself.
Yes! I was a wee baby night owl, too.