Yesterday (Monday, Day #8) was my most difficult day yet. A terrible night's sleep on Sunday evening eve, too much dairy in the dinner, the room too stuffy, coffee, chocolate, and all of these, I know, meaning little in relation to feeling stuck again over making a decision, any decision. I was impatient, and felt that familar anxiety heading down into Falmouth town (I'm staying with friends) of not being able to sit still and not being able to go anywhere or do anything, and then the same old reaction: buy a load of sugary stuff to eat.
Back at home then, lying down and in and out of a very light sleep for about an hour, and struggling to know if I should pick up the laptop or not and write. And in the end I did, because I had stuff rolling around in my head. And in about an hour I'd written 3,600 words of stuff, you know that stuff that is stuck in the head and needs to get out. It was prompted by this phrase:
What I need to do is ‘lovingly accept the fears and vulnerabilities which resulted [e.g. and still carry with me now] from the pain and disappointment you suffered in childhood and adolescence’. I will then be better able to ‘deal with the feelings that are so depressing at the moment’.
The interesting thing was not so much new lessons from a stressed childhood (good for writing, according to Doris Lessing, and I can't disagree) but the recognition and acceptance that the behaviours now still stem from there. What was useful was to think about my behaviour, think about the thoughts depressing me, and then 'correct' them with more accurate (and sometimes just more positive) thoughts.
So I focused on this question: what is depressing me now? And I realised it was being stuck over making decisions. Indecision. Uncertainty of how I am feeling, and how I feel paralysed in making the wrong decision. And so I looked back at my childhood and adolescence and noted that, actually, 1) I was left to make all my own decisions with very little parental input (e.g. which college to go to, what A-levels to do), except for 2) lots of criticism from my father for constantly making 'wrong' decisions.
There was some support from my mum and step-father, Colin. Although this was generally subdued,and quiet, and that we never communicated about these choices. I can see from here, of course, that mum was struggling, and dad too. But that doesn't make it easier for that child, just for me now as the adult to forgive. The pain and disappointment was real and has its legacy in the pain and vulnerability around making decisions that I feel now.
So. My task is to accept that pain and vulnerability now, see how I would act in these ways if I had been brought up in that way (from before I was even 10 making many decisions on my own, or judging my parents' decisions to not be in my best interests, how could they be if they never spoke to me about them or asked me what I wanted?; and then having a hyper-critical father; and also about the unspoken, the modelling of their 'wrong' decisions in being together, in having us chidlren, which were then also expicitly said to have been quite evil decisions, e.g. my dad wanting to ruin my mum's career; me being a 'child of hate'). With all this as a constant way of life growing up, no wonder I have difficulty making decisions now -- when I am in a difficult emotional place, such as deciding if a relationship is right for me or not.
So, I spent a lot of last night just accepting this. Accepting this is where I am at, and the child is still feeling these things, these criticisms and paralysis. And that's ok. We are all child and adult. The thing for me to do now is to care for that child as the adult. And slowly move to the adult position. And that's ok, because I can still act creatively and maturely and well because, you know what, I have learnt a lot, I am mature and thoughtful and good in many situations. I have support and I have friends and I have a safe centre (inside me).
I saw more clearly that changing your thoughts really does change your feelings, and then your actions; that thoughts lead to feelings. Instincts can and do come first, e.g. instinctual reactions, but thoughts quickly get into this (e.g. the difference between Thinking Fast and Slow, as Daniel Kahneman says) and then feelings emerge or respond to those thoughts... so changing the thoughts, thinking of them more accurately, not being governed by the negative or ‘incorrect’ thought... and, also interesting, it doesn’t really matter if the thought is ‘true’ or not but that my reaction, my thoughts on the subject, can change my feelings. Useful to bear in mind: it is the lesson of Buddhism after all that it is always us that are responsible for how we think, feel and act.
One of the surprising things that came out of this was, thinking of myself as that stressed child, I wrote down, without even really thinking about it, of letting that child sleep. Telling him he's safe, and that it'll be ok, and all this fretting over a decision isn't worth it, everyone makes 'wrong' decisions, that there aren't really any 'wrong' decisions, as long as you're acting honestly and wishing to do no harm.
And, along with the Temazepam, I suppose, and the calm evening, and having flushed all of this stuff out and onto the page (inspired very much by reading the horrific and tragic story of two men kept in solitary confinement for 40-years for a crime there is no proof of them committing) and how 'reading and writing' kept one of them sane... then, I thought, what privilege I have to sort this out. What freedom.
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I come into Pret in the morning and because I’m not in the middle of writing then I panic about getting started, about what I’m going to write. I know this is indivisible from the sleeplessness—or is it? Although last night I slept well, from 1125 to 430, five hours, and then another hour—although with the help of 30mg of Temazepam—and yet it doesn’t matter, does it, what I write?
His subject matter was a woman, LJ, who lived in Canada from the 1910s to the 1970s, and whose relative handed her materials, her journals where she wrote ‘my poetry’ which was all in rhyme; it was prole art: the poetry, the creativity, of an ‘uneducated’ working-class woman. There was one particular poem about not being able to sleep for all the things running around in her head—it touched me particularly for its simple clarity; and also for the articulation of the power of writing to ‘clear’ the mind to help LJ get back to sleep.
What was important, for Professor Kelly, was LJ’s use of writing as an ongoing making and remaking of herself in relation to the cultural and political events surrounding her life. She spoke of ecological and cultural matters—the dirt of the city, the college education of her children and how it separated it from her. She wrote with no desire to publish; but to express, to make sense of herself and her life through narrative. Isn’t that what matters?
One of Professor Kelly’s strongest polemical points was that the academy belittles and ignores the lives of people like LJ, and do not consider her work Literature (with a capital L). For Kelly, this was ethically irresponsible. A member of the audience asked Professor Kelly why?—why was did it matter to most people what small coterie of writers or canons the small academy focused on anyway.
His answer, said before and after, was about the power of the institutions of high culture: and if I can paraphrase, it is about the privileging of one form of life experience (generally white, middle-to-upper class, rich, Western, male) over others, what Lauren Berlant calls the ‘non-dominant’ forms of life, in which I particularly include animals and flora, but which, in the humanities, generally refers to women, ethnic groups, the dispossessed, the disabled, the working and lower classes, the poor. Why are there thousands of monographs on T.S. Eliot and yet only two papers on Catherine Cookson in the whole MLA archive: Catherine Cookson, whose trust funded the 'Popular and the Middlebrow Conference' that had taken part that day, and who is the most borrowed library author of all time. Do the peoples’ experience of Catherine Cookson, their pleasure in her books (my own grandmother read every single one) not matter?
It is, as I’ve written elsewhere, the question of ‘who matters’ in the public sphere or, as Lauren Berlant puts it, ‘who counts. We are continually in “a political, rhetorical, and economic struggle over who will count as ‘the people’ and how social membership will be measured and valued” (Queen of America: 20) and, as I understood Professor Kelly’s argument, people like LJ count; her writing counts; and we, the academy (or as Professor Kelly put it, ‘them; I’m not one of them anymore’) continue to exclude her.
Why is this? What can be done? I’ve recently conducted a half-dozen interviews with creative writing academics here in the North East for a Paul Hamlyn Artworks project, looking at Arts Practice in Participatory Settings (from public engagement through to community arts projects) and for those engaged in the activity, the drive was nearly always personally-political: whether it be as an active commitment to the struggle against apartheid, the empowerment of women through adult education, or a belief in the power of narrative to advocate for social justice and change.
Two things these academics bemoaned most forcefully:
The lack of funding and the lack of structural support within their universities to proactively carry out and teach ‘participatory arts’
The lack of interest from their students in even their classmates’ narratives; they seem to come in, want feedback on their own work, get graded, and be individually creative.
Where is the belief in the importance of other peoples’ narratives? Particularly those who have not the power, access, opportunity or permission to be heard? An example: one of the lecturers in Creative Writing I interviewed told me about the Refugees Migrant Justice (RMJ), a legal organisation fighting asylum claims, but who have lost their funding (all part of the Big Society?) with no public outcry. “Even as we’re a country waging wars on other foreign territories, asylum seekers come from here for our aid. We blow their country up, they come here and we tell them to fuck off back to their country we’ve blown up. But there’s no outcry about the closure of the RMJ because we don’t know it’s happening. My aim, using writing, is to facilitate a participation for those people, to force on the public a reading, to get their voices heard.”
I was involved in something similar a year or so ago: Alan Lyddiard’s 100 Faces, 100 Stories project, to tell those stories of the ‘non-dominant’ and dispossessed: refugees from other countries who were victims of torture; and the homeless and at-risk of homelessness members of Newcastle’s Crisis Centre, and the Cyrenians. It was a humbling occasion; my stories (of a homeless man/ my missing father) next to those of torture victims; of those who had been through mental illness and were coming out the other side. Their stories and narratives as valid as mine; mine as valid as theirs, regardless of the ‘ability’ or ‘literary’ quality of the writing. My small role was to provide a training session for writers on interviewing subjects who may have difficult stories to tell.
What matters to the writer is the moment of writing. I come back to this. Professor Kelly told us the story of a class of his, all bright and good kids but hard work (‘I was tired of going uphill with this lot’) to whom he gave the set text Paperwork edited by Canadian poet Tom Wayman, and who surprised him by coming in the next class with poems of their own, about their own experiences of work, poking out of their pockets. He took no credit for it, but said that they had ‘found their own way to see the relationship between words and their own experience’. That is: language, writing, structures experience.
It is also, from a more ambivalent perspective, the way in which humans take over the planet. That is why the emphasis throughout the day on the body, from Nicola Humble on the reading body, to the affective experiences of what makes the body active, must also be related to the phenomenology, the bodily experience, of narrating, and of writing. My own feeling is that both reading and writing can be a recruitment to better, more ethical, more responsible ways of living. Both are creative. Both can be haptic, even ludic. The feeling of writing; this is what I’m exploring.
(And I haven’t thought about sleep for 37 minutes. This is good. The lesson from the First Sweep, which I re-read last night, is about focusing on the day, life, and not the sleeplessness.)
When he rules the world, Professor Kelly told us, there would be no departments of Literature (with a capital L) but departments of reading and writing (lower case, I assumed). They would be departments I would like to work in.
I was at a conference today at my university, where the subjects of 'the common writer' and the relationship of the body to personal life loomed up as important motifs. While sitting there I was conscious of my mind wandering to my own situation--the lack of sleep.
I'm really struggling to get back into writing about this. That's because, I know, overall I am burnt out by writing. My creative mind isn't quite back yet. So, if it doesn't feel right, then keep off it. Take the break, extend it. You've got time. I was going to write about the responsibility I need to take for how I feel. But first of all I need to take responsibility for giving myself some rest.
So, I was riding the bus into town to go to the cafe and read, or perhaps riding it back home (a funny morning of chasing around doctors' appointments and oil breather valves for the motor; by the way, I'm on temazepam tonight to break the poor sleep cycle) when it occured to me, as I've written below in the 'better' thoughts column that I need to approach this problem differently.
In the first sweep, May-Aug 2011, I was part of a PhD study at the Glasgow Sleep Centre which was looking at adherence to the bed restriction element of the sleep treatment that they use with patients. As such, it was mainly a behavioural treatment, although it overlapped with the cognitive aspects of the CBT package. This time round I'm applying the cognitive part. It mainly revolves around 'changing your mind' as Colin Espie says in the book. Critically, as most people now know, the words you use determine your perspectives and thoughts about any situation. So to begin with, the aim is to look at my thoughts about sleep and sleeplessness, and then to change them; for those changed 'perspectives' (written down) to then change how I feel about sleep and sleeplessness. It's a critical part of the process in aiding long-term and permanent(!) change to automatic sleeping.
That is: coming at it from another direction. As Sanjoy Mahajan puts it of Richard Feynman's approach to scientific discovery: "Feynman wanted to turn over the idea, to see why it was true, from any angle that he could find."
So, anywhere, all the thoughts I could muster about sleep in one go. And now to carry around this form with me in the next week to note them down whenever they come up. I've just put one example here.
My thoughts about sleep and sleeplessness: That I use it as an excuse to not have to deal with the life situation that triggered it.
How this makes me feel (and so act): Helpless about the life situation but also protected from it
A more accurate version of my thoughts could be: Insomnia is a real and overcome-able medical condition triggered by life events. One you have used in the past, perhaps, to avoid dealing with things—but not a behaviour you need repeat.
How this version makes me feel: More positive, also more realistic about needing to be honest with myself and others.
"I want to reassure you that I am telling you this [don't let relapses discourage you] because it is quite normal for the process of sleep change to be an uneven path. Try to think of this as normal and you will find it much easier to deal with."
- Colin Espie, Overcoming Insomnia, p.90
And so I come to the second sweep. I completed the first sweep May-July 2011, when my sleep, and relationship to sleep, improved greatly, and changed, for good, forever. My attitude towards sleep became more normal, automatic, and far less anxious. Even a run of a few night's sleep used to be enough to drive me to despair. After my first sweep of using the Glasgow Sleep Centre's programme (mainly the behavioural changes associated with sleep restriction and sleep hygiene) I lost the anxiety and could get generally restorative, replenishing sleep (with about a maximum block of 5+1/2hrs from falling asleep, and an average of 7hrs overall).
But then a couple of life pressures brought on a relapse. It's important to note what these were:
Pushing forward with 'two jobs' in writing a novel as part of a PhD, and doing the 'day job' and a different body of research; basically, moving from deadline to deadline to deadline without a break from January to March 2012
Injuries which stopped me running--very much to do with the above and sitting down for 10-hours a day and not stretching properly
A crisis point in a relationship
These all coordinated around a point in mid-March. And I a) stopped sleeping properly at the same time as b) stressing about the relationship and c) being creatively burnt out from 55-days of writing and d) unable to relieve the stress through running.
And so here I am, beginning again... carrying on with sleep change. As Colin Espie says, it's an uneven path. I had thirty years of poor sleep. Now, on the other side, I cannot expect it never to be bad again.
So. There's lots I've already got my head around that will inform this sweep. Such as:
The insomnia keeps me in the position of victim and 'unable to act/decide'
It's not the insomnia: it's a symptom and tool of anxiety
But that the insomnia lays down the vicious circle which depletes the energy to deal with the anxiety
What anxiety? Well. That's for another post. Importantly I just want to mark down what I'm doing here today, in Day #1:
Set sleep window to 1130-600 (expecting four sleep cycles of 90mins each + the half hour of falling asleep and waking up)
Going to get some sleep tablets to break the cycle
Following daily stretching and meditation
AND... following with cognitive as well as the behavioural parts of the programme
The only other thing to do today is to set my sleep goals (final and intermediate steps towards that). I'll do that linking off a page.
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So, in fact, swinging from extreme to extreme and giving up on things is what I’ve always done. And if I really want to learn something from the truism in current circulation (always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”) then I need to do things differently.
Which is not give up. Which is not act so quickly.
Last Sunday (Messy Sleep, Messy Life) had me in a mini-breakdown after three or four very poor nights' sleep. I was in a state -- I just couldn't, couldn't go back to that poor sleep again.
But then, Thursday 1230pm, as I'm filling in the final battery (their word: interesting...) of questions at the Sleep Centre, I'm already aware that my answers ('extremely'; 'very much', 'very poor'; 'strongly agree') are already unrepresentative of the past three months, and how much improved my life, not only my sleep, is. (Perhaps not up to being a healthy sleeper yet. But a little less of an obsessively bad sleeper. In fact, roughly diagnosed as a Non-Restorative Type 2 Insomniac. Certainly Neurological. Difficult to argue not psychological. But diagnosed, and moving on.)
Even so, I'm jotting down the questions and my answers for more clues, yes, more:
Problem areas:
Early, Mid, Late morning (sometimes late afternoon)
Activities of sitting and reading, lying down (jeepers, really?)
Staying asleep is a problem (ditto)
Feeling too hot
No poor sleep in 'social situations' (out with friends, I'm awake. Mostly)
Problem with enthusiam (see above: willing to give it all up again)
And my worst scores on the surveys (the higher the score, the worse the problem):
3s: tense, wound up, restless
2s: slowed down, no enjoyment, loss of interest in appearance, can't see funny side, worry, don't look forward to things, panic, no sitting at ease
1s: not so cheerful
0s: fearful, catastrophising
Worst difficulties with:
- fatigue, at work and with performing, tension, anxiety, sex and intimacy
Three things most affected by sleep:
- mood and attitude towards enjoyment of people and life
- creativity and productivity
- relationships
Is there anything else?
And so even before I'd finished scribbling down these 'findings' from my three months of sleep data collection and treatment, I had my own inkling that my behaviour - 'as obsessive as someone in love... no, infatuated' said my friend K this morning over banana bread - was not very healthy.
And so it turned out (not) to be. That actually, the advice from the sleep centre was:
- It doesn't matter if you've been a poor sleeper for 30 years. What matters now is acting like a good sleeper would (the best way to be a good sleeper is to act like one, no matter past behaviour or how long the sleep problem has been going on). So... THINK like a good sleeper.
- Which means three or four bad night's sleep should not be responded to with a panicked mini-breakdown where all my life's goals are abandoned ('so, you used to be a drama queen and you're not any more?' asked my friend E last Thursday over drinks and tapas at the Salsa Cafe. 'No,' I said, quite confidently, 'not any more.')
- In fact a good sleeper would assess the situation and see it in the context of, say, 12 months or even 1 month. And so, looking at it in three months, this poor episode just before going back to the Glasgow Sleep Centre (yes, just before going back to the Glasgow Sleep Centre) should be taken in context, kept in perspective.
- And a good sleeper would: a) prioritise the issue (here: needing to amount to something) that was stressing me out, and b) get on with life in a decent, careful way. Not compulsively. Not indiscriminately.
Which led to a number of other important insights:
- Actually, the poor sleep of the past three or four days may just as well be with over-tinkering with the sleep window, and that actually jumping from 6hrs 45m to 7hrs 30m was most likely the main cause, because - and this takes some thinkign about, 6hrs 30m (when I was getting the best sleep) is actually all I need. Not the 'average' 8hrs. Blimey.
- And the poor sleep from the past three or four YEARS is almost certainly from over-thinking about sleep.
- And if I focus less on sleep and more on life then my dysfunctional beliefs about sleep (conscious and unconscious) will wane (more on this in the cognitive work to come). Give sleep its due, but only what it is due. Don't think about it.
- Get in a 90-minute wind-down before bed. And use a journal to unload thoughts into, and close the book (physically) before going to bed.
- And if I strengthen the separation between sleep and waking then my overall sleep pattern will continue to improve. So, no sitting on the sofa reading just after I wake up. No working until bedtime. Etc. These are the habits of good sleepers - even if 'good sleepers' can every now and then blur that separation.
And so... yes, possibly the last post, probably the last post, as I need to move away from dwelling on sleep - or at least, my own sleep. But it is, I think, something I will want to write about in a more professional way in the future.
But for now. Well, there it is. Three months of following a bed restriction programme to, I would say 90% of the behavioural time. Which requires, I think, a little celebration. So tonight K and I are going for a quick drink and a Lebanese. Tomorrow E and I something other. And then, a slow Sunday, making jam, baking banana bread, and not, possibly, probably, hopefully, thinking about sleep.
How did it go at the Sleep Centre today? Did they have anything constructive to suggest? Hope you've had a better week,Aileen.
Hello - nice to hear from you. Yes, very constructive. It's always good to speak to people who have experience. Going to write up some notes now - possibly my last post here about it - as one of the key measures of improvement is focusing on (bad) sleep far less. My reaction to poor sleep - stop doing everthying, give up my ambitions - is the reaction of a bad sleeper. The reaction of a healthy sleeper is to have it far more in perspective and think rationally about the causes and workload. There is a part of me that is worried that "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got" but, looking at it again, in fact swinging from extreme to extreme and giving up on things _is_ what I've always done - from the position of an obsessively bad sleeper.
The other key thing from my three months of data is that I may well have reached my optimum sleep window (6hrs 30m) and that trying to get more sleep throws my sleep pattern into mild chaos.
So a good trip, with good people, and myself and C, the other patient, went out and went to GoMA (and saw Elizabeth Price's excellent User Group Disco) and had a glass of wine, and then I had another on the way home in 1st class, and I slept pretty well. :-)
I'm going up to Glasgow on Thursday this week (today's Monday) for the two month follow up with the Glasgow Sleep Centre People. Unfortunately, today, and for the last couple of days, I feel right back where I started: waking up four or five times a night, falling straight into dream sleep, not getting any long blocks of sleep, and getting no slow wave sleep.
Last week I pushed my sleep pattern out from 11-545 to 11-630, as this was the trend before my bad weeks. It worked for a day or two. But it's now just progressively worse -- as it seems to have been for a three or four weeks now. And I feel lost -- I can't see a pattern, I feel the programme's messed up.
At it's worst, I feel more than fed up - tearful, and I just don't want to carry on if this is what life is going to be like. Unable to achieve anything. Unable to live a normal life (have a drink with friends; be supportive and thinking of others; writing). I wake up in the morning already defeated. My sleep is stressed with epic dreams all night long - last night the world was going to explode, and there was one final ship left to catch, which most of us had golden chips/tickets for, but some didn't and it was an apocalyptic fight to hold on to them. There was plenty of other stuff, too, very detailed, but that's the gist of it.
Yesterday morning I woke up miserable and tearful and had to sit down on the sofa for three or four hours and do a big think about what the hell's happened (in life; in the last few weeks) and try to root around into the basic stresses that are leading to this insomnia. Here's what I came up with, in brief:
Three main fears:
Of not amounting to anything (of not being worth anything)
Of dying after an unproductive and unfulfilled life
Of dying
And these lead to:
Trying to please others (amounting to something in their eyes)
Taking on too much (always grabbing new opportunities)
Not living fully--isolating myself
Each of these feeds a restlessness -- and insomnia is the nighttime restlessness. I don't have a problem falling asleep. I seem to be afraid of staying asleep, or too restless to sleep (must be doing something, thinking, working things out, creating).
And yesterday was a good day: took it easy; fought restlessness; did non-mental creative stuff (baking, made jam); and exercised and fought isolation (joined a badminton group). And still slept shit.
And yet I'm sitting here this morning getting tearful as I really don't want to carry on any more. And the thought that comes into my mind is that 'I don't deserve this, I've done nothing wrong'. A childish cry, really: one that comes from the child. Does my insomnia and restless still, really come from this sense of punishment? That I have done something wrong (in my parents' eyes) and so don't amount to anything -- and so to counter that, as I have a strong ego, I've overcompensated, by trying to do too much, and indiscriminately and compulsively grab at new things (new people) to achieve and amount.
Well, yes, probably, that is what happens. And I did map out some ways to counter all this:
Separate out my sense of self-worth from my work (that is, if my work is not amounting to anything, then I think I am not either; this is a model picked up of thinking things are not quite bad/good enough - e.g. the sleep's not quite bad enough to take seriously; my writing is not quite good enough to take seriously... why?)
Celebrate, plan, review, do - particularly celebrate
Expand my being so it isn't crushed by always doing (indiscriminately and compulsively)
Challenge the restlessness: stay at home; don't launch into new ideas
Better boundaries around work and what other people expect of me, and what I feel I 'must' do to keep everyone else happy
Bring better practices in, even if I'm too tired to do so (stretching, yoga, meditation, mindfulness and meditation)
Begin again -- take back the sleep restriction, but follow the other steps too
Take myself seriously - and take the problems seriously (see 1.)
Maybe I need to keep going with this journal. When I was using it before the sleep seemed to be getting better, as it maintained a good focus on the programme and on taking sleep seriously.
Again, the Thursday and Friday are the poorest nights for sleep, as life creeps into the picture. This Thurs/Fri I stayed in what can only be described as the Grand Central Station of city hotels in London for the Spectacular Environmentalisms conference.
Thursday 6hrs 20mins 91% (no block of sleep; conference hotel)
Friday 5hrs 40m 83% (conference hotel, quite a bit of booze)
Saturday 6hrs 04m 93% (5hr block of sleep - shattered, back at home)
Sunday 6hrs 29m 94% (4hr block of sleep)
Monday 6hrs 24m 91% (3 1/4hr block of sleep)
Tuesday 6hrs 19m 94% (3 1/4hr block of sleep)
Wednesday 6hrs 29m 94% (no block)
Even though the sleep efficiency remains high, the sleep consistency (a block of sleep from falling asleep) and quality really started to fade away -- and this following a conference where I come back envigorated and enlivened to do academic work, and -- again -- think I can do all that and write a novel and do a PhD -- again -- and my sleep begins to get progressively worse...
As well as the 'mourning' of the passing of my old house and lifestyle, and the acceptance of a lifestyle more within my means; which is difficult to admit, as it's a reminder of some of the older feelings about 'should've been further along in life than this by now'... but anyway...
So, sleep is getting a little worse. I'm waking up straight away, and then dreaming straight away, as I take on too much in the day.
Three more weeks until Glasgow, so only three or four more posts on this blog.
I'm beginning to see a pattern were Friday nights definitely get the least sleep, and where the blocks of sleep sometimes tumble off to fewer hours.
Thursday 6hrs 24mins 94% (3 1/2hr block of sleep)
Friday 5hrs 59m 85% (moved house, not good sleep)
Saturday 6hrs 19m 94% (3 3/4hr block of sleep)
Sunday 6hrs 24m 94% (2 1/2hr block of sleep)
Monday 6hrs 24m 94% (3 1/4hr block of sleep)
Tuesday 6hrs 19m 94% (4hr block of sleep)
Wednesday 6hrs 19m 94% (3 1/2hr block of sleep)
But then this Friday (1st July) was a house-moving day - and my fear about the neighbours being noisy made me wake up regularly and get generally less time asleep.
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My friend showed me an article from Sept 2010 Elle magazine she'd kept for me. It was by the feminist psychologist and writer Susie Orbach, a summary of her book On Eating.
The article looks at the danger of diets and the need to de-pathologise eating. (My friend gave it to me as I am a terrible eater -- always worried about what I'm eating, never enjoying it, and never eating when hungry, stopping when full).
Of course, I immediately picked up on the straw man of sleep that Orbach throws in to make as a contradistinction from eating:
"As a culture, we have gone mad about the most basic of functions - eating. We don't seem to think about our other natural urges in this way. We don't treat the desire to sleep, for example, as something that has to be policed, sleeping as infrequently as possible, and then worrying that we are going to be out of control and need to surrender to a sleeping binge. We don't compete with one another to sleep less and discuss our anguish about having slept too much. There isn't a stigmatised group that sleeps too little or too frequently."
But of course that's exactly what people, who have a poor relationship with sleep, do. I was policing my sleep (10 minutes this side, then turn over, if not asleep do this, do that); I was (unconsciously) sleeping as little as possible, and indeed did fall into sleeping binges (every third day of a holiday, for example, staying in bed for 24 hours, to try and 'catch up' so that I could be relaxed and enjoy the rest of the holiday).
And in fact, if Orbach sat in on a sleep clinic session, she would see people competing for how little they slept (holding on to their insomnia, in the same way she accurately identifies people holding on to their poor eating patterns). And, as I've just learnt about hypersomnia (which, very interestingly, the friend who gave me the article sometimes suffers from, perhaps unknowingly), people do indeed have anguish about sleeping too much. In fact, it's crippling. I had a conversation with a novelist the other day who was anguished about sleeping for too long. I am always anguished if I sleep past 7am. 7am!
And no--finally--Orbach is correct. There isn't a group stigmatised (externally) for sleeping too little or too much. But that doesn't mean that group isn't there: suffering in terrible silence in the middle of the night.
I've been of no fixed abode now for 10 days (one more to go - then I can go and get my cat from the cattery; I can be in my own space again) and it hasn't too badly affected my sleep habit. That's because my hosts are very easygoing and I have a room and a small office I can use/share with K, and am free to come and go as I please.
Even so, I felt uncomfortable for staying 10 days straight, so went camping in Budle Bay. Beautiful, had the most wonderful beaches all to myself on grey, drizzly days (out for two hour long runs)... but the same can't be said for the campsite. Saturday night in particular it turned into a corner of Magaluf. The more difficult thing, however, was doing nothing in the evenings: having no stimulus other than a book and a light to read by, so that on Friday night I was in the bed waiting to go to sleep at 1015. Hence the poor sleep efficiency. Fortunately, one night has not broken the good cycle, and we're back onto sleeping in blocks.
So, my sleep diary for week eight (thresholds of 1115pm-545am):
So I used to describe the conditions for sleep as a weighing scales, but with a dozen or maybe 20 pads on which different things were finely balanced (diet, booze, caffeine, stress, work, family, fitness etc). But I think it is now much simpler than that.
Last night was not an average-to-poor night's sleep. I got the hours, but I didn't get a big block of sleep and was dreaming for much of it, from the go. But at least, in the spirit of scientific experimentation and controlled conditions, I have learnt, I think, that my sleep is much more simply affected than that dodecadal scale. In fact, I think there are three key things affecting sleep:
A. Sleep Habit (time going to bed, time rising, bedroom habits)
B. Diet (what food, eaten when)
C. Mind (worried or calm or flexible or rigid)
So last night I changed A (to 11pm from 1115pm as my sleep threshold), and I abused B (big dinner, eaten too late, lots of snacking on crisps and chocolate) and I let C go round in circles and get overworried (mainly about writing -- rather than just write, I panicked about what to write, when, for how long, how good it is, etc).
So this sleep treatment has really cleaned up A. And alongside it, I have made good inroads into B and C, although they now, I see, need as much determination and discipline to change (for good sleep/a good life) as A. In particular, my attitude towards B and C. My attitude towards A is good now, very disciplined. It's not very flexible right now, but that's because I'm learning new patterns (flexibility - e.g. the odd lie in, the odd nap - will come when I am a 'good' sleeper). So, time to work on B and C too.
For that, then, B = six small meals, no over-snacking, no big dinner after 8pm.
And C = as my yoga teacher says, 'practice (live) with an attitude of joy; struggle never works'. My mind needs discipline to be calm; to be flexible; to be joyful; to be curious and not anxious (see Todd Kashdan's wonderful book for the relationship between those two emotions). To be light. (And for writing, that includes a discipline of 4hrs a day, 6 days a week on the Major Project of the time; which is, at the moment, the novel--and to be done spontaneously, with joy, from the unconscious heart).
And for the record, here's my sleep diary for week seven (thresholds of 1115pm-545am):
Thursday 6hrs 04mins 95% (4 1/2hr block of sleep)
Friday 6hrs 02m 89% (3hr block of sleep)
Saturday 5hrs 50m 92% (5 1/4hr block of sleep)
Sunday 6hrs 24m* 93% (3 1/2hr block of sleep)
Monday 6hrs 01m 93% (5hr block of sleep)
Tuesday 6hrs 01m 93% (4hr block of sleep)
Wednesday 5hrs 59m 91% (3 1/2hr block of sleep)
(I've just filled this out and it follows the same pattern of ups and downs as the previous week. How interesting...)
This was great. A realy good week with blocks of sleep all the way through. Although *Sunday had two glasses of wine with K for her birthday and completely broke the system, passed out on sofa at 10pm.
I've been sitting on some correspondence from a fellow tumblr for a week or so now. I've been moving house, but it's also because sometimes things take a little while to absorb, reflect on, and respond to. The earlier correspondence was fantastic but not so relevant to respond to here, now, as the posts they referred to are from a few weeks ago. But the most recent email (below) is still timely enough, and a lovely passage to reflect (or sleep) on.
So, guesswhosecomingtodinner wrote:
You sound pretty exhausted in your post today. Over the weeks I think I've seen a tendency in you to want to resolve every paradox you discover. Today you wrestled with at least six different ones in the space of one post. No wonder you feel worn out! We expect the world to be logical and scientists have led us to believe that all puzzles can be solved. And yet it is science that teaches us that exactly the opposite is true. Schroedinger's cat, Heisenberg's uncertainty law, and Quantum Weirdness have all demonstrated that paradox, uncertainty and human observation are actually built into the structure of the Universe at the most fundamental quantum level. Quite simply, the observation of the mysterious is a scientific neccessity of existence and will express itself in our everyday lives as we encounter the world around us. So really we should stop trying to solve life's paradoxes- we might explain the Universe out of existence.
Sleep on that...
I've never really considered myself that logical -- or, only in less interesting moments (rationalising my way out of problems and emotions). But there are more sides to knowing and unknowing than those two opposites. What sits 'besides' (in Eve Sedgwick's use of the word) knowing? All those non-linear, non-dual ways of seeing and feeling the world/word of logic.
In terms of creativity, Marian Milner speaks of the need, in being creative, to develop a 'tolerance of doubt'. Without doubt and uncertainty, there can be no creativity. There is no curious search; no asking what if? And without a willingness to listen to uncertainty in the world around us, without mystery, there is no unique voice. No idiom of a writer. Every writer I love speaks with that individual voice--the way of being besides the mysterious world and writing it in their own way. Kafka, Levi, Roth, Hustvedt, Lessing, Mitchell, Sebald.
Importantly: they write from the unconscious. Their own world of mystery. It is the flowing of a world of paradox and uncertainty from/into/around the unconscious that makes human observation interesting. And if that's built into the structure of the Universe at the most fundamental quantum level, and expresses itself in our everyday lives as we encounter the world around us, then it's important not to search for answers, but to ask questions. Or not even to ask question, but to listen and to tell the story of what one hears.
So. Something new from me. My sleep this last week has been good. A whole week where I have had a block of sleep from the falling asleep (ranging from three to five and a half hours). And I really do believe I'm seeing the world in a new way--or seeing more of the world. I've noticed things I've never noticed before: simple things, on the normal paths and routes I pass by through town. That is: my experience of the world is not so internally absorbed. That I am looking outwards more; seeing more. And this I know (I feel) is to do with actually getting some slow wave, reparative sleep. My mind is less anxious. I sleep better. That makes my mind even less anxious. And I sleep even better. And the noticing, the outward looking, in not conscious, but actively unconscious. It is that 'patient waiting alertness' that Marian Milner writes about in her 'A Life of One's Own' that is an important state for letting the universe inside and around oneself express itself.
Long may it continue.
(Heartfelt gratitude to guesswhoscomingtodinner for taking the time to read, think, write and inspire some thoughts).
I slept well last night. I think (not quite sure) that I slept pretty solidly from 1120pm to 425am, and then got a bit more afterwards.
So I think I've got a handle on things (not sleep. but how the sleep restriction therapy works for me). What I think is happening is that it takes my body/head two weeks to integrate that extra 15 minutes that we're allowed when our sleep efficiency is above 90%. So it goes from bad--better--bad again--better again during the first week when trying to integrate the extra time.
Last week I was getting the same amount of sleep (just under 6 hrs) but no long blocks of sleep at all but just short spurts, so was knackered all week, and it felt like a step backwards, even though I was getting 15 minutes more sleep. I could do stuff, but was way, way off functioning properly. It does get me down as I'm clearly unable to really spend much time with the friends I'm seeing simply because I'm knackered. Would really like some of my old self back.
But I think this is how it's working for me, over a two-week phase rather than a one-week phase. I'm hoping now if I've got it right then this week will start to get better again. Last night was a long block, and I'm hoping that the rest of the week will be too. That at least prepares me for if it goes bad again next week when I add 15 minutes. I'm sort of ignoring the % sleep efficiency and concentrating instead on recording my blocks of sleep. I'll give myself 15 minutes more next week if I have 5 or more nights with a concentrated block.
Three factors that could have fed into the good sleep:
A really physically active day of moving/packing/cleaning (but not done at breakneck pace, but rather slowly and with time, as I've started four days early, which was something I've NEVER done before)
That also means that my bedroom is completely bare. No pictures, no books, no distractions. The room is a (comfortable) cell, simply for sleeping in--a completely spare bedroom. [Note to self: in new place, 'sleep in the spare']
That there were moments of mindlessness yesterday (a whole pack of carob coated raisins in about 30 seconds) but also moments of mindfulness and self-control (stopping work when tired, small dinner portions, relaxing with a film) that meant I felt self-restraint accumulating. It always feels good.
Oh, and a fourth. Reading Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, and while I feel jealous (of course) of his bookish success, I was also really inspired by the story of compassion, love and joy being at the heart of ultra-running success...
And all success? The book is the story of ultra-running, barefoot running, but mostly about the Mexican Tarahumara tribe. There are wonderful stories in the book, such as that of Emil Zatopek (although his is also tragic) but particularly the one about the best utra-runner of all time (Western standards, anyway) Scott Jurek. He wasn't any good at running when young, when he had to look after his mother with MS. He hated running in fact, and did not compete or take it too seriously. But he turned into the ultimate ultra-runner. It was because he expected nothing from his running that it rewarded him so well.
And I thought: well, isn't that the same for everything? Relationships, writing, life?
Well, certainly for running. I went out this morning along the Marsden-South Shields coastal walk. A great six miles, heartfelt, enjoyable, fulmars gliding on the wind and sandmartins darting around the paths. A great start to the day.
""Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second." -- William James
(Added: Born to Run guitarist Clarence Clemons dies)
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Most people think self-control is necessary for happiness and wellbeing.
The Happiness Institute (based on positive psychology) suggests self-control is necessary; economics researchers believe happiness is dependent on making 'optimal choices' about lifestyle; on various help forums, people advocate to each other the benefits of gaining more control.
Even self-styled Happiness Guru Gretchen Rubin's provocative article 'abandon your self-control' is not actually about abandoning it, but in conserving it, and choosing more and more situations where it's not necessary (like biscuits? then don't have any in the house... this is actually my manta: when I go shopping, I keep repeating to myself "if you don't buy it, you can't eat it").
So, to sleep: I sleep well on nights when during that day, and normally in the evening, I have made a decision to control some of those aspects of behaviour that often lead to poor sleep (diet, drink, socialising, writing, working, laptopping etc). Last night, I went and met colleagues for an end of year drink and dinner, but I had one glass of soda and then left, came home for dinner, and didn't turn the laptop back on. And I slept better.
So, the more I seem to practice self-control, and have this be conscious and apparent--that is, I register it, the better sleep often is.
Thursday 6hrs 09mins 95% (5hr block of sleep)
Friday 6hrs 05m 89% (woke 5/6 times - 1 beer, wedding cake)
Saturday 5hrs 29m 92% (3hr block of sleep)
Sunday 6hrs 04m 93% (started dreaming...)
Monday 6hrs 04m 93% (3hr block of sleep)
Tuesday 6hrs 10m 93% (4 ½ hr block of sleep)
Wednesday 5hrs 57m 91% (dreams...)
I've tried to blame the poor sleep on the friends I'm staying with and their overindulgence in sweets and desserts! :-) I've tried to convince them that I'm just too sensitive to sugar in my diet--which may be true--and that I can't snack on sweet stuff three or four times a day, as they seem to do when I'm hear (but not when guests are not, apparently). (Although the desserts at the wonderful Oliver's was well worth it.)
But I also know that if I enjoyed the sweets when I did, with pure enjoyment, rather than worry, then they wouldn't affect my sleep. The overindulgence comes with guilt and anxiety, which triggers poor sleep (and waking) behaviour.
The best nights sleep that I've had in the past six weeks came after (not directly, but a night or too later) an exercise of self-control. That is not simply to do with not eating sweet foods. It is about the self-control of attitude towards enjoyment.
