When people tell me they have trouble sleeping they mean they're waking up
at two in the morning, worries on an endless feedback loop playing in their head. That was me last night. For our ancestors, having insomnia meant still being awake at midnight. Today too often we haven't even gone to bed until midnight, forget about being asleep.
It's always my goal to practice what I preach about healthy living but what the hell, I'm human. Insomnia is not a stranger to me [Sleep and Your Sanity] and once in a while I have a relapse.
Last night I had a dream about a marital therapy session not going well. I woke up trying to analyze what it meant. Were my interventions effective enough? Was I approaching the problem from the right angle? Of all the things to worry about, why this, why now?
What it really meant was I needed to turn off my brain and get some rest! So I prayed that God help me help this couple and eventually I fell back to sleep.
Michelle Slatalla in the Style section of the New York Times today, wrote a very nice piece on what it's like for a middle aged woman for whom sleep is elusive. Her frustration made me smile with recognition and I took comfort in what her experts had to say.
photo courtesy rekha
