6 Sleep Tips from an Insomniac

Let me start by saying that there was a time when I couldn’t even talk about my insomnia without going into a total rabbit hole of shame, embarrassment, confusion and general overwhelm. I don’t at all consider myself free from insomnia these days, but I have completely changed my perspective on it and how it does or doesn’t control my life. Perspective is everything. If you give something the power to control you, then all your personal power is gone and you’re a victim of circumstance. Don’t be a victim!

I’ve extensively researched almost every sleep support cure, whether out of sheer desperation or curiosity, and here are some of the practices that have stuck with me over time:

1) HERBS WORK, BUT SLOWLY

Part of working with herbs is that you have to believe that they can help you. When I was weaning off of Klonopin for sleep, my body had become so accustomed to strong medication that I was unable to detect more subtle shifts. When we take prescription medication it can sometimes hit us like a truck, whereas herbs are much gentler. The process of starting to notice subtleties when working with herbs connects you more deeply to all of the bodily systems, which is ultimately part of healing more holistically. Passionflower, Ashwagandha and CBD were detectable to me at first, so I was more inclined to develop an internal belief that they were “doing something”. This helped me go on to develop a deeper relationship with them. They were like gateway herbs that helped create enough balance that I could start to venture into a wider world of herbs that weren’t just to support my sleep (lemon balm, linden, calendula, nettle, licorice root, dandelion, borage, tulsi, etc…). 

Although almost all doctors will quickly prescribe an Ambien or Klonopin for sleep as we have a system that attends to symptom management. I’ve found that these work in a pinch but create more problems in the long run, making them unsustainable solutions. Doctors disagreed with me for years, but I knew how I felt when I missed a night of Klonopin and it was NOT GOOD. The brain builds dependency on a synthetic process to increase GABA (a calming neurotransmitter) and stops producing its own. It can heal, but the damage is done much more quickly than it is undone. Being depleted in GABA made for brain fog, fatigue, cognition issues, memory trouble, light sensitivity, inability to focus and a sense of depersonalization or feeling outside of my body. And after a while, it stopped helping me sleep anyway! The whole thing became a big old mess,  but I still wouldn’t trade it because it gave me so much in terms of self-care and self-awareness practices.

2) GET OUT OF BED

I generally get very annoyed with articles about “sleep hygiene” because as a perfectionist they usually make me feel like a failure. Give yourself permission to do whatever it is you need to do to quiet your mind. I went through a phase where I’d read all these articles about how my body was literally going to shut down from lack of sleep if I didn’t adhere strictly to the sleep hygiene practices. It was even more pressure than I was already putting on myself to get to sleep. More pressure=more anxiety=fewer zzz’s. 

Anyway, one that I did use with some success was getting out of bed when I wasn’t sleeping. Your brain starts to build a connection with wakefulness in the bed the longer you spend awake there. This is part of a training process to teach your brain that when you get in bed it’s sleep time (or sex time, that is ok too). I even went so far as to keep a yoga mat with a pillow and blanket on the floor next to my bed. If I was tossing and turning and getting frustrated I would get on the mat and lay there instead, sometimes to read, watch tv, or meditate. It makes getting back into bed much more relaxing.

3) BUILD A BEDTIME RITUAL

Make bedtime fun, and do something with your hands that gets you out of your head. Whether it’s skincare routines that relax you (my personal favorite, I love a scrub, serum, eye cream, facial massage moment and some essential oils before bed). Pulling a tarot card is another treat to look forward to at the end of the day. Tea is also a standby bedtime routine. I often don’t even get around to drinking much of it, but going through the motions is relaxing. And yes I do get up to pee, but, dude, trying not to drink anything 3 hours before bedtime, as many sleep hygiene posts will recommend, was such a bummer and more stress for me, so I keep the lights off and get up to pee and imagine that if I barely open my eyes the whole time I am basically still asleep. Just on the toilet.

4) WARM LIGHT EVERYWHERE

I got an app called f.lux for my computer, which dims the screen and sets it to warm pink hues instead of blue tones to mimic the natural light at all times of day. I similarly have my phone set up to warm lights after 7pm. Our brains don’t register reddish lights as a stimulating reason to stay awake. It’s the one color on the spectrum that works this way. When we were hunter gatherers we would spend our evenings by the fire, staring into warm tones, which also mimic the colors of sunset. This is a signal to our brain to start producing melatonin. I only read by my pink himalayan salt lamp at night and try to keep that on in my bedroom a few hours before sleep. Sometimes I sleep with it all night and don’t find it disturbing. 

5) GENTLE EXERCISE

We live in a culture that pushes us to work ourselves into the ground and be tough. The messaging a lot of insomniacs get is that they should just exercise like crazy to make sure they crash. When you’re already dealing with a taxed adrenal system though, this can stress your body out even more and cause it to produce stimulating hormone responses that keep you awake. I’d run 4 miles in the evenings and then go home and be so activated that I was up all night. I turn to Yin yoga poses and Yoga Nidra now, which have that similar subtle but sustainable approach that herbs do. And after a while, it’s not so subtle. A good supported forward fold, with time to relax muscles all the way down to the bone, starts teaching your body that it’s safe to go into the parasympathetic response (aka, rest and digest). Similarly, somatic meditation saved me so many nights. Finding a guided somatic meditation or progressive muscle relaxation can again help you to get out of the thinking brain and connect with the body. When you start to communicate with subtle gestures and muscle groups and systematically move up and down the body relaxing both tiny and large muscle groups, you’re creating neural pathways in the brain that normalize moving away from constant, unproductive chatter. I also love Ralph De La Rosa and Tara Brach.

6) GET TO HEALING YOUR TRAUMA

Maybe start by reading The Body Keeps the Score and exploring the connection between spiritual and physiological wellness through something like One Spirit Medicine. I have also found Eastern Body, Western Mind to be integral to my understanding of the Chakra system and energetic healing in a world where we’ve been taught that Western Allopathic medicine is king. 

And go to therapy! EMDR was the most helpful form of therapy for me. It targeted traumatic memories all throughout my life, and helped me create new and positive outcomes for them. I don’t think we always realize how much we carry around in the way of trying to solve old problems. The brain is a bit of a grudge holder and it gets stuck on old trauma and often continues to go back to it to try and “solve” a problem as if it were still happening in this very moment. Another exercise I did at a retreat was to ritually imbue a stick with all of the genetic and ancestral diseases throughout my lineage (basically just think really hard about putting all of that into the stick) and then throw it into a fire and burn it up. Yes, this is witchy, and acts as a sort of spell, but it’s worth a try, right?! I was able to really start moving on from a family history of mental illness when I did this, and believe that I was in control of my own destiny. 

As a final note…you’re right, none of this works overnight and that sucks! I started getting insomnia in my early 30s and I’m turning 40 very soon. It’s been a long road of trial and error, tweaking, changing, giving up and starting again on a variety of different paths. Sure, it would have been awesome if my burnout didn’t lead to insomnia in the first place, but it’s the hand I was dealt and I am so proud of myself for looking inward and learning to follow my intuition for solutions. I spent too many years handing my power over to medical professionals who knew so little about me. Of course I still go to doctors, but I allow myself to know myself and that is the best medicine there is.

Keep going,

Brooke