The Year I Couldn't Sleep: A Book of Self-Healing for the Sleepless, Embracing That Invisible Unease with You

"When did sleep become a religion?"

When I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't sleeping at all.
In those days, I wasn't entirely a bad sleeper; I was a non-sleeper.
I was also a bad sleeper, but nights of bad sleep were considered good nights,because at least I had some sleep.

Midnight, 2 AM, 3 AM, 4 AM, even 5 AM, it made no difference.
No matter how many sheep I counted, how many essential oils I lit, or how much sleep music I played, trying to tell myself not to care,
the desire to fall into slumber remained completely absent.
And sleepless nights are the longest, largest, deepest, most cavernous things...

Regarding insomnia, have you tried any of these?
✘ Going to bed an hour early to coax sleep before officially going to sleep.
✘ Quitting caffeine and sugar.
✘ Mindfulness-based stress reduction.
✘ Consulting a therapist or visiting a sleep clinic.
✘ Acupuncture, or various folk remedies within budget.
✘ Mind-body-spirit counseling and communication.
✘✘✘✘✘✘✘……
 
But all these efforts were utterly useless.
Invisible darkness and a fog of thoughts constantly spread during every sleepless night;
and the fear and anxiety of not being able to sleep fueled the insomnia, like a tiger in the room.

In 2016, Samantha Harvey transformed from a "sleep-carefree" person who could sleep soundly even under pressure to a "sleepless" person who found it difficult to sleep (getting two to three hours of sleep) or had no sleep at all.

"I had to continue being my own archaeologist, digging around to see if I could unearth the problem and find a solution—but in reality, I was afraid of myself, not of what I might find, but of finding nothing at all."

Harvey went to a therapist, wanting to understand if there was any hidden anxiety in her subconscious—a persistent fear of death, the shadow of a trauma 15 years ago, or simply the gift of impending menopause... In that year, Harvey tried every conceivable way to soothe her wakefulness, searching for the almost non-existent sleep, and resorted to all possible means: medication, exercise, therapy, relaxation techniques, diet adjustments, changes in her daily routine, but nothing helped.
 
So she wrote. She wrote down the chaotic thoughts of her sleepless nights: her cousin's death, philosophical reflections on faith and science, anger over Brexit... Even though what she wrote seemed disorganized, in a sense, she began to see herself in the words she produced...