How to make peace with insomnia, or why Tolstoy stared legs for the night

Photographer: Gianni Berengo Gardin

... The life of a mouse is running around ...
What are you disturbing me? ...
I want to understand you
I am looking for a meaning in you ...
Alexander Pushkin, "our everything." "Poems written at night during insomnia"

Attention, attention: our world is in danger! No, we are not threatened with a nuclear war or an asteroid - just people began to sleep badly!

What are we talking about?

Do you have such a thing that you physically want to sleep, and even very, but the brain stubbornly "does not turn off"? You lie ten minutes twenty. And the watch is ticking. The night from Sunday to Monday started a long time ago, the neighbor is already asleep, the neighbor is also sleeping, and the cat is sleeping in the yard, and the dog. Everybody sleeps. You are not. Look at the screen of the phone with caution - and you see that quite a bit is left before the start of the working day (and at the same time you understand that you looked at the screen for nothing - they read the same thing that the light of mobile phones is harmful). Awareness of this even more pushes you into the abyss of insomnia, and only in the morning, exhausted, do you (possibly) fall asleep.

Well, if it is at least a little about you, then you are not alone. News feeds are often replete with research results: up to {number1} percent of the population of developed countries suffers from regular insomnia, and the world's largest economies lose up to {number2} billions {currency} per year. And there is no reason not to believe these figures: if you live in a large city, and your friends work, then almost certainly someone of them is tormented by the poor quality of sleep.

Recently, more and more articles and books appear on the topic of how sleep is actually useful. Slowly but surely, the image of a manager who is able to sleep a couple of hours a day and at the same time be effective and do everything in time (I personally was always impressed by the former coach of Manchester United Football Club, Sir Alex Ferguson , who admitted that in his youth he had four hours of sleep - however, only at the beginning of his career, then he started the habit of taking a nap an hour during the day between workouts). Scientists and coaches, as well as the founder of Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington, share research results and personal experience and prove: sleep is important for proper functioning of the brain, RNA genes, creativity and peace, and those who do not sleep specifically to be effective are harm your body. Well, it always happens: who can sleep - does not want, and who wants - can not ...


Photographer: Rene Maltete

You just have to look at it and see how, on Monday morning, along with the usual “zombies”, who first of all pour in a liter of coffee and are desperately yawning in the hope of reveling in oxygen, poor fellows of a different kind are pulled to work: with tired faces, silent and sad. I, from week to week watching one such colleague and not assuming anything serious, somehow approached him and jokingly inquired whether his insomnia tormented him. It turns out, yes. It is Sunday insomnia.

The reasons

My insomnia has reached its limit. At night, I run around the room and howl. And I beat myself with my fist on the stupid skull to bruises.
Korney Chukovsky, children's writer

If you go through the articles about insomnia, it is easy to see that the reason for it in most cases is the inability to distract from the pressing problems, or the feeling of anxiety inherent in us before something responsible. In other words, stress. The problem is that stress in our lives is always, almost every day. You cannot get rid of it, but you can develop stress resistance!


No, he is not bad. It is simply stress resistant. Photographer: Vivian Maier

But back to our colleague. He had a special kind of insomnia, the cause of which is anxiety before the start of a new work week. It all started with a job change: he was so worried before going to a new place (for the first time - working in a large concern, big projects, high expectations), that he did not sleep all night. Probably, this vigil did not seem to him such a pleasant pastime, and a week later he was already intuitively afraid of repetition. Of course, IT was repeated - and so the poor fellow got into the “damn wheel”. Since then, once a week, he either did not sleep at all, or slept half the night, or slept, but badly. Already on Saturday, he anxiously awaited Sunday, knowing that he was waiting for him. And every time his expectations were justified - the mechanism worked properly, without fail, as if by the hour! Six months later, he no longer remembered, because of what it all started, the anxiety for the work went away, and only the fear of insomnia as such remained. Needless to say, at such nights he hated himself, and was ready to beat himself on the skull, like the good author of “Moidodyr” Korney Chukovsky?

After some time, he changed jobs. Not because of insomnia - he put up with her. But in the depths of his soul he hoped that with the transition to a new job, a strong, comprehensive, restful Sunday dream would return to him. But no! Sunday's anxious waiting and the next wakefulness, of course, have not gone away.


Photographer: Philippe Halsman. Eye - Salvador Dali.

It turned out that this kind of insomnia is not such a rarity, and the reason for it, probably, in the modern rhythm of life and the number of roles that we have to try on. Women who have a sense of responsibility towards certain things, as I personally and Rebecca Shambo, the author of an interesting article , are statistically more susceptible than men (the wife will not believe what I think). But men can comprehend the frightening, mysterious, irrational Sunday insomnia.

What to do with all this?

He slept well until 5, then insomnia, fell asleep by morning.
Lev Tolstoy

In the diaries of our famous classic Leo Tolstoy, you can often find mention of his insomnia. Like everyone who regularly encounters her, he tried to invent his own “method” of her treatment. His doctor said : " L.N. said that earlier when he could not sleep, he walked barefoot on the floor, and now he simply studies them on the iron bars of the bed and thinks that when his legs start to warm up, the blood rushes to them from the head, and <he> falls asleep . "

There are many such “tips”: brewing special tea before bedtime, pour cold water over, do not eat spicy, read for 15 minutes at night, put elephant tusk under the pillow, etc. Of course, none of this helped my colleague. Then he read about one psychological trick: to lie with only one thought: do not fall asleep, do not fall asleep, do not fall asleep, do not fall asleep ... He fell asleep. But only once. Then everything returned to normal. The purpose of the rituals is to calm down, and the tricks are to deceive the brain. The second goal is wrong, it is not “looking to the root.” The first is partially correct.


Photographer: Rene Maltete

A few months later a colleague began to come unusually satisfied. Wary, I asked him about the reasons. With insomnia, he somehow reconciled, and now he fell asleep pretty quickly.

I am not a psychologist at all, but I’m wondering how you can solve certain problems. Moreover, insomnia itself has not yet “bitten”, and therefore I cannot convey any personal experience in overcoming and overcoming it. So do not wait for tips to help you get rid of insomnia without registration and SMS. I can only share some ideas heard from a colleague over coffee, or inspired by this conversation.

The thing is, I can't always fall asleep right away either. Sometimes I try in vain for half an hour to “turn off” the brain: I concentrate on breathing, listen to it, or just try not to think about anything and “look” into the darkness with my eyes closed, and sometimes it helps, but not always. However, when I do not manage to sleep longer than half an hour, I don’t start to panic, but I see it as an opportunity to calmly think about something that is important to me - but it is always pleasant. I do not think about the problems, but only about the ideas and pleasant plans. It seems to me that it is important not to do drama from the fact that you cannot fall asleep right away. Well, do not get enough sleep, so what? For the sake of interest, I tried to sleep somehow at night for three hours, working until the morning, and then immediately going to work. Was I tired? Of course. But was it so scary to be very afraid of this? (Now I remembered that one day I could not fall asleep for three days at all - I did not give in to panic, finding in this an opportunity to easily walk around the city with headphones in my ears). In addition, the body will still take his when he needs it. We must understand that (if this is not an extreme case) when the body realizes that it can no longer, you will fall asleep, as pretty. I know that this may not be very encouraging at first glance.

I recalled here the story of the famous cyclist Lance Armstrong, who at one time had cancer of several organs at once. Do you know what he began to do after chemotherapy? Exercise with triple strength. And he began to communicate with his cancer. Naturally, he sat down and spoke to him: "You will not win." By the way, Lance really beat cancer. And what gentlemen awake can make out for themselves - try to imagine insomnia not as something big and evil, that hangs with a black cloud and looks with an unkind eye - look at it analytically. I think it is important to analyze your insomnia and understand it, purely from a rational point of view. Recall how it all began, honestly admit to yourself why this is happening now. And to understand that this is not a threat to you, but a maximum is only a slight inconvenience. So you "grope" her, and cease to be afraid.

And still your insomnia is, most likely, not so much about sleep, as about stress tolerance in general, about how easily you let go of your troubles, so as not to scroll through the same destructive thoughts in your head. On this subject there are many useful articles . Personally, stress helps me to cope with something that I am pleased to do (for example, to cook “something,” or to read an interesting book), and to realize that there is a lot of interesting things ahead of me. Try to make life diverse, delight yourself and loved ones, walk and do a lot of sports (the recipe of the ancient Greeks), be creative (the recipe of Florentines), read interesting books (the recipe of Soviet children) and, as the grandfather of a classmate said, -you-wow. " I also read more than once in recent weeks that we often mistakenly think that thoughts always determine actions. Actions can also determine thoughts. So, it is necessary to really do something pleasant, then thoughts will be about the same.


Photographer: Henri Cartier-Bresson

Well, if you still lie down without closing your eyes, and it would seem that nothing can help you, just imagine a dark-dark room (yes, yes, like yours, only darker still), on the bed - lying on Lev Tolstoy’s back, cooling his feet on the iron bars of the bed, cringing Pushkin on the floor mattress, shuddering at every “tick” of hours, and running and beating himself on Chukovsky’s head in the middle of the room.

You are not so bad.