I want this week’s column to be a cheery one. The atmosphere of this week has been heavy, and the days have seemed to draw on for far longer than their 24 hours of allotted time. 

I can always tell how my week is going and likely is going to go, by examining how long the days have felt. If I just want one day to collapse into another, as I have this week, the forecast is not so bright. By Wednesday morning I usually have an accurate read on how Thursday and Friday will feel.

It might sound defeatist, but I consider it to be more pragmatic than anything. This is for one reason, and one reason only: sleep. If for three days of the week already you have been dragging feet, tossing and turning, then by an estimation of simple science you can extrapolate your likely outcome.

But like I said, I want this to be cheery. 

I have had insomnia for a very long time, really as long as I can remember, and for reasons other than a mere imbalance in melatonin. It’s the kind of thing that snowballs, that piggybacks off of other pre-existing issues, other chemical imbalances or what have you. For this reason, it can feel almost inescapable. 

With all the experience I have with the issue, I am going to take my best calculated stab at it, and hopefully shed some light.

That brings me to my first point. Light, it has a fair amount to do with light. A night light won’t do much harm to your melatonin levels, but led lights bannered all across your walls certainly will. This is especially defeating for those of us who suffer from chronic nightmares or sleep paralysis or some other fear-driving issue. I have been there, configuring my lights to the lowest possible setting that I can still feel secure with, and though it may help through the night, it drains the mornings. 

This is the first defense mechanism that should be scrapped. It does no good. Try listening to music or reading a book. Better yet, combine the two methods and listen to an audio book; Spotify has some great ones. 

If you have a TV in your room, you could configure the screen settings to low brightness and put on a favorite movie (a failsafe of mine is Corpse Bride because it’s already of a dark color scheme.) Point is, there are multiple avenues you can take in order to get to the same place.

I have not gotten there, truth be told. To be completely honest, I am not at all among the first people you should consult with for this issue. Insomnia is almost always due to underlying issues. If seeing a therapist is an avenue available to you, I highly recommend that as well. 

But, in the meantime we do what we can. Stress is often cited as its most common cause, though I sense if stress is causing that much difficulty for you, there is still likely something more underlying it. 

And like I said, these things tend to snowball. You’re stressed, so you don’t sleep well. You don’t sleep well, so you don’t perform well.  You don’t perform well, so your stress increases even more. It’s a hard thing to escape, and trying to outpace it is a sport of little avail to me. My best advice is to heartily rotate through the cycle, toss and turn as need be, and little by little I think you’ll gain on it; I always have. 

If there has been any “cheer” in this, I hope it’s from that you know you are definitely not alone (should this be something you struggle with.) These topics are for understandable reasons hard to discuss, but I think upon prying them open we’ll find what an outpouring there is.