It seems I have been doing it wrong.
Sleep that is.
As a teenager I was always getting wrong and being yelled at and made to feel ashamed because I was asleep for too long. My bedroom door would burst open and my mother would be there, full of anger directed at me. I was mystified as my only crime was being asleep. How could I have done something wrong when all I was doing was lying down with my eyes closed? Just because it was 3 o clock in the afternoon and the day had slipped by, was no ones problem but mine. She didn't see it that way. To my mother's mind I was missing something and she was angry with me for the waste of time.
I was always good at sleeping. It used to be a life skill I had mastered. Alarms would be missed as well as buses. The alarm would always be a very rude interruption to my sound nights sleep and as far as I was concerned what ever happened in the night (thunder, barking dogs, burglars skulking around the bedroom) never happened as I enjoyed my blissful sleep.
It was a genuine worry to me that I would not hear the cry of my off spring - but I did. I put this down to pre programmed mothering instincts which in turn led to their survival.
And now the ability to fall into a deep and peaceful sleep, which could last til mid day on a weekend, has left me. I don't need an alarm to wake me in time for, say, an exercise class at 9am on a Saturday morning, because I'll be awake.
I am informed that I am doing almost everything wrong when it comes to sleep.
Apparantly its not as easy as just putting the light off and lying in the dark for 8 hours. There are preparations. There are rules.
The bed should be a bastion of sleep. Nothing should go on in the bedroom other than sleep (I know what you are all thinking now but I'm not that sort of blogger). So the very fact that when I wake up in the night and check the time, the very fact that I look at the shiny big numbers on my phone means my brain is confused and wants to fully wake up.
There should be no tv watching in the bedroom because it is not condusive to sleep. Yet I find that watching a tv programme is stupendiously boring enough to send me off to sleep. Yet again its the dangers of the screen that make the brain less sleep and more likley to wake up. I must stop this.
Typing a blog in bed as opposed to sitting at a desk paying attention to posture and screen glare is another black mark - excuse me while I move to the office!
My bed is like a nest with all sorts of things going on. There is lap top use, there is kindle use, there is ipod use, there is phone use, there is radio use, there is painting of nails, there is cleansing of skin and face mask applying and when all else fails then sleep happens.
And this is why I wake up far too early or wake often in the night. I need to remove the chaos from my bedroom and in turn the chaos in my mind.
If I can have a resolution before the turn of the new year - can I? - it's going to be that I have a complete turn around of bed activities and use other rooms to do all the things I have previously found comfortable in bed and just use bed for sleeping in.
Yawn, excuse me I must sleep now.
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