Making peace with my bed

Mindful Sleep Therapy gives you the choice of being able to stop fighting with your insomnia and instead accept and embrace it. It does this in the knowledge that once all fear, anger and pain surrounding poor sleep is accepted so too will be the powerful grip that it has over you.

Dr Guy Meadows




Have I been here before? Have I? This idea of acceptance - real acceptance of my insomnia - not a half-hearted, enforced, tepid, wishy-washy kind of acceptance. Yes, I have. But I've never been able to see it through, because a powerful wave always engulfs me and a defiant voice from a place deep within says I do not accept this. I do not want to suffer anymore, and I need to fix this problem.


Well, I think the time has finally come to stop trying to fix this problem. So much of what Guy said at my appointment at the London Insomnia Clinic the other day made sense to me. The idea is that the more I fight my condition ie by trying to 'solve' it, the more I will be at its mercy.


So, how does one 'accept and embrace' a mentally and physically debilitating condition? It's far, far easier said than done. There's no overnight fix to this....obviously. I need to keep taking a day at a time. And another good place to start is by making peace with my bed, strange as it sounds. I've spent more hours than I care to remember in places other than my bed in the small hours. When I don't sleep, I blog, I read, I think, I walk, I eat, I drink, I even bake.


I used to love my bed. And whilst this is no longer the case, it's time to make peace with it. No more claiming this quiet, dark, peaceful space downstairs in the middle of the night as mine. I need to stay in bed and resist the urge to be somewhere else. This is what I've done the past few nights since my appointment and it has, to be honest, been hell. I've squirmed and wriggled and half sat up before making myself lie down again. But, as I said before, this will take some time. And of course, there are tools to help us insomniacs to stay in bed and re-associate with it. More of that in the next blog...