Sleep Anxiety—

by Donna Quesada: A student recently came to me and shared her recent struggle with “sleep anxiety,” a common form of anxiousness that usually follows a bout of insomnia. She had recently switched jobs and had taken on a heavy mortgage… all of this following closely behind a breakup with her longtime partner. The concurrence of these major life changes left her stressed and sleepless for a good number of nights.

Even after sleep returned, it was shaky. But what was worse for her, was the anxiety that had begun to swell up, every night before bed… As she put it, she began dreading night time because it had gone from being a cozy time, in which she would look forward to getting into bed and melting into a lovely sleep, to a dreaded affair that brought nothing but doubt, fear and worry about whether she would be able to relax into sleep.

Although she had been seeing a therapist, she came to me knowing that I had experience with anxiety and sleeping challenges, and that I was also familiar with eastern approaches to these sorts of things.

Thwart the Catastrophizing—

Firstly, to undo the catastrophizing, I appealed to her logical mind, by reminding her that one of the strongest urges the body and brain has, is to sleep. It’ll do what it needs to do, regardless of us and our crazy thoughts and fears. The fear and anxiety are like a hurricane… it kicks up for a while, and then it burns itself out. It simply can’t keep up that intensity forever. Similarly, we go into “hyperarousal mode,” as a result of life’s stressors, and our stress hormones keep us awake for a while, and then we crash. It’s the nature of nature.

And it’s the same with all of our bodily functions… sometimes when we’re stressed, or even when we’re out of our usual routine, such as when we travel, we don’t have our usual appetite, we can’t go to the bathroom, our energy level isn’t the same, but after a while, things normalize.

When I followed up with her a few weeks later, she was feeling much better and my words seemed to have helped. But she was still experiencing some lingering sleep anxiety before bed, which had caused her to adopt what she described as “OCD like behaviors and rituals” around sleep. Although there’s nothing wrong with that, in and of itself, the fear and anxiety is no fun, so I shared a story with her… one that had helped me tremendously on many occasions. It’s an old Tibetan tale that I once heard Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron tell.

Here it is in my words:

The Story of Milarepa’s Demon—

There was once an old Tibetan monk named Milarepa. One evening, he went to gather firewood, like he often did. But on this occasion, when he returned to his cave with his arms full of wood, he found his home full of demons. They were cooking his food, reading his books and sleeping in his bed. They had totally taken over the place!

He had gathered much wisdom through his many years on the spiritual path, and he knew that as a monk, he was supposed to be a man of compassion, but he also knew he had to find a way to get these guys to leave.

At one moment, he suspected that they may be just a projection of his own mind—all the unwanted parts of himself—yet, he still didn’t know how to get rid of them. So first he tried to reason with them. He even taught them some Buddhist ideas about how we are all one. Nothing happened. The demons were still there. Then he lost his patience and got angry at them. They just laughed at him.

Finally, he gave up and just sat down on the floor, saying, “I’m not going away and it looks like you’re not either, so let’s just all live here together.” At that point, all of them left except one. Then Milarepa said, “Oh, this one is particularly vicious.” He didn’t know what to do, so he surrendered himself even further. He walked over and put himself right into the mouth of the demon and said, “Just eat me up if you want to.” Then that demon left, too.

The Takeaway—

When we give up the resistance to the fear, it loses its power. Try accepting the anxiety as nothing more than a habit. It has nothing to do with how reality is going to unfold. So, as Milarepa did with the demon, try making friends with the fear. You’ll find that suddenly it’s not so bothersome, anymore. You can even give the anxiety (the demon) a name. Something kind of cute or funny, like “Bob,” for example. And when he shows up at night (or before what ever event has become scary), say, “Hey Bob… how you doin’? Come on, let’s go to bed now… and don’t hog the blanket!”