Diary of an Ex-Insomniac: Expectations Around Healing Insomnia

I didn’t sleep that well last night. There was tossing, turning, a few get-ups and a few let-downs. I wouldn’t say it’s normal for me, but as a self-proclaimed ex-insomniac, it wasn’t entirely unfamiliar either.

As the guy who wrote the book “I Can’t Sleep”, people often expect that I’m a perfect sleeper—like I’m some Prince of Sleep whose nights are as fluid and deep as an underground river. But while the writing of this book no doubt revolutionised my life and changed my sleep forever, I still carry with me the vestiges of a life lived with insomnia.

Now, I’ll give myself some slack here. Last night was my first night in a new house. I still had boxes and bags littered around, and I could have named around ten things that I know from having written my book could have affected my sleep significantly. In fact, watch me.

While the bed was plush and comfortable, the duvet was stifling, the airflow minimal, and my cat was running around in a mix of anxiety and curiosity. I too had been busy shifting boxes under bright lights until after 11, and my body clock—ready for a 9pm bed-time—had been disrespected. It was over five hours after dinner and I was starting to get hungry again, I’d been using my phone late and thinking of tomorrow’s plans. The wi-fi was left on, the smell of cat poop was in the air, and the bed was pointing west. And on top of all of that, I’d left my sleep mask at my ex-girlfriend’s house.

Usually, if I know I’ve shot myself in the foot in advance, I’ll do a number of things to help my brain calm down. Some meditation and slow-breathing, with a few acupressure techniques to give my body an edge. This time, while I still did a light meditation, I didn’t pull out all the stops or try desperately to claw my way back to slumberland. I simply relaxed into the acceptance that it wasn’t going to be a perfect night.

At this point in my sleep journey, sometimes a rough night is just something I can smell in the air and can feel in my bones. It's like a practised golfer knowing, the instant the club connects with the ball, whether it’s going to fly straight or not. And this time, I already knew what I’d done wrong before my head had even touched the pillow.

This is something I’ve recognised in myself. Earlier on in my sleep learning journey, my hypervigilance would only add to the list, stirring up an extra feeling of anxiety and paranoia about what I had or had not done, or what might or might not be affecting me.

Now, I’m still just as vigilant—if not more so—although the time and experience that’s come with this whole process has left me something of a zen master when I’m lying in bed awake. I no longer stress, I no longer panic and add to that frustration. In many ways, that helps. To remain cool and calm and simply enjoy relaxing in bed makes both the night and the morning that much better. I look better, I feel better—almost like I had the night of sleep I really wanted.

To some people, it might feel almost coldly analytical to observe all these factors the way I do. I guess there is a sort of professionalism to it. As in sport, even a professional doesn’t always have a good game. The difference is that they understand why—and they don’t panic when it happens. In a comparable way, we might concede that a ‘bad night’ of sleep for someone  learned in sleep theory may not be as bad as a bad night of sleep for someone who hasn’t got the foggiest idea why they’re not sleeping.

On my part, I owe this to the learning journey. Understanding of myself has directly fed into that relaxed, accepting state. The burning question of ‘why’ no longer haunts me, and I can simply recognise that, sometimes, there are anomalies and events in life that can affect your sleep. Sometimes, my imperfect discipline is to blame—but even still, it’s only human.

But even now, after effectively training myself to sleep in good health and relaxation, I still recognise something deep inside. My body and my brain are like elephants—they haven’t forgotten the nights where I’ve suffered and strained. They haven’t fully released the memory of deep frustration and distrust in themselves when it’s come to the moment to turn off and relax.

I’ve learned so much, come so far, and yet this isn’t just a mental game. You can’t simply outsmart insomnia with a clever card trick and a magic lightbulb. This is a journey that takes healing, discipline, and a lot of patience.

Of course, strategy helps immensely. After all, this is a big part of my book. But it also requires some dedication to going deep emotionally inside oneself. Love, forgiveness, trust, and self-sensitivity. These are so, so underrated when it comes to sleep. Because bad sleep can either be from, or itself be, a kind of trauma. No sleep mask or red-light therapy can heal wounds of the soul, but these kinds of investigations can always lead one deeper into the world of sleep improvement—and that’s an excellent start.

For me, this journey has threaded together so many domains of my life. More than just the mind, more than just the body. More than just health, more than just intellect and strategy. Inside all of us is a soul that’s recorded and adapted with each experience, and through all the trials and tribulations of life, it’s made me realise that sleep, in more ways than one, has been a mirror for seeing the tenderness I might otherwise not have seen.