Our life’s Trajectory…
In my early twenties following a traumatic event involving my boss while working at a cafe - I acquired insomnia. Not the kind that comes and goes - the kind that stays. Night after night, the more I tried to sleep, the less I slept. It turned into a fear of sleep and performance anxiety all because of a job I dreaded waking up to (hence the boss narrative). I quit the job and the insomnia stayed for twenty five years to be exact. Yes,I’m aging myself here. Now, how in the world did this last that long?
Well, after finding my way out, organically, meaning I didn’t use sleep medications, not that they aren’t very useful sometimes, I just knew full well they could possibly land me back in insomnia alley, I had realized there was a narrative playing on repeat in my mind.
It wasn’t as simple as ‘I’m not going to sleep tonight again’ it was me imagining how I would function at work the next day in a state of exhaustion, again. You see, my imagination would run away with me, because it had happened so often. I would literally imagine almost every detail of my day being littered with sad, delirious Sarah, wandering around just trying to cope. Now if any of you have had insomnia for any length of time you understand how excruciatingly hard it is to function like this. You feel like a ghost of yourself, like the living dead.
But I was future catastro-phising and my imagination and the narrative I created was so relevant in creating my reality, that I never realized it was a self fulfilling prophecy. After I was married my husband and I started reading The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (Great book btw!), and this triggered my awareness to go inward with the issue.I became aware of this thought pattern and although it took me awhile to get out of it I believe my insomnia is finally at a feasible level, of manageable. Meaning it only happens here and there in mild spurts and for reasons generally expected. which I can handle! And even could handle (past tense). Noticing the thought pattern was the first step, I then reframed it or redirected it with a new scenario that disrupted the pattern. Sometimes I was too tired to replace it with something so I would just go find something else to do that I enjoyed. Redirecting in an actionable way and this was all dependant on how I felt in that moment. Some nights I had extra energy to expend, some nights I didn’t and that was ok too.
Now there are many other issues I also addressed through self discovery to warrant this hiatus of a twenty-five year sleep drought, such as accepting my needs and boundaries but that’s for another story. I do believe this was a really big timeline jump for me.
Journal Prompt - Is there a storyline you have on repeat that is creating a narrative that no longer serves the divine nature that you know is you?
