Has It Always Been This Hard to Sleep?

Anxiety, the nighttime villain

BY SHANNA SIVAKUMAR

Can I be honest? I think I had a bit of an anxiety problem over the summer. It’s the only explanation I have for why I can’t remember the past five months. And if I dig deep down into the crevices of my brain — like deep down between my gyri where my memory box lies in my hippocampus (not entirely factual) — the only thing I can remember is lying awake at night as thoughts of everything I did not complete that day ran through my mind.

I tried listening to podcasts to drown out the thoughts, and that helped, as long as I paid attention to every single word. Another method I tried was staying busy all day so I would be tired enough to fall asleep right as my head hit the pillow. But none of these methods worked for long — ultimately, I knew I needed to talk to my therapist and hop on those meds as soon as possible.

It’s a bit tortuous — being tired yet unable to sleep. And closing your eyes just makes it worse... like why am I experiencing the worst of both worlds? It’s sending me into a slight panic just thinking about it right now. This process of anxiety at night and relief during the day sometimes feels like a never-ending cycle, and it’s exhausting.

To know that this is a shared experience is reassuring. Perhaps it’s something we all do at one point or another. Maybe you can’t sleep because you’ve fallen behind in your summer classes or you’re going through a period of grief. Maybe you forgot your nightly dose of melatonin and your pituitary gland doesn’t know what to do anymore. No matter what the reason is, anxiety is a bitch.