Rethink Insomnia

We need to rethink chronic insomnia. It's a serious medical condition. My quality of life was really, really poor. I just didn't feel like I was a human being anymore. Chronic insomnia for me is a debilitating condition which has just had such a fundamental impact on myself, my family, my friends and my career. There'd be times that I would be lying there at night and I couldn't sleep and I literally would just smack my hands to my head because I was so frustrated. The most recent chronic insomnia episode that I had lasted nearly three years. It was brought on by the menopause with night sweats. So I would go to bed about 10:00 at night and then I would wake up maybe around two or three in the morning and even the three or four hours I'd have at that period were broken sleep. My body wasn't repairing itself so it was making me actually physically quite poorly and it was having an impact on my anxiety and the anxiety was causing me to stay awake. I felt quite worthless, I felt like I'm failing as a human being, I'm not able to do this thing of sleep that everybody else can do so easily. As a mum, I wasn't really there for my daughter because I was hardly there for myself and my husband, you know, it had an impact on our relationship because I was exhausted all the time. The impact that it's had on my daily activities has been absolutely immense. It's just getting out of bed, getting yourself dressed when you're so sleep deprived and this has gone on for months and years becomes just a task in itself, going to make a cup of tea. I'm concerned I might burn myself by the kettle. I couldn't drive anymore because it was dangerous. I was a medical representative and part of the role is to go out and see customers and I couldn't do that. So then I had no choice but to end my career. Chronic insomnia is different from insomnia and I don't think people appreciate how different that is because it's relentless. Insomnia, maybe just having a few bad nights here and there, it's completely different to chronic insomnia that impacts your everyday life. There is something in my body that isn't right and it needs to be taken seriously. You're desperate to find information out there. One of the things on the internet talk about things like sleep hygiene, that is talking about having the right temperature in your bedroom, you can't have your phone by you, you mustn't drink, any caffeine, in the afternoon. The list is endless and you've started to get really annoyed that I've done all these things and yet nothing seems to be working. My advice to somebody suffering with chronic insomnia is you need to speak to your GP. There is support out there, things are getting better and hopefully your journey won't be quite as bad as mine, but there is more education, there are more treatments available and you will get through this.

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