‘I was constantly in fear of my sleep patterns slipping’
Author, journalist and ex-insomniac Sophie White talks to Liadan Hynes about her harrowing journey to better sleep.
‘MY first big brush with insomnia was after a nervous breakdown that I suffered in my early twenties,” Sophie explains. “Back then when I was in treatment for what seemed to be a combination of issues like drug-induced psychosis, depression and severe anxiety, sleep was an enormous priority. As anyone who’s been sleep-deprived knows, even a relatively stable mind can be thrown out of orbit when suffering from exhaustion. I was on a cocktail of medications (antidepressants and anti-psychotics) which seemed to have a sedative effect on me but I was constantly in fear of my sleep pattern slipping and the effect that would have on me.”
Sleeping pills were essential at this time. “That was a period of my life when I took them quite regularly. I tried not to get too hung up on the fact that I needed them — in my mind the problem of being reliant on sleeping pills was offset against the number one priority, which was to not become suicidal again. In that period, as my mental equilibrium was gradually restored (through medication and CBT) I found I needed the sleeping pills less and less, but I always have them. I see it as insurance against sleeplessness and rarely take them, but knowing I have that option is helpful for me.”
Like many, Sophie found having children several years later affected her sleep. “Six years later, I found that having children really profoundly impacted my sleeping pattern again. I’ve definitely heard this from other mothers too. I co-slept with my babies and nursed through the night and I often found that, even when they would go off to sleep, I would be wide awake. There is nothing as frustrating as being an exhausted new mother and unable to sleep when the opportunity arises — those windows are rare, like, unicorn rare — and wasting them in a state of anxious wakefulness is an absolute b**ch.”
Since then, she has developed several coping methods to enable better sleep. “Of course, the sleeping pills weren’t an option for me then and that’s when I began to rely on headphones in bed. I was so attuned to every little sigh and whisper of the sleeping babies that it felt like they just had to flutter their eyelids and I’d be up, heart racing and straight into fight-or-flight mode. I started using headphones to help block out the noise (not completely obviously, but just take it down a notch; I could absolutely still hear the baby!). I had used GentleBirth, a self-hypnosis app by Irish midwife Tracy Donegan, during my pregnancy to prepare for birth and in the early months afterwards I still used some of the sessions on it to help me wind down at night.”
When she finished nursing her second child, her husband took over night feeds for a time in order to give her a long period of interrupted sleep.
“I had a really restorative stretch of sleeping on the couch in my office on my own for a good few months. I think this was really, really helpful in getting my sleep patterns back into good shape.”
Audio books became a means of getting to sleep. “I listened to Hunger, which is written and read by Roxane Gay, and I found her voice to be incredibly soothing — which is crazy because that book is utterly harrowing. The subject matter is so dark and anyone I mentioned it to was completely confused as to why such a thing would help me sleep.
“About a year ago, I heard about ASMR through a friend and that was a gamechanger,” Sophie continues. “ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response and is essentially tingling and relaxing sensations produced by watching people perform repetitive tasks, or the sounds of whispering, hair-brushing and other stimuli. There are hundreds of thousands of audio and video ASMR stimulus on YouTube (some of these channels have more than a million subscribers). Now I use ASMR to go to sleep whenever I’m having trouble. It’s really relaxing and definitely helps with the racing thoughts I’m often hit with at bedtime. Also, I really rate sleeping on your own if you can.”