How I learnt to sleep again
Forget counting sheep – author Maeve Haran goes for a ‘virtual’ 3am wander around her local supermarket to send herself off
There are no other customers present for my late-night laps of the local Sainsbury’s. The only staff member is the nice security guard, who always offers me a bag for my flowers. From there I progress to the fruit and veg aisle, taking in the strawberries, grapes, melons, kiwis, apples, tangerines. I’ve never once made it to the till. Usually, I am fast asleep by the time I get to “Snacking and Sharing”.
Before you think I’ve gone completely crackers, these circuits take place in the comfort of my own bed – and head. Instead of counting sheep (has anyone ever done that? Even Little Bo Peep?), this highly personalised form of visualisation, a well-known psychological technique, is the best way I’ve found of guaranteeing sleep. I share my peculiar but remarkably effective method after being gripped by this week’s revelation from Chrissie Rucker, founder of The White Company, that she suffered from such chronic insomnia a few years ago that she sought help from a psychologist.
You’d think with all those scented candles and calming white linens in her life, she’d be out like a light. But the demands of being a mother of four and a high-flying businesswoman meant that even counting the threads of her luxurious Egyptian sheets (and the millions she’s made from them) couldn’t help her to drop off.
I found this fascinating on various levels. First (and I have to confess, rather trivially), I’m sure like many people I’ve pored over her tasteful catalogues while experiencing a great deal of life envy: “Now there’s a woman who’s got things nailed!” So it’s particularly endearing to find that beneath the picture-perfect exterior lies a real person with problems like the rest of us. Secondly, I’m a serious insomniac myself. I’m convinced this is partly genetic; my mother was a busy doctor and mother of four who was to be found up a stepladder at 1am painting ceilings, and I’m sure I’ve inherited her restless energy. When we went on holiday as children, driving to the south of France, she used to give me – both somewhat unethically and, worse, ineffectively – a dose of sleeping pills.
I’ve always been a Duracell bunny and, like Churchill and Mrs Thatcher, I prided myself on getting by on only four hours. There are advantages to being full of beans when others droop. But, like Rucker, 48, whose sleep troubles peaked six years ago when she was trying to find a new chief executive for her expanding
‘You’d think with all those scented candles, she’d be out like a light’
empire, periods of extreme work stress can push insominia to unacceptable lengths. “I was feeling very overloaded, I wasn’t sleeping well and I was tired,” she said.
Similarly, when I worked as a TV producer in the Nineties, a profession dominated by men working 14-hour days, I used to pride myself on my ability to “pull an all-nighter”. But add small children into the mix, and there were moments when I thought I might actually crack up. Worries that seem manageable in the daytime take on monstrous proportions in the darkest hour just before dawn.
It was as I turned 40, at the height of my career, with two tots under five, that long-term lack of sleep began seriously to take its toll, bang on cue. A Yougov survey of more than 4,000 British adults published last year found that 46 per cent of women have trouble sleeping and, according to Public Health England, the over-40s are the most sleep-deprived.
Middle age creates a perfect storm of conditions: work and family commitments peak in tandem, making bedtime the first area of the 24-hour day that people look to cut back on. Going to bed at the same time each night is more important than getting a long night’s sleep, a Harvard study is reported to show. But longer commutes, longer working hours and the constant pressure to be electronically accessible 24/7, all combine to undermine our natural sleep patterns even further. “It’s easy to feel like you are drowning underneath all that,” noted Rucker.
Over the years, I tried everything. Pre-internet, it was listening to the World Service, friend of insomniacs across the globe, then reading all 24 Regency romances by Georgette Heyer. I imposed a 4pm caffeine curfew, made lists before bed to “download” any worries that might keep me awake. Nothing worked.
Eventually, I gave up my stressful career and based myself at home to write my first novel, Having it All.
But as years passed and I still suffered wakeful nights, I decided something had to be done.
I signed up for an online programme called Sleepio, designed by experts in the field to help still the “racing mind” in only six weeks, using techniques derived from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.
I gladly paid up £99, filled in the online questionnaire about “sleep hygiene” and the light level in my bedroom, not to mention my negative nocturnal habits. I dutifully kept the online diary and was issued with encouragement by a dear little avatar called The Prof. I was even given access to other insomniacs for advice, rather like a virtual AA meeting. Sadly, it didn’t work for me. Maybe I was too resistant, or too lazy to keep it up. I especially couldn’t deal with the ban on reading in bed.
Eventually, I worked out my own wacky and wonderful solutions to sleeplessness. I drink a cup of Clipper’s Sleep Easy tea (an infusion of cinnamon, camomile, orange and valerian) an hour before bed. It smells like something out of Rosemary’s Baby and has almost the same effect, minus the demonic intrusions. Sometimes, when I feel especially exhausted and yet sleep still eludes me, I take an occasional (but wonderful) melatonin tablet, used widely in the US for sleeping problems.
Finally, I evolved my own barmy CBT technique: that virtual run around my nearest Sainsbury’s. The funny thing is, I still keep that other instrument of the devil, my iphone, beside the bed, feeling bereft if it isn’t by my side at all times. Arianna Huffington, who seems intent on combating a “sleep deprivation crisis”, would consider this bonkers. Sleep experts and my husband all concur: Turn It Off or Leave It Downstairs. But I like to know that my children are safe. This is certifiably mad as all three are grown up and highly competent, but for some reason I sleep better knowing they could call me if they had to. And just as my mother passed on her mad energy to me, I have passed my mad sleeping technique on to them. The rather rewarding thing is, on the odd occasions they have found it hard to drop off, they say mentally walking through somewhere they’re familiar with is rather useful.
It’s just that, surprise, surprise, it isn’t Sainsbury’s.
‘Pre-internet, I listened to the World Service, friend of insomniacs’