Could Insomnia Be Your Dark Night of the Soul?

It's always darkest before the dawn. There is light at the end of the tunnel. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

There are many ways to describe the struggle we endure, a time when everything feels hard and painful and we wonder how we will be strong enough to go on. Then, right when we are about to give in, life opens up and we pop out on the other side, back into the light. This process of transformation can look like magic, an invisible fairy waves a wand and suddenly the curse is lifted, but anyone who has experienced significant hardship in their life knows it doesn't really work that way.

Difficult times can often be scary and soul destroying. Out of this pain and the struggle to survive, we become stronger, more resilient, as we learn a new way of being in the world. It is through this struggle that we learn and continue to grow. I know insomnia can be difficult and painful. I am not trying to romanticise it. The hard to accept truth is you don't get to control your sleep. It is an automated survival process which happens on its own.

Because sleep naturally occurs in a relaxed state, any attempts to control it only add stress (hyperarousal) and push sleep further away. Although you do not get to control sleep, you can control your reactions around it. Looking at a problem (any problem) through the lens of "What Can I Learn?" is called having a growth mindset. This helps you to stay positive and opens the way for positive change to occur, in stark contrast to a fixed mindset/ victim mentality which keeps you stuck.

If you are currently stuck in a difficult place, whether you choose to be there or not, wouldn't you prefer to at least get some benefit from it? Especially if these benefits can help with future struggles down the road.

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