…hard to believe, isn't it? The 21st century was supposed to bring us peace and more time for ourselves, but the exact opposite is happening. Anxiety is eating us alive, and if there's one disorder that stands out above the rest, it's insomnia. Over time, we've heard dozens of recommendations to sleep more/better, and one of the latest to join our list is counting backwards from 300 in blocks of three.
Spending a sleepless night once in a while is nothing unusual, but if Morpheus decides to take a longer vacation than normal, we're in trouble. Science tells us that the term insomnia applies to difficulties falling asleep, or waking up during the night. Insomnia is considered chronic once it crosses the four-week threshold, and the feeling is, well... absolutely horrible. Imagine a person on the verge of falling asleep while standing, sitting, working, traveling, cooking, in the bathroom, and so on, only to end up like an owl once they get into bed. The problems associated with insomnia have been the subject of study among thousands of professionals around the globe, and one of them is Dr. Michael Breus of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
One of the first things Dr. Breus points out is that, unlike his colleagues, he thinks there's no problem falling asleep with the TV on. This is because the sound of the TV (not the image) provides a suitable distraction to avoid thinking about those things that cause anxiety before sleep. One of his suggestions we had heard before is creating "gratitude" and "worry" journals. As its name indicates, in the gratitude journal we should write down everything we are grateful for before going to sleep. In contrast, the worry journal should be filled out two hours in advance. Divide the page in two; in one column we put what worries us, and in the other a possible solution. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate, but rather an idea of what we could do.
If creating two journals isn't a viable option, what Dr. Breus proposes is a variation on counting sheep: We start with the number 300 and count backwards in blocks of three. The theory is that the process turns out to be complicated and boring enough to fall asleep in record time. Does it actually work? I suppose there's only one way to find out...
