I can fall asleep very quickly.
Most of my life I have had trouble sleeping, for as soon as my head hit the pillow, my mind would start racing. It was like my brain had finally been let loose after years of silence in captivity, and wouldn't shut up. So many nights I would lay there for hours, sleepless, and unrested in the morning.
What changed was when I really started writing consistently, which is largely done before bed. and what I suspect is happening, is that the righting process is clearing my head of thoughts of the day, even if I am not directly thinking about them, so when my head touches the pillow, there is nothing left to think. I also believe that there might be a mental energy component to it also, where if I haven't worked my brain enough during the day, it will look to get its step count in one way or another.
It is even easier now.
While I find all the various implications that have affected me since the stroke interesting, they are also off-putting and sad at times, as I come to terms with the things I have lost or am unable to do anywhere near as well as prior. So, so many things. And as I have mentioned before, one of the more fascinating of the conditions is that my brain no longer creates images spontaneously. For me to see something in my head, 95% of the time I have to concentrate and "build" it there.
However, recently I have discovered one of the side-effects of this, even though I had noticed the issue occurring years ago. I get incredibly tired, within a very short timeframe, like a minute or two. It is as if I am unable to keep my eyes open, like a baby up hours past nap time and just falling asleep at the dinging table. My head gets heavy, nods and I have to use mental force to stop myself from sleeping.
But it only happens sometimes.
A few years ago, my wife and I went with friends to a symphony orchestra, and halfway through, I nodded off. Now, you might say, no wonder, but I actually like orchestras and classical music. But, as I have written about earlier, since the stroke my appreciation of all music has changed, because it no longer evokes the images, or the the feelings it once did and while I can listen, I don't get much out of it.
It is tiring.
Not the energy it takes to try and listen, even though that is intensive at times, but it is literally tiring. What I have discovered is that when I am not actively using my brain to think, it goes into a type of hibernation mode and shuts down, running compulsory systems only. It keeps me a live, but doesn't absorb much from my experience, and forces me toward sleep.
I really only started realising this in the last couple months and running tests, but over a year ago, my daughter was playing on the piano, gently testing out sounds and keys as she is prone to do. And while it isn't all beautiful, it also isn't consistent, nor always in the same kind of feel. While she names the pieces things like "Spring butterfly wings" and "Winter deep" and plays something that sounds fitting, essentially, it is just random notes strung together, so there is no strong feel to it, no image of it. I can lay there on the couch listening, and within two minutes be asleep, almost guaranteed.
My wife is all too familiar with this trait also.
But, it is interesting, because I think that this is not unique to me, but there is normally so much stimulus coming in, that we are unable to block it out. People meditate and attempt to reach a zen state by first learning to clear the mind, but once the mind is actually clear, do we fall asleep as the brain has nothing to do?
I think this also aligns with a lot of the sleep issues many people seem to have these days, because the waking hours are spent consuming content, constantly bombarded with something that might not require thought, but still keeps the brain occupied. In the not too distant past, after eight at night, there really wasn't anything else to do, other than sit around - so people went to bed earlier. Maybe that period before bed, sitting in the dark, nothing to consume, is part of our evolved routine to wind the body down, and shutdown the brain into sleep mode.
All of the advice for better sleep tends to support this, but I wonder if I have a kind of cleaner experience of just how it works, because I don't have to do anything extra to accomplish it, I have to do something less. It doesn't take force, it takes using less energy. I just have to stop thinking. And, because it is easy for me to be thoughtless (my wife knows this well also), the default position is to be mentally still. And, my brain wants to do it, because thinking is so energy intensive for me, that my brain is constantly looking for relief anyway. As soon as experience isn't of the type that I will manually generate images for, I zone out to the point I sleep.
If there was a clear your mind Olympics, I would be a contender for gold.
What this experience tells me though is two things. Firstly, it is very useful to defrag the mind through writing daily, because it gives the opportunity to process thoughts and emotions before going to bed. And, cutting down on mindless brainwork before bed, should lead to a faster fall asleep. Mindless brainwork is in useless consumption, that makes the brain process, but doesn't process much of value. The turning off of screens well before bedtime is good advice.
When there is little for the brain to do, it seems it will naturally look to rest. This might be an evolutionary feature, where the brain has developed to rest the body when it can't detect any immediate threats to pay attention to. At night when we are watching all that content stream in, perhaps the brain is forced to look for threats, even though consciously we know we are safe, making it hard to fall asleep quickly.
Anyway, while I hope you don't need to suffer a traumatic brain injury to be able to get a good night's rest, I do hope that this article today gets you thinking about ways you can design your night time to think a little less, and sleep a little faster.
Goodnight!
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]