The Sleep Solution

What this book gave me is confidence. I can sleep, I do sleep - sometimes with difficulty, but that's ok. The book begins by describing exactly what happens when a human sleeps, with the intention of defanging the beast by demystifying it; this was extremely effective for me. Once the ins and outs of sleep are addressed, the author goes on to talk about what he calls “sleep hygiene”. This involves setting up an environment that is conducive to sleep, and then changing how you feel about that space and the act of sleeping. The latter point really resonated with me because I had been feeling dread whenever bedtime was approaching since I assumed I would have a tough time sleeping. I found these early chapters extremely helpful. There are more chapters which discuss insomnia (hint: it's not what you think it is), more exotic sleeping disorders, sleep studies, and sleeping medications (hint: they hurt more than they help). These later chapters weren't covering anything I had trouble with, but I found them very interesting to read regardless.

One of the most helpful analogies from the book was when the author compared appetites and sleeping. He pointed out that if it is mealtime and we aren't hungry, it's no big deal for us to skip a meal because we know that another appetite, another meal, is around the corner. However if we have a bad night's sleep, or even miss that night's sleep entirely, we are likely to start worrying that something is wrong with us. We quickly lose faith that another good sleep is around the corner, and this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Highly, highly recommend.