Sleep, tigers, afraid in your cave

I came across the nightworrier blog today--obviously a blog written by someone with insomnia. Not just insomnia, but worry as well. In fact, worry in the night is the major feature of this person's insomnia.
Many times I have been awake at night and worried. Let me count the ways—my work the next day; the kids driving at night; paying for lessons, the house, college; whether to move; the argument from yesterday.

Somewhere along the line I had a realization that most of the things I was worrying about did not seem as bad the next day. I mean I would be just plain freaked out in the night and positive that something bad was going to happen and I had no idea how to deal with it. Then, when morning came, I was able to deal with it, forget it, and it didn't seem so bad. How could that be? I was the same person just a few hours later, but my perspective and reaction to the problem was very different. This happened enough times that the pattern was obvious. Kind of like "the darkest hour is just before the dawn" perhaps.

So one evening I'm giving a lecture on sleep in some fancy restaurant to a group of doctors. Doctors are a tough audience, but smart and usually interested in the topic or they wouldn't come. We're talking about insomnia and I mention to the audience that things look really bleak to me during the night, but then during the day the same problem seems manageable. "I wonder why that is."

A hand shoots up and the doctor says "It is good to be scared in the night—it keeps us hiding in our cave." This was brilliant, and the more I thought about it the more obvious it became. Clearly, for primitive humans, there would be an evolutionary advantage to staying quiet and still and hidden in the night. I mean, anybody who wanted to go whistling through the jungle at night probably didn't survive very long in the world of sabre tooth tigers and pythons. Those who did survive passed on the nighttime scardy-cat gene.

So think of this the next time that you are awake at night. You are hard wired to be anxious at night, and it helped your ancestors survive, and it might even still be good for you. Comfort yourself with the knowledge that this is normal, and that things will seem better come the dawn.

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