Self-care is the best kind of love we can give to ourselves  🧡💙

However, self-care doesn’t look the same from one person to the next.

While living with chronic illnesses, I also have to cope with insomnia. Insomnia, sometimes, has its creative upside…

At least for me.

 

However, most of the time, I feel exhausted from the lack of rest.

I’ve been living with insomnia for a long as I can remember. When I was a teenager, getting out of bed in the mornings was difficult for me because I stayed up late most nights reading, drawing, or simply lying awake because I was unable to fall asleep. In my twenties, it didn’t get any easier; so I resigned myself to not being a morning person.

In my thirties, I was sent for my first sleep study (Mayo Clinic link) or Polysomnography.

 

Before that sleep study, I had no idea it was possible to learn in such detail and with such accuracy, about what contributed to a person’s inability to sleep. Going into that sleep study, I fully expected the test wouldn’t reveal anything consequential, or at least nothing physical that was preventing me from achieving what is supposed to come naturally to every living thing. It turned out there were real physical reasons I couldn’t fall asleep, stay asleep, or feel rested if/when I did sleep.

The doctor who treated me at the time, a Neuropsychiatrist (Encyclopædia Britannica link), identified the causes for my sleep issues and their symptoms, and prescribed a medication he believed would help me cope with them: Gabapentin (WebMD link). I would learn some years later that Gabapentin is also beneficial in treating severe and chronic pain.

However, the dose of Gabapentin needed to treat my chronic pain was significantly higher than what I needed to treat the causes and symptoms of my insomnia. Unfortunately, that higher dose caused me to experience some of the common and rarer side effects attributed to Gabapentin. Some of those side effects were drowsiness, dizziness, and extreme swelling in the feet, ankles, and legs. Because of those side effects, I had to stop taking it. Removing Gabapentin from my pain treatment plan also meant losing the sleep benefits it had delivered to me.

Fast forward a few years into my illness—and its resulting chronic pain—and my struggle with insomnia has re-emerged with no end in sight. This chronic illness has taught me that not being able to sleep complicates healing and one’s ability to cope because sleep is the body’s restorative state; and feeling constant pain is not conducive to sleeping nor simply resting. Worse still, for some yet unknown reasons, in the evenings and during the nights, when most people are winding down to get some sleep; my pain tends to become more intense, which makes it more difficult and often impossible to get comfortable enough to sleep at all.

Being awake for long stretches of time or waking during the night and being unable to fall back to sleep, leaves me with few alternatives. Therefore, while I’m stuck in this sleep-deprived state, I rely heavily on my creative practice to help me cope. I decided a while ago that while I’m unable to sleep I’ll create something.

 

Having an activity with which to occupy myself during those hours when no one else might be awake or available to keep me company helps to keep boredom at bay and, thankfully, lessens my anxiety; and often helps me to cope with my chronic pain.

Drawing has become a source of meditation and mental escape for me. Sometimes, I get lost for hours in the pages of my sketchbook(s) as I draw lines then add colour.

 

On some occasions, the mental focus involved in creating something tires me enough so that I can sleep for a short while; even if it’s with my face planted in my sketchbook. This may be a temporary reprieve from focussing on the incessant pain, but drawing is among the few things that give me any mental ease.

I know this isn’t an ideal way to cope with not sleeping, especially while living with chronic illnesses. Nevertheless, I’m learning that looking at things through a positive lens—even if it’s contained to what I create on the pages of sketchbooks—makes a significant difference in how I feel and how I engage with the world around me.

 

As always, I hope what I share helps someone cope with any difficulties in their life.

♥  ♥  ♥  ♥  ♥  ♥

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.