[SleepWorry]

My biggest fear around sleep is being up for multiple days without sleep and losing my mind, and then not ever being able to be normal again. I work shift work, three 12.5 hour shifts a week, all in a row (friday /saturday/sunday). These are very long days, and when I have to work them on low sleep or no sleep its very hard on my body and my mind. I can work one on no sleep without much problems, its the fear of going on 2 days in a row of no sleep, then having to work that drives me mad. I know everyone here says you have to not worry about sleep but that has been almost impossible to me. Its not just the fear of having a crappy day the next day, its the fear of losing my job or starting to see things that arent there and going mad, making me end up in the looney bin.

[Scott]

Hey @SleepWorry,

Welcome to the forum! It can be difficult not to associate poor sleep one night with having a bad day the next day. What if I told you that you won the biggest lottery in history the day after achieving not much/any sleep? Do you still think it’d be a terrible day for you? Or, have you ever had a bad day after a good night’s sleep?

Typically, the best way to react to sleep disruption is not to react since our reactions are often unhelpful and can increase our anxiety about our sleep. As hard as it can be some days, I would encourage you to avoid the temptation to modify your days in response (canceling social events, going to bed earlier, daytime naps, etc).

Let’s take a look at your job concern from a mathematical perspective, which I’m hoping will reduce your job related stress:
Compare estimated # of poor nights of sleep with # of days where you actually didn’t do well at work. Let’s say you’ve had insomnia for 1 year, 4x/week = 208 “bad” nights of sleep for that year. The number of days of poor work performance in the past year = 25? So, 25/208 = 12% chance of doing poorly at work the day after a poor night of sleep. Those aren’t terrible odds and, yes, you might feel fatigued but chances are, you’re performing better than you think you are at work.

What have you tried to help resolve your insomnia?

Hope that helps,
Scott J

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