Filling Holes in the Night

When I first got insomnia, I saw a few doctors and therapists. None of them helped me much. The first therapist was intent on teaching me relaxation techniques. She made me bring a tape on our second visit, and she turned down the lights and recorded progressive relaxation as she said it to me. That was our session—her recording of the tape. She had a cold.

That night, when I lay down to make a stab at sleep (my stabs only seemed to poke holes in the night, letting in too much light), I listened to the tape. Right as I'd started to doze off, there was a cough. She coughed on my progressive relaxation tape! I told her the following week, and she said to bring another tape in, and we do it again. I told her I'd already paid for that session, and she should record it on her own time. That was the end of our relationship. I realized that her constant focus on trying to relax me wasn't going anywhere.

I had another therapist who claimed to be a hypnotist. I kept asking him to do his magic, but he, too, wanted to record a tape. His voice was more relaxing, but he was so slow and boring that I was more annoyed than anything.

It wasn't until a year later (by now, four years had passed) that I met Joel Knispel. I'd say he's my current therapist, but I haven't needed him in over a year. He is that good. In fact, he is so good and so honest that he actually tells you when he thinks you're done. I went an extra time or two, just for the hell of it. And there was nothing to talk about, which, in therapy, is excellent.

What made him different? He listened to me. He didn't give me what he thought I wanted (hypnotism, a magic pill); he gave me what he knew I needed.

I told him my whole story, how I had a baby and got insomnia. He asked what my life was like before, and I talked of poetry readings and rock concerts and drinking binges and LSD and all the things that made life fun, B.S. (Before Serena), not as if there was no fun A.S., of course, but it was different fun.

He looked me in the eye and said, "Here's the answer. Write poetry or join a punk band." I said, "What?" He told me that when I'd walked in, I was weepy and sobby and depressed and heavy, but when I spoke of what I used to do, I had a light in my eyes. He asked when I wrote poetry last. It was four years earlier, sometime during my daughter's infancy.

He told me that blocked artists develop mental problems (in nicer words, of course), and that I was the extreme case of the blocked artist because I wasn't even TRYING to write, I didn't even KNOW I was a blocked artist. Write, he said. Sleep will come.

I took his advice and became a better sleeper. I told my husband, my family, my best friend. They all said, "Well, duh! We've known you all these years. Why didn't WE think of that?" No one paid them to think, perhaps. (And perhaps that's the best use of that putdown I've ever heard!)

I wasn't perfect, mind you, but I was better. And each mosaic project made me even better. We both realized that I needed projects—any kind, whether it was work, art, or writing—in order to keep my brain healthy. The problem with my sleep was not that I worried about anything. It was more that I WASN'T worrying about anything! My brain was unstimulated.

Eventually, we moved on to dealing with the sleep issues themselves, the so-whats, the plans. Whatever it was worked, though I still believe it worked in concert with calcium/magnesium supplements and Atkins dieting. Chalk it up to synchronicity, the planets being aligned in exactly the right way for me then, everything in the proper order, at the proper time.

But how is it that a total stranger can tell you what you need? That strangers on an Internet forum can see more clearly than you can? Perhaps you are too close to the subject. It's not that you need an objective eye; those strangers and that therapist certainly have their biases and seem to want the best for you, so they are not without partiality. But they are without fear.

So thanks to all with insight. Thanks to all the fearless (a Weir film recommend by Joel Knispel). And thanks to the Jewish Buddhists for their righteous zen selves.