Noi’s Story – Sleep

One of my most difficult hurdles of my entire life is that I have always had sleep issues. I still have some to this day, but not as severe as they used to be. In the past, I always struggled with waking up early for school where everyone had to be at school at about 8:00 AM. I used an alarm clock every morning, but sometimes that didn’t even work because I would be very startled from the loud sound of the alarm that I accidentally fell back to sleep.

I have always been a night person, where I sometimes function at night better than I do during the early morning. Since I’m not a morning person, I sometimes envy some people who are naturally morning people who find it easy to get up early each morning naturally and go to work. I would never choose to have a job where I have to be there at 8:00 or even 10:00 AM because I would dread not waking up in time for work and also because I would be awake nervous all night not being able to sleep at all from anxiety. When I get almost no sleep the night before, I am in a very grouchy mood and then almost my whole day goes bad from not enough sleep.

Anxiety has also been an issue that has gotten in the way of sleeping well for me. Much of what has caused my anxiety for many years are extraneous thoughts that have gone through my mind at night such as school, relationships with friends or acquaintances, being organized for the next day, and sensitivities to different sounds during the night. There were times when I lived on the first floor of a dorm during college (and sometimes at home) where I could not go to sleep because of the fear of hearing sounds or someone tapping on my window trying to peek into my room at night. I felt this was the worst part of my anxiety preventing me from sleeping. I don’t need to worry about this fear anymore now that I will always choose to live anywhere except the first floor.

In the past couple of months, I have felt a little more relaxed when going to sleep because I have found great sleeping methods like listening to white noise sounds like soundscapes and meditational music for relaxation. There are still some occasions where I wake up from a scary dream and can’t easily get back to sleep, but the sleep music has really helped me a lot.