Sleeping problems can be avoided: ability to sleep can be learned

Many people wonder why sleep is even talked about, because for them sleeping is not a problem and there is no such thing as a sleep disturbance. They sleep well and take sleep for granted. They sleep an hour less or an hour more, just as they at times have more appetite than at others and are sometimes in a good mood, sometimes in a bad mood. They don't check on their sleep, they don't count hours, and they don't compare their sleeping habits with anyone else's. They consider sleep as much a matter of course as digestion. But for many other people, of whom there is an astonishingly large and constantly increasing number in our civilized world, sleep is a problem. These people are always conscious of difficulty in sleeping. They wake up with an almost masochistic satisfaction in saying to themselves, "I knew I couldn't sleep." And they go to bed with the same certainty of, "Again I won't be able to sleep."

Everyone who has trouble sleeping has a strong need for dialogue, for exchanging opinions or sharing experiences with others having similar problems. He does not necessarily look for direct answers to his questions. What he wants is to gain some clarity about himself and his problems, just as many sick persons, after talking to a

doctor, then reflect on their problem. This can often be more helpful than medication.

People who have difficulty sleeping are also preoccupied with the problem during the day. Consciously or unconsciously, they consider new regimens, precautions, and medications for the night. They prepare themselves for a sleepless night. They know already in the morning that they will be unable to sleep that night. They get a kind of fixation of considering sleep a problem, and for this reason they eagerly and gratefully adopt all the precautionary measures garnered from others in the same fix. This even includes the exchange of sleeping pills. Later on, they will have to ask their own doctors for a prescription of their own—that is, if the pills have helped. Unfortunately they often do help in the beginning, even though only for a short period of time. As long as the sufferer still has hopes that the medication will be effective, his anxiety about a lack of sleep and his psychic tension abate somewhat, but only for a while. But he makes the mistake of confusing the effects of the medication with his own positive attitude toward sleep. For a short period of time, he has regained his trust in his ability to sleep, unfortunately through the aid of a false remedy that will soon lose its effectiveness. And after a short phase of disconcertion expressed in a changed ability to sleep, the sufferer is back where he was at the beginning.

Trust in one's own ability to sleep cannot be obtained through medication. It can only be learned through an understanding of the context in which sleep takes place. Sleeplessness is not a permanent condition. The ability to sleep can be regained through a continuous learning process. This means that the ability to sleep can be learned, exactly as remaining awake can be learned.

Any person who works as a night nurse, train engineer, doctor, soldier, as an air traffic controller, or as a participant in an expedition learns how to stay awake. This learning process can, however, be reversed and can be applied to the ability to sleep. There is extensive biological proof that it can be done. The most precise formulation about sleep is the statement that among humans sleep is an instinct-related, periodically changing event that, like most other instincts and drives, can to some extent be changed through a learning process.

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