End the Nightmare of Insomnia
By Lisa Zaccheo, MA, BCH, BC
every year. Having worked with hundreds of clients who struggle to get some shut-eye, I know the toll it takes on their lives. And having helped corporations who are working to decrease the expense of an unhealthy work-force, I know the toll it takes on companies too. Did you know that employers spend around $3,200 more in health care costs on employees with sleep problems?
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Insomnia is defined as, “a prolonged and abnormal inability to obtain adequate sleep,” and comes in many different forms from not being able to fall asleep, to not being able to stay asleep. Then there’s transient insomnia, which is occasional and lasts from one night to a week, short-term which can span up to a month, or chronic which can last for a month or more. No matter what form it takes it wreaks havoc in our lives, havoc in our families, our bank accounts, at work and on the road. Did you know that 100,000 accidents occur annually due to drowsy driving and about 1,500 of those accidents are fatal?
I had one poor woman come in who hadn’t slept for more than a few hours a night in over five years! She lost her job, was unable to drive and felt like she was looking at life through a thick haze and could no longer make sense of even the simplest conver- sations. Thankfully, that siege on sleep has ended for her and she’s back to enjoying a productive life. If you have insomnia, you know how challenging it can be. It can affect all aspects of life and can be a living nightmare.
re your eyes bleary as you read this? Did you just stifle a yawn? If so, you’re not alone because over 30 million adults and over two million children suffer from insomnia
Sleep Disturbances Thankfully, there is help. Our bodies have been designed to get the sleep we need for health. Even though you may not remember it, there was a time in your past, before the “interference” came in, when you slept as your body was designed to sleep. That “interfer- ence” grew in your system over time. Just like the maple seeds that land in the yard in the spring, before you know it, it’s a little sapling. If you pull the sapling early it comes out easily. If not, you really have to put some muscle in it and if you let it go any longer you may not be able to pull it out without help. The seeds of our sleep disturbances are the same. They start very small. For example, one client’s “seed” got planted because of her parent’s tendency to fight after the kids went to bed. Meanwhile, the kids are upstairs, all alone, hearing every word and more importantly feeling the energy of conflict and thinking, “I’d better stay awake in case anything bad happens.” That seed grew over time and continued to disturb her sleep long after she was grown, out of the house, and married with kids of her own.
The birth of a child is another perfect example of a seed of dis-
turbance. A harried and short-tempered mom came in saying that she hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since her first child was born, and her oldest was in her early teens. The seed in that case was, “I’d better keep an ear open for any sounds from the baby because if I sleep deeply I might not hear if something happens or if she needs me.” One gentleman’s seed was a past affair that he’d been “los- ing sleep over” for years. His lack of sleep was his subconscious mind’s way of punishing him for that misjudgment. I had a client just last week whose belief of “I don’t have time to sleep”, even though she’s now retired, prevented her mind from being able to relax, let go and sleep.
For children, it’s very often being exposed to age inappropriate
scary movies, a nightmare or the fear of being alone. The seeds of sleep issues are always very interesting, and rarely what we con- sciously think is the cause of the problem.
Stress and Anxiety
More than half of the folks struggling with sleep are doing so because they’re stressed, anxious or depressed; all things that hypnosis can help with. And all these things winnow back to the class fear of “Not Good Enough”. People feel stressed because they think they’re not capable enough, not smart enough, not organized enough, not something enough to handle the challenges that life throws their way, in spite of the fact that they have success- fully handled hundreds of challenges in the past. They’re anxious because they’re afraid they’re, “Not Good Enough” and that as a result, people won’t like them, will leave them, then they’ll be all alone and may not survive.
Depression is the same thing. How can you feel good when
you spend the bulk of your day judging yourself to not be as good as others? You simply can’t. I know many people believe that these issues run in families. I’m like this because my mother’s brother has anxiety. Those are behaviors that have been modeled, so it’s ener- getic as much as it is genetic. They are modeled thought patterns, belief patterns and habit patterns. I’m anxious because my mother was a worrier and her mother was a worrier and so on and so forth. OK, did that work for them? I don’t think so. “I’m this way be- cause I have a chemical imbalance.” How did your chemicals get imbalanced? Did you know that every thought you think releases chemicals in your brain? Maybe your chemicals became imbal- anced because your thoughts are imbalanced.
24 Natural Nutmeg - November/December 2017
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