Sleep is such an important Key to Calm that I am returning to the topic. It is particularly relevant to those dogged by anxiety and depression: when we are sleep-deprived, our emotional brain (the amygdala) becomes more active and we can no longer regulate feelings effectively, locking us into a downward spiral of over-sensitivity and yet more anxiety.
We established last week that insomnia itself is not the problem per se: it is worrying about not sleeping that feeds our insomnia and chokes us with stress like angry ivy covering a ruined house.
The question is then what to think about instead. For me, reciting a poem is one answer. In repeating Wordsworth or Yeats, Herbert or Emily Dickinson, I soothe my hurt mind and tell myself a more positive story. I feel less alone, hearing a new and welcome voice in my head which teaches the virtues of acceptance and hope rather than struggle and despair. I’ve been particularly calmed in the last few weeks by George Herbert’s ‘The Flower’. One of my favourite lines is ‘Grief melting away/ Like snow in May.’ Another favourite is ‘Who would have thought my shrivelled heart/ Could have recovered greenness.’ Herbert is my friend in the small hours of the night. I hope he might become yours.
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