I got good news last week. Almost 6 years to the day that I discovered a lump in my breast I had another clear mammogram. I have now been discharged from cancer follow up and am back to regular breast screening.
But the real story of the last 5 years since my cancer treatment ended has been fighting another illness. One that, like cancer, affects or is likely to affect 1 in 3 adults in the UK today. And one that I have discovered can be even more debilitating and have an even greater impact on my quality of life than cancer itself. I’m talking about chronic insomnia. In my case the two are connected, because my cancer treatment triggered the insomnia in the first place.
And I’m writing this blog not in celebration of kicking the cancer ball firmly into the back of the net but for the achievement shown in my sleep data graphs below. In January 2024 I hit my nadir in terms of sleep deprivation, as shown by my average hours of sleep per night that month and number of nights when I got less than 6 hours. Roll forward a year to January 2025 and the figures are very different. This is not just one month either – you can see how 2024 has been a far better year for sleep than 2023. So how have I managed to achieve this?
Before I tell you, the difference between insomnia and cancer treatment is that with cancer, doctors seem to know what they are talking about. When it comes to insomnia however, the world seems full of experts, who offer up all kinds of advice, most of which often makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. The Guardian published one such list of sleep tips only last week. I can follow every sleep hygiene strategy offered by these sleep police and still find myself staring at the ceiling at 2am.
The worst thing about chronic insomnia is it can feel like there is no escape. No way forward. With my cancer treatment there was an end in sight. I always had hope. With insomnia it started to feel like it was a life sentence, and it was making life feel pretty unbearable. I had got to the point where I was beginning to ask myself if I could carry on working or have any quality of life because I was struggling to function so much.
The anxiety and negativity that comes with a lack of sleep just accentuates the problem. Because when I listen to others with sleep challenges and look at my own story I recognise that the root cause of most insomnia seems to be some kind of trauma. The GP eventually decided last year that the cancer treatment had left me with PTSD. I prefer to think of myself as being hypervigilant. And that’s what keeps me awake at night.
Some sleep doctors seem to like to make things worse. Take Dr Matthew Walker. He always seems to start his talks by telling you how bad insomnia is for your health. Duh! We chronic insomniacs don’t need to be told that. We know how dreadful we feel in the morning after a really bad night. We know what it is like to struggle to keep our eyes open, to stagger about the house in a brain fog and to spend the whole day crying out for sleep, but at the same time dreading going to bed that night and facing the long hours of darkness again. It’s not as if chronic insomnia is a choice thing. It hits us, even when we are desperate to be free of it. So please, sleep experts, don’t hike our anxiety.
So, I am here to say to every one of you out there who is struggling with sleep that yes, it can get better. You can overcome it. You just need to find your own way of giving your brain a hug.
So, what worked for me? Well, I’m going to acknowledge a few things, before getting to the main event.
First, having one session of hypnotherapy at the Cavendish Centre in Sheffield four years ago did stop the regular panic attacks where I would wake traumatised in the night thinking I was going to die because I hadn’t taken my drugs properly.
Second, there are some sleep hygiene rules that I do follow (although they are not a guarantee of a good night’s sleep).
- I go to bed at a regular time.
- I get up at a regular time.
- I sleep with the window open to keep the room cool.
- I don’t drink coffee after lunch.
- I avoid drinking and eating within 3 hours of bedtime. My one really poor night in January 2025 was after I spent the evening sharing a bottle of wine with my son’s partner and then had a Burger King Whopper just before bed. Very nice but not good timing.
Thirdly, I did some breath work with Ivan Broad from January to June last year which may well have resolved some stuff on an unconscious level.
Fourthly I have to thank the community mental health nurse at Valley Medical Centre in Stocksbridge for suggesting that the problem when you just try to keep on going is that eventually you have to stop.
But I attribute the real transformation in my sleep pattern to one thing – listening to Jane Austen. And not just any Jane Austen. There was one book that worked better than any of the others and that book was Persuasion. So, why did this help when all else had failed?
The answer I think lies in a few things.
- My brain is enraptured by the quality of the writing. It is a pleasure to listen to the prose, even when my brain is fighting sleep. This sense of pleasure relaxes the brain, gives it something to focus on, and enables me to gradually relax into sleep.
- Listening to the audio version rather than reading means that the listening experience continues even as I fall asleep – I’m in bed, with my head on the pillow and the light off, so there is no interruption.
- Familiarity with the story calms my brain – there is no anticipation or wondering what happens next, which would then make getting to sleep harder. Persuasion is also a book where nothing really difficult or miserable happens, unlike say Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, which I just find too depressing.
- It is quite an introspective book, largely focusing on the inner musings of the heroine Anne Elliot. So, it works better than say Pride and Prejudice, which is more high-octane with characters like Mrs Bennett and Lydia Bennett not being conducive for sleep. There are also no characters who really irritate me, unlike say Sense and Sensibility where I find Marianne Dashwood somewhat annoying.
- Listening to a female voice (Greta Scacchi, Juliet Stevenson) is particularly soothing, perhaps in my case invoking unconscious memories of my mother reading me a bedtime story.
- Leaving the audio to run all night does seem to reduce the number of times I wake up – so each time I come out of a sleep cycle I am not always coming into consciousness. When I do wake up it is often for another reason (e.g. I need the toilet, or the cat has come in).
- I do have to change the book – too much Persuasion becomes too much as familiarity does breed contempt. Other Austen novels have worked to a certain extent, as have George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Forster’s A Room with a View. But when I am having a more difficult night I always go back to Persuasion.
There are still nights when it is harder to get to sleep than others, but I find now that my mindset around sleep is so different. I no longer dread the nights. I go to bed confident that I have a way of getting at least 6 hours of shut-eye. My sleep efficiency (i.e. the percentage of time I am asleep, which the sleep police love to measure) is usually over 80%. And even if I do find myself awake for a while listening to the book is a pleasurable way of passing the time. I also know that eventually it will take me to the land of Nod. And if I choose not to listen then I accept that I may get a bad night. That happened after I ate the Burger King Whopper, as I didn’t turn the book on when I woke up at 2am. But I can cope with 1 bad night out of 31.
So, my question for all you other insomniacs out there – what can you do to give your brain a hug? Listening to Jane Austen won’t work for everyone. For some it might be reading or listening to another book or author, for others it might be meditating or even watching TV or having a long soak in a bath to relax body and brain. Whatever it is, I hope that you can find it and recapture the quality of life that comes with a good night’s sleep.
Sweet dreams, every one.
