Can Insomnia Be Caused By Fear?

2:43 AM. You’re laying in bed tired, but tossing and turning. You wish for nothing more than to just be able to sleep but sleep won’t come. You need to sleep while you can. You have to be up early and no matter how many times you tell yourself that and look at the time, it just isn’t happening.

“Why can’t I sleep?”

It’s a simple question. On the surface, it seems straight forward. Why can’t I sleep? Well, what’s keeping me up? Well?

That’s the crux of it, isn’t it? What IS keeping you up?

I’ve had sleeping problems as long as I can remember. When I was younger, I was overweight and wasn’t taking the best care of myself. I wasn’t hitting the gym. I was eating badly and felt symptoms of what most would have called depression.

I wasn’t depressed. I miserable. And I was miserable because I was fat and going nowhere. I was stagnant, like my lifestyle.

As I got older, I went to work and eventually found myself in a similar situation. When you work a cubicle everyday for 5 years it’s easy to watch your waistline expand a few sizes and feel helpless to change it. Between work and going out for drinks with coworkers, or going home to your family and trying desperately to relax you just flatout didn’t have the time to be a “gym person.” You get fatter, you move less than you used to and less frequently, and you get miserable.

This gets compounded upon by work. Anyone who’s ever worked for someone else knows that feeling. That Monday Morning Dread. That feeling of when you wake up on in the morning, miserable and tired, and then you remember what day it is and you feel like running your head through a wall. Or disappearing.

Garfield comics aside, Monday morning isn’t just miserable because of some arbitary reason or because something something astrology, Monday Morning is the symbol of being a slave. Do not mistake me, there’s surely to be good money for some suit-and-tie types, but for those of us who aren’t regional managers know what it’s like to feel like you’re wasting the best years of your life for peanuts while your boss pockets the profits.

It’s not that you hate who your boss is, although you might eventually by proxy, it’s that you hate who your boss isn’t: yourself.

Monday reminds you of the chains of the life you live in the same way that Friday shows you a few fleeting moments of what it’s like to feel “free” again, if only for an afternoon or so.

What does this have to do with insomnia? Frankly, until earlier this week I had no idea. Then, my latest bout of insomnia hit and I realized something. I couldn’t sleep because I was terrified.

I’m not a small guy by any measure. When 200 pounds and over 6 feet tall is nothing to you, monsters under the bed don’t have the same spook factor they did when you were 5 years old. No, it wasn’t what was under my mattress that scared me, but what was on my pillow. My own head had me spooked.

Anyone who’s ever had insomnia knows the feeling. That lifeless tiredness. The way days blend together and blur and how time loses its meaning. 4am is the same as 4pm to you if you’re awake for both. And when you have insomnia, you can’t think. You’re thankful when you make it to and from work without dozing off on the bus, or worse, driving. I hate insomnia because it is a real threat to causing me to accidentally hurt someone. I’m very vocal against driving while intoxicated or on drugs, and being tired is one of the most debilitating things. And every day that being tired only makes my own life worse is its own bitter sweet gift.

The problem is, as the days begin to blur and you go through the motions, working your 9-5 for someone else’s money, just like AM and PM, your own life loses it’s meaning. You are what you are not. What I mean is that you are defined by everything you are not. And when you become the kind of person who is a tired, wageslave, a background character in somebody else’s rat race, you lose sense of self. You lose any semblance of purpose.

You lose reasons to live. And when your purpose leaves you, it leaves you hollow and feeling like it’ll never return. That’s what fear is. The belief that the situation you’re in is bad and it won’t get better. You don’t fear a bear attack just because the bear exists, you fear it because the bear has the power to make you not exist anymore. Your situation won’t get any better after that.

That’s why, as depressed or down as I’ve been, I’ve never wanted to kill myself. Suicide accomplishes only to prevent your situation from ever getting better.

So what am I afraid of? Being stagnant. My life not going anywhere. Never meaning anything to anybody. Never mattering. Really, no matter how you word it, I just don’t want to be wasted potential. All these years, all my ancestors lived and fought and died in a much rougher world than what we have, and that all made it and had children who lived to carry on their genes.

Life is a game and only the winners get to tag in new players. That’s the way it’s always been and it isn’t changing anytime soon. That’s what I’m afraid of. Never amounting to anything.

When you’re a man, you’re told from when you’re young that you have to be this, or you have to be that. Media, friends, family, books, movies, everybody has an idea of who you should or shouldn’t be. And as you get older, you start to get an idea of that for yourself too. Who you want to be. I’m not a big believer in predetermined destiny. I think life is 100% of what you make it with work. There is a bit of luck involved, but luck has a funny way of rewarding those who put in the hours.

That’s what was keeping me up at night. When I was at my most tired, when I could barely keep my eyes open or to form thoughts, when the haze of fatigue blurred reason and thoughts into near incoherence, there was one thing that was always present. The crippling, hopeless feeling of despair.

One question that kept repeating in my heart. “Is this all I’m ever going to be?”

Where I am. Who I am. I’m not happy with it. I grew up dirtfloor poor. I’ve struggled a lot. And through it all, I suppose, somehow I’ve kept a feeling that I was never worth the ridiculous dreams I had. I wanted to be this and I wanted to be that, but I felt like I couldn’t afford to take the risk. I can’t afford to move to New York and take up standup, or move to California and become an actor, or to move out and hop on an oil rig and have the kind of life I want.

I was afraid that I was never going to be anybody, and worse, that I was right where I deserved to be. I accepted somebody else’s reality. Working for somebody else just to make ends meet. Sacrificing my entire future and happiness for a ham sandwich for lunch.

I was afraid of being nobody my whole life and the worst part of it is that I knew I had no one else but myself to blame. I wasn’t sleeping in a one bedroom place because somebody else held a gun to my head and told me to settle. I wasn’t working instead of grinding toward a Doctorate because someone else told me I wasn’t allowed to go to college.

Everything in my life was on me and what I did and didn’t do. I made every single choice that made me miserable in life and all I could think was one thing.

Thank God.

It wasn’t because of spiritual reasons. I wasn’t praying, I was exhaulting. I was joyous. When I realized that every single thing wrong in my life was my own fault because of the choices I made, I realized something else.

My choices have power.

I am truly the master of my own destiny. Every single thing wrong with my life was nothing more than my defeated mindset telling me I didn’t deserve it, so I didn’t go after it. For as long as I can remember, the poem Invictus has been my personal motto. I suppose in some way, at my deepest core, I knew who was to blame. Perhaps that was the part of me that loved Invictus. The part of me that knew I could be more.

I was the Son of Winners. No matter who I am now, or who my father is or was, or his father before him, even if we were the blacksheep of our family, we still come from the same winner. The Patriarch of our family, the one from whom we all descended, and his ancestors before him all made it, for better or worse.

It’s as cheesy and cliche as it comes, but the simple understanding that I was a screwup because of myself was the most empowering thing you can feel. When you pull back the curtains and realize that the Wizard behind the curtain, pulling the levers and twisting the knobs was you all along.

Now, what to do with this information. Without a plan of action to change, this post would be as pointless as every other self-revelation in the world. Suddenly “understanding” your problems is a realization that is a dime a dozen. Doing something about it, on the other hand, is not. Lucky for you, that’s what we’re going to do. If you’re here, and you’ve made it this far, some part of you is either just looking for the point or you’re hoping that what I’ve figured out can help you too.

Maybe you’ve got dreams you’re not going after. Maybe you’ve got something you told yourself you couldn’t do. Maybe you’re stuck and not sure where you are. I’ve been there too and this is what I’m going to do.

I need to change. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. Being stagnant, simply not moving forward, will kill you. Not just physically, but inside as well. So I’m starting a plan of action. I’m already doing the #NoNothingNovember challenge so I’ve already got some momentum at my back.

So, starting today, I’m going to lay out my dreams. Don’t worry, it gets cheesier from here. I already know what I’m afraid of. I’m afraid of success because I feel like it’s not for me. I’m not worth it. I don’t deserve it.

So I’m going to BE worth it. I’m going to figure out what I want to be and what I want to do, and whatever I feel like I need to be to be that, I will. Whatever I have to do to make that dream come true, I will.

I’m setting up obstacles in my own way because I’d rather climb and struggle than stagnate and die. When I found out why I wasn’t sleeping, because I was worried this was all I was ever going to be, I felt a sudden surreal peace.

I won’t promise that reading me talk about it will do it for you, because I had enough introspection to realize it. But if you feel like some days you just would rather not bother. If some days you’re angry or upset or tired or irritated or malaise for no reason, maybe there’s something missing.

In the movie Office Space they pose the question of “If you had a million dollars, what would you?” It’s introduced as a means to bring up the plot for the rest of the movie, but it brings up an interesting point.

If money didn’t matter, what would you be doing? If you could literally do or be anything, what would you want? What did you want to be before you “realized” that you needed a “realistic” dream?

If you haven’t watched the movie, I highly recommend it. It’s very similar to what a lot of men and women are going through these days. Office Space is essentially a more SFW version of Fight Club. Just don’t tell anyone I told you that.

So what does this mean for you? Well, perhaps you’re the type that likes to watch someone stumble and fail. Maybe you’re the type who needs to see someone else succeed to motivate yourself to make it happen. Or perhaps you’re the type who wants to believe that for once, the person on the other end of the screen isn’t just some idiot with a blog trying to sell you something.

Make no mistake, in the future I might try to sell you something, but it’s not today. I have nothing to sell you. If you’re reading this, my blog is just starting. I have no affiliate links. No ebooks for $2.99 for you to buy. Nothing.

All I have is my word, and I’m giving that to you for free. So, if that satisfies you, stay around awhile. Just like with this blog, as it grows and I move toward becoming bigger and better, perhaps you’ll find the resolve to move your life in it’s own direction too. And if that can inspire you to go after your own life, then I’ll be glad for it. I’d love nothing more than to help even one other person be willing to risk a little failure for a chance at big success. If you think what I’m saying sounds like the kind of plan that would work for you, do it.

Trust me, I’m not the kind of guy who works for get-rich-quick schemes. Doing this blog is going to take a long time before I ever earn a cent from it. It’s not monetized right now, and by the time I purchase my own .com address it’ll definitely be well after this goes up.

I’m in the “learning to crawl” steps. I have big dreams not just for this site but for my IRL life. Things I want to make happen and slowly but surely, I’m getting out of my own way so I can go after it.

So stay around awhile. See how I do, and if you like the cut of my jib, maybe you’ll let me show you the way.

Until then, I’m going to catch some sleep.