Fear of Sleep / Hypnophobia / Somniphobia

I had several conversations with people yesterday about my issues with sleep. I don't generally feel tired at night; often, the later it is, the more awake I am. I also feel more anxious at night. And then, when my body is finally read to doze off, my brain starts fighting off this urge to sleep. 


It's more complicated than just insomnia.


If I were granted three wishes, I would sacrifice one to never need sleep again (yes, sometimes I do want to sleep, but it's rare).


I thought I'd tackle the job of explaining hypnophobia, or somniphobia (the fear of sleep), to easy-sleepers through the voices of people who have also experienced it.


God of radio and nerd-cool Ira Glass tackles the issue on one of my favorite episodes of This American Life: "Fear of Sleep"

Beginning when he was six, Glass developed this fear of sleep and its "complete annihilation":

My uncle Lenny went off to Vietnam. And that opened up this chapter in my life where I was obsessed with death [....]  

So I was six and I knew I was going to die and my mom and dad couldn't help me. Nobody could help me. I'll be dead forever. Galaxies would spin. Humans would travel to other worlds. And I would miss all of that. Nobody would remember me or anybody that I had ever known forever. 

And I would lie awake at night, scared to fall asleep, because sleep seemed no different than death. You know. You were gone, not moving, not talking, not thinking, not aware. Not aware – what could be more frightening? What could be bigger?  

[....] For those of us who fear sleep, there is a lot to fear. [....] this altered state where we're vulnerable and just gone. 

In act five, "A Small Taste Of The Big Sleep," Glass talks to others who fear sleep:

Man 1 I can feel time whizzing by. And I'm trying to hold on to something generally. So I usually start grabbing the walls or like clinging to the pillow. And I'm like this isn't going to go away. I need to hold this. I need to hold on to time. I need to stand in this river and just not move. 

Man 2 Like it's a kind of very primitive feeling. You have to just, like, flee from this totally horrible thing that's happening to you. But there is nowhere you can flee. And understanding at the same time that what you're fleeing and trying to run away from is the complete cessation of you. 

Jane Feltes I cry. And I just get really sad. And I just think. I try to breath. I breath really deeply. And I just think like there's nothing I can do. Like the terror is over-taken by just sadness. I just want it to not be true.

Glass ends the show by reciting a portion of one of his, and my, favorite Philip Larkin poems, "Aubade":

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

I'd like to add a section from another favorite poem of mine that also deals with sleep, "Briar Rose" by Anne Sexton:

Briar Rose
was an insomniac...
She could not nap
or lie in sleep
without the court chemist
mixing her some knock-out drops
and never in the prince's presence.
If if is to come, she said,
sleep must take me unawares
while I am laughing or dancing
so that I do not know that brutal place
where I lie down with cattle prods,
[....]
I must not sleep
for while I'm asleep I'm ninety
and think I'm dying.
[....]
There was a theft.
That much I am told.
I was abandoned.
That much I know.
I was forced backward.
I was forced forward.
I was passed hand to hand
like a bowl of fruit.
Each night I am nailed into place
and forget who I am.

- image via tuttotheatre.org/Shows/Ophelia -