Carl Jung recommends, "Become who you are afraid to be", which contains the secret of healing insomnia.
We have sleep loss because we are fearful, anxious, unresting. Even in the most joyful and relaxing day, a chronicle insomnia patient can lose sleep at night. Why? That is because the habit of fear has long been engrained in his mind. Our ancestors lived in the jungle, so at night they must keep vigilant of surroundings in order to run away from threats such as tigers or lions. Today, even if we live in the safest house, with complete assurance that everything is safe and satisfactory, we may not sleep well and deeply, because our subconscious mind would creep out and wake us up again and again.
What make us fear are no longer tigers and lions, but job pressure, exams, suppressed angers, tax reporting, relationships, etc. Often, even if the issues are addressed, the habit of fearing has been entrenched in our submind. In other words, we are already "programmed" to fear for no reason.
Once something is programmed, the only way to get rid of it is to unprograme it. Otherwise the program will keep running in your submind, whether you like or not. In fact, the more you want to suppress it, the more you make its existence significant. Hence the worse your situation. But how to unprograme it?
By becoming who you fear to be.
Try to do what you usually fear to do. Try to welcome uncomfortable situations. If you fear of losing sleep, tell yourself you are completely ready to feel any anxiety your body produces, any spinning thoughts your mind fabricates. The more you feel them, the more they lose their purpose. In the long run, your sleep loss will be gone, and you are "unprogramed". It takes time, but it addresses the root causes.
Many times, what you truly fear is just your own perception. There is no real danger in reality. Therefore, by doing what you fear, you change yourself. Yes, you change yourself, not the surrounding world, because the true disturbance does not come from the outside, but from within.
If you take care of sleep issue, often you will have avoided a slew of other diseases, such as cancer. A good sleep recharges every cell of your body, leaving no room for cancer cells to grow. In fact, we get healthy by sleeping and resting, not by exercising. Exercising encourages our body to repair, but true repair happens when we are asleep, not when we are exercising.
