By: Kate Pierpoint

I wanted to share my experience of overcoming my insomnia because when I was trying to recover, I found very few examples online of anyone saying they had successfully done it. Just horror stories. Extreme cases and warnings about how insomnia can shorten your lifespan and lead to serious, long-term health conditions.

I can understand why people don’t want to talk about it. I am not going to say that I’ve recovered from my insomnia, because that feels pressuring. I think of it as healing my negative relationship with sleep and though I know we might have a tiff from time to time, that’s ok.

From this experience and understanding the all-too-common experiences faced by my peers, it’s clear that the Millennial generation have faced some specific challenges affecting their mental health. This blog has allowed me to reflect on these challenges and understand why it took me so long to value my own mental health.

Here’s my story and the story of my generation…

I’ve been tormented by insomnia for 6 years. Historically, I’ve always been a really good sleeper. I never gave it a moment’s thought. But there were a few triggers that culminated in the perfect storm.

The Millennial sleep problem

I’ve always put unnecessary pressure on myself in any job I’ve had. In part I think that’s a tendency of my generation (Millennials born 1981-1996). A willingness to work overtime, an eagerness to make a positive difference in the world and the pressure to afford to pay for growing costs of living.

I think I and others my age had great expectations starting off our careers. “In the last 50 years, the expectation has been that each generation will do better than the one before it. This is the first generation where that’s not necessarily true” (Mcmaster, 2020). I studied International Development at University and my peers and I were ready to change the world. And then the 2008 Global Financial Crisis hit and it became a matter of getting whatever job you could get. The Millennial/Gen Z “generation as a whole is among the most educated it has ever been, but the path to success is also less clear” (Mcmaster, 2020).

Millennials are also more altruistic then previous generations. You can see this trend in the increased proportions of Millennials working in the public sector and decreased proportions working in the finance sector compared to Gen X (Gay, 2017). On top of all this, Millennials are also among the first social media influencers, are expected to be entrepreneurs, and are also the most likely generation to have “side-hustles”; bringing with it an extra 6-15 hours work per week on average (Hiscox, 2020).

Unlucky, depressed and sleep-deprived

It’s no surprise then that Millennials are seen as the most “unlucky” (Van Dam, 2020), “depressed” (Akhtar and Hoffower, 2020) and “sleep deprived” (Bhattacharya, 2018) generation. I know so many people my age who have “burnt out” or have developed serious and/or chronic mental health issues. They haven’t recognised the warning signs, they’ve been too ashamed to tell anyone or ask for help, and/or they’ve continued to work in toxic work environments.

Although great strides have been made in how we think about mental health, it’s still not treated in the same way physical health is. The warning signs are not as visible and I found it easy to ignore mine. I thought I was just being “pathetic” or “weak”. Words I would go on to use constantly to describe my declining mental health. As it turned out, this was a root cause of my insomnia, a symptom of the huge pressure I was putting on myself to be “well”. And I don’t think I was alone in not understanding why mental health is important.

An invisible problem across the life course

The relationships between poor sleep and long-term health effects like obesity, CVD and depression are well-documented. Perhaps, what is less known is the mutually reinforcing relationship between poor sleep and chronic pain – a correlation which increases as both become more acute (Wei, Blanken and Van Someren, 2018).

Research conducted by the SomnIA project explains that despite this, poor sleep in old age is often ignored by both the medical profession and the general public because it is perceived as an inevitable part of ageing (Arber, Venn and Eyers, 2018). Professor Sara Arber, who leads the SomnIA project, has also researched the complex range of social factors affecting sleep across the life course, including transitions, such as parenthood, care-giving and widowhood (Meadows and Arber, 2012).

Medication rather than cure

In the USA, the American College of Physicians recognises Cognitive and Behavioural Therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) as the first-line treatment for insomnia (Lamberg, 2016). In the UK, patients are inconsistently referred for this treatment and there is a tendency in the medical profession to prescribe medication for insomnia, rather than to explore the underlying causes. Koffel, Bramoweth and Ulmer (2018) identify three drivers for this: lack of knowledge amongst healthcare providers and patients and system barriers including lack of funding and prioritisation.

For me, I was prescribed anti-depressants and beta blockers for my sleep issues, which did relieve my symptoms in the short-term. But, I didn’t address the root of the problem, which for me was cognitive.

Too tired to sleep

As I moved into more senior positions, I struggled to switch off and became more and more anxious. After an injury, my sleep deteriorated to the point where I went days without sleeping and mentally I was in a very dark place. Then I had an anxiety attack, which would take years to fully recover from.

Pretending it wasn’t there

At the time, I struggled with contradictions I saw in insomnia. Talking about how I was feeling helped me in all other situations, but it was a trigger for a bad night’s sleep. So I didn’t talk about it… to anyone… for years. Strategies I put in place to help me sleep – like putting lavender on my pillow or going for a run at precisely 5pm to optimize my sleep hormone levels – became part of the prison I’d created for myself.

Rocky patch

Ironically, having a baby didn’t trigger insomnia for me. It was when she started sleeping well that it reared its head again. Maybe because I wasn’t exhausted anymore. It hit me harder than it had before and I was sleeping on average 4 hours every night for months.

Turning a corner

This time I took Cognitive and Behavioural Therapy sessions. The waiting time for group CBT-I sessions on the NHS was up to 6 months, but that was too long for me and I didn’t think a group forum would allow me to explore the underlying issues personal to me. Fortunately I was able to afford private sessions. I had previously avoided it because my “coping” mechanism was not to talk about it. And it was expensive and was my mental health really worth that?

After only 10 sessions, I can honestly say that I conquered all the negative thoughts that built this strong belief that I wouldn’t be able to go to sleep or stay asleep when I went to bed. It was like knocking down a wall brick by brick. I felt empowered by my plan every week, so even when I had a bad night it felt like I was on a road to recovery.

The Open Road

Possibly the most compelling thought I have used is to change my expectations in going to bed. When I’m tired I think about what I “want” to do and not what I “need” to do. When I’m tired I think to myself that I want to lie down and close my eyes, which is completely within my power to do. Rather than thinking, I need to sleep now, which isn’t within my power to do. Because sleep is fundamentally a passive thing, it’s not something we do, it’s something that happens when we’re not doing anything.

What happens next

There is inconsistent understanding of the causes and therapy treatments for mental health issues like insomnia – by both medical professionals and the general public. Poor sleep is an issue for people across the whole life course, and in particular Millennials, but is often ignored in old age, despite the huge implications for health and wellbeing. A cause and consequence of this lack of understanding is that treatment for mental health issues like insomnia is far out-weighted by demand.

We need to wake up to the growing demand and address the system barriers to effective treatment.

References

1. Akhtar, A. and Hoffower, H. (2020) ‘Lonely, burned out, and depressed: The state of millennials’ mental health in 2020′. Business Insider. Accessed: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/millennials-mental-health-burnout-lonely-depressed-money-stress%3famp
2. Arber, S., Venn, S. and Eyers, I. (2018) ‘Sleep and autonomy in later life: the SomnIA project’. The New Dynamics of Ageing Volume 2. Policy Press Scholarship Online.
3. Bhattacharya, S. (2018) ‘Why Do Many Millennials Complain Of Insomnia? The Reasons Are Worrying’. Idiva. Accessed: https://www.idiva.com/amp/health-wellness/mental-wellbeing/many-millennials-complain-of-insomnia-and-this-is-very-troubling/17075207
4. Gay, W. (2017) ‘Millennials Are Effecting Change With Social Responsibility’. Forbes. Accessed: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/wesgay/2017/08/11/millennials-social-responsibility/amp/
5. Hiscox (2020) ‘The ‘side hustle’ culture: Is this the new norm?’. Accessed: https://www.hiscox.co.uk/business-blog/side-hustle-culture-new-norm
6. Koffel, E., Bramoweth, A. D. and Ulmer, C. S. (2018) ‘Increasing access to and utilization of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I): a narrative review’. J Gen Intern Med. 2018 Jun; 33(6): pp. 955–962
7. Lamberg, L. (2016) ‘Treat Chronic Insomnia With CBT-I, Says American College of Physicians’. Psychiatry Online. Accessed: https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.pn.2016.6b19?code=psychnews-site
8. Mcmaster, G. (2020) ‘Millennials and Gen Z are more anxious than previous generations: here’s why’. University of Alberta. Accessed: https://www.ualberta.ca/folio/2020/01/millennials-and-gen-z-are-more-anxious-than-previous-generations-heres-why.html
9. Meadows, R. and Arber, S. (2012) ‘Understanding sleep among couples: gender and the social patterning of sleep maintenance among younger and older couples’. Longitudinal and lifecourse Studies 3(1)pp. 66-79
10. Van Dam, A. (2020) ‘The unluckiest generation in U.S. history’. The Washington Post. Accessed: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/27/millennial-recession-covid/%3foutputType=amp
11. Wei, Y., Blanken, T. F. and Van Someren, J. W. (2018) ‘Insomnia Really Hurts: Effect of a Bad Night’s Sleep on Pain Increases With Insomnia Severity’. Front. Psychiatry 9:pp. 377.