The last TV program worth watching is over and it’s time for bed. You complete your nighttime rituals, turn out the lights, and … Nothing. Still awake. Tick…Tick …Tick. The small clock across the room that you didn’t even know made a sound announces its presence and in the stillness of night every sound is magnified. And, what’s worse, you’re awake and hearing every noise.
We know that a good night’s sleep makes everything go smoother the next day but problems, anxieties, and Psychic Vampires conspire to keep sleep away. I started using the term Psychic Vampires thirty-five years ago to describe what it felt like being around a certain relative who shall remain nameless. After leaving a family function, be it an everyday dinner or, even worse, a holiday gathering, I would feel so spent both physically and mentally that I felt like a walking advertisement for psychotropic drugs.
Psychic Vampires aren’t just people we would rather avoid. They are not Aunt Matilda who talks constantly about people and things you have zero interest in; they are not the cousin that always has a get rich scheme that he wants you to invest in. Psychic Vampires are those people who are so negative that you can literally feel your energy just escaping your body. If you discuss the birth of a child, they go on and on about the difficulties of parenting; if politics is the subject, they monopolize the talk with bombastic rants about this S.O.B. or that jerk of a Senator. Health? Well, no one has had things tougher than they have and then they proceed to re-tell all of their problems beginning with the time they were in an accident in 1937 and continuing to the present where those damn doctors who can’t do anything right …etc. etc. etc.
After getting home, sleep would not come. Reading helped but some nights I could read 100 pages or more on a lively topic like Richard Feynman and quantum physics before sleep would come. Then, more often than not, if I fell asleep I would drop the book either on Mrs. Commish or the poor dog sleeping next to the bed.
Between Psychic Vampires and “normal” worries triggered by other things we are plagued with in this hectic world, my sleep rhythms were not very rhythmical. I had trouble turning off my mind so that sweet oblivion could overtake me. Then one day Mrs. Commish and I discovered a sure-fire way to go to sleep literally almost before our heads hit the pillow.
First, I check before family functions and if “The Vampire” is coming I suddenly get a 24-hour flu and have to stay home that day. Secondly, and most importantly, we listen to Books on CD when we get ready for sleep.
It doesn’t matter what the book is. We have “read” 1000-pagers like “Pillars of the Earth” and fluff like Harry Potter or True Blood novels and never do either of us stay awake for even 10 minutes. We fall asleep so quickly that most of the books we get from the library have to be renewed so that we can find out the ending. It is wonderful as our minds don’t dwell on the day’s troubles and we listen to someone reading to us. It’s almost like being a child again at bedtime.
How do I know I fall asleep in 10 minutes or less you ask. Well, it’s easy to tell because the tracks on most stories are about three minutes long and we have to find where we last remember the story and it is never, never ever three tracks from where we started the previous night. In fact, more times than not we don't make it to the next track.
Having trouble falling asleep? Rid yourself of those Psychic Vampires in your life and replace them with a story about real bloodsuckers! Try it and I’m sure you will look forward to bedtime and refreshing sleep without the need for pharmaceuticals.
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