I used to be getting ready to snapping at my boyfriend this morning, as a result of his mattress app scolded me that I’d overslept. This opinionated mattress is a kind of fancy jobs that hooks up through Bluetooth to your cellphone and measures all types of belongings you didn’t even know you had, like HRV (coronary heart charge variability). I’d been in mattress for a bit of over 9 hours, and the app took it upon itself to warn me that, “An excessive amount of sleep could be a unhealthy factor, so strive to not make it a behavior.”

I confirmed the textual content to my boyfriend, pondering we might share fun about it. As an alternative, he stated, “Sweetie, sleep is that firm’s entire enterprise. They have to know what they’re speaking about.”

He clearly forgot that I’m bipolar. And that I’ve written three books concerning the topic. And that if there’s one factor I really feel like I’m a semi-expert on by advantage of my sickness, it’s the topic of sleep.

Sleep disturbance is taken into account a defining characteristic of bipolar dysfunction in all its phases (Harvey, A., American Journal of Psychiatry. 2008 July; 165(7):820-9). A severely decreased want for sleep is among the commonest signs of mania, whereas melancholy is usually characterised by hypersomnia (sleeping for very lengthy intervals). It’s potential that sleep points are so widespread amongst bipolar people due to a organic vulnerability—i.e., a genetic abnormality of their circadian rhythm system (Wehr, et al., American Journal of Psychiatry. 1987; 144:201–204).

I didn’t at all times perceive this the way in which I do now. For many of my life, I simply thought I didn’t know how you can sleep like a traditional particular person. Was it one thing they taught you in nursery faculty that I had someway missed? I keep in mind wanting round in any respect the opposite youngsters throughout nap instances, questioning how they managed to float off into dreamland upon the trainer’s command, whereas I used to be nonetheless tossing and turning and fretting about being awake.

Sleep both evaded me fully or drowned me into unconsciousness, relying on what temper state I used to be in on the time. In intervals of hypomania, I might really feel a heightened sense of wakefulness—an acute alertness to sounds and stimuli I normally neglected. I used to be like a canine let unfastened for a romp, and the world was one huge joyous wonderland of sensory enter recognized solely to me.

However as soon as that hypomania escalated into full-blown mania, the enter overwhelmed me. There was no escaping it—an excessive amount of mild, an excessive amount of noise, an excessive amount of tactile info; I couldn’t tune it out for a millisecond. If I attempted to shut my eyes in opposition to the searing brightness, they’d solely flutter open once more. It was pointless even to attempt to sleep, so I’d spend days whirling round in a manic spin, my physique exhausted however my thoughts cruelly, savagely awake.

One would suppose the inevitable ensuing melancholy would come as a aid, but it surely didn’t. Despair isn’t welcome, irrespective of how a lot one longs for mania to finish. True, my world would sluggish manner down then, however the slowness got here at an insufferable value: an intense paralysis of thought and motion. The lethargy seeped into my very bones till it grew to become practically inconceivable for me to do something however lie immobile in my mattress. Sleep grew to become my solely escape, and I’d spend days, even weeks, trapped beneath my covers, haunted by the reminiscence of motion.

Thank God, these too-awake days and nightmare-soaked nights are principally behind me now. Remedy, remedy, mindfulness, and years of training have rewarded me with temper stability. However though I’m now what’s referred to as “euthymic”—that means my bipolar signs are in remission—sleep stays an absolute precedence in my life. I do know that it’s one of many linchpins of my restoration, and that I might simply backslide if I don’t look after it the way in which I might look after a treasured possession.

That’s why I guard it so fiercely. As I emphatically advised my poor boyfriend this morning, no one and nothing—and definitely not a mattress app!—will get between me and a great night time’s sleep. The reality is, bipolar dysfunction usually makes me really feel like my thoughts isn’t my very own. Sleep is a kind of uncommon issues that offers me a modicum of management. It could be foolhardy to not deal with it like the valuable useful resource it’s.