No More Afternoon Naps!

I find myself getting really sleepy around 4 or 5pm, and got into the habit of having a lie down and a brief snooze. Trouble is, I generally wake up a half hour later feeling really shattered… much worse than before I had the lie down. I also tend to have a lot of trouble getting to sleep at night, and recently while reading the section on sleep in The Happiness Handbook, I was reminded that sleeping during the day isn’t good for insomniacs like me.

So I promised myself the other day that I was going to stop having a mid afternoon nap. I broke my promise yesterday, thinking “But I feel soooooo tired!” Well yes, I did, but that was nothing compared to how I felt when I woke up after about half an hour. I felt like my head had been backed over by a truck. Several times. I was due to give a presentation at Toastmasters that evening, which meant dragging my sorry ass out and waking up enough to speak coherently. Fortunately I’m really good at that, and it went down without a hitch. I’m glad I had the thing prepared the day before; I often leave things to the last minute, and that’s not good when a truck starts reversing mid-afternoon.

Invariably when I go for a lie down and have a quick snooze, I don’t get back to sleep again after waking up. I just lie there staring at the ceiling feeling washed out. It’s a bit like the effect I used to get the day after a really bad migraine. Oddly enough I don’t get migraines any more, which is one reason why I think my CFS is stress-related. I can see that my migraines were caused by the stress of compulsively pushing myself to achieve achieve achieve all the time unrelentingly.

Anyway, so next time I head towards the bedroom mid-afternoon because I’m feeling exhausted, remind me to go out and go for a walk or something, and get a decent night’s sleep instead. Slap me about if necessary until I get the message.