How the Inability to Face Unresolved Issues Can Lead to a Maddening Bout of Insomnia

In the latest of their incredibly insightful videos, the School of Life explains, through animation provided by Daniela Sherer, how insomnia is caused by unresolved daily issues and the lack of time most humans spend in order think about them, meditate on solutions and face one’s inner critic honestly.

Something within us, you might call it an inner guardian or conscience, prefers that we should stop deriding all the many obvious benefits of sleep rather than leave a raft of existential issues untreated for much longer. This points the way to an important solution to insomnia. Not so much a pill or a special kind of tea or a long bath, but principally more time in the reasonable hours of the day for thinking. More time in which there are no demands on us and we can at last meditate philosophically. That is, systematically examined everything we’re concerned about. Sifting through our regrets, discussing our work with our inner critic, airing the tensions of our relationship with our true selves. In short reacquainting ourselves with ourselves. Insomnia is seldom physical disease. It’s an inarticulate maddening but ultimately healthy plea released by our core self that we confront the issues we’ve put off for too long. Insomnia isn’t really to do with not being able to sleep, it’s about not having given ourselves a chance to think.