The fear of falling asleep can have many causes, from trauma to sleep apnea, and the effects are debilitating. But there are effective treatments
hen Elizabeth Johnson tries to fall asleep, anxiety often takes over. After going to bed, she starts to relax, but feels as though she is losing control. “Instead of continuing,” she says, “I get a sense of panic, a shot of adrenaline and I’m fully awake again.” She is describing what it is like to have somniphobia – the fear of falling asleep. “Then I have to do the whole process of trying to sleep again, or give up for the night.
Johnson teaches English and history to students with behavioural differences. She also has two children, aged seven and 11, and having a family helps her cope. “I just gotta keep going,” she says. “There have been stretches where I haven’t been able to sleep for several days in a row. Staying awake at work is hard. And it makes it hard as a parent.”
Sleep apnea – when your breathing stops and starts during sleep – can be another cause of somniphobia, says Hare, with sufferers having “dreams about drowning, or they wake up feeling they can’t breathe at all”. She was afraid of going to sleep from the age of six or seven. When she was nine her mother took her to a doctor, who prescribed an antihistamine and sedative. “It would help me fall asleep and stay asleep, but it was hard to wake me up in the morning and I didn’t like taking it.” So she stopped. “I started forcing myself to stay awake, because I didn’t want to fall asleep. Eventually, my body would get so tired that I would just fall asleep.
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