gwax's rumblings

I have noticed in my life that there is an inverse rela­tion between the quan­tity of sleep that I get and the degree to which I am expe­ri­enc­ing stress. It is unclear to me in which direc­tion causal­ity lies and it may be noth­ing more than a cor­re­la­tion but I recall times in my past where I went as many as three nights with­out sleep. All but the last of those such times were before I under­stood the sen­sa­tion of stress – such is my dis­con­nect from my emo­tional state.

As I think about it, I am inclined to sus­pect that not sleep­ing is a sort of cop­ing mech­a­nism. In the extreme of those three night vig­ils, I would reach a level of exhaus­tion that was so strong and per­va­sive as to be able to wash over any other stress that I might have been feel­ing. Eventually, I would sleep and the rest would be needed to such a degree as to make every­thing else seem insubstantial.

It seems as though, for quite a long time, I have had to approach my emo­tional state from an indi­rect point of view; suss­ing out how I might be feel­ing by watch­ing my reac­tions and back-tracking to the most appro­pri­ate descrip­tor for my state. This is an arrange­ment that I have come to accept and although it often works well enough, it can be a lit­tle slow as far as pro­cess­ing is concerned.

I’m sure that there exist other thoughts on these mat­ters and things that I might express but, mostly, I am find­ing the issue rather per­ti­nent at this (just after) one in the morn­ing time. I intended to go to sleep a num­ber of hours ago and, at this point, I will not get much sleep, which causes me to sus­pect that I am avoid­ing sleep in some man­ner cor­re­lated to stress. Unsurprisingly, this con­tin­ues to be my stan­dard way of being; such is my life, I guess.