‘No wonder I can’t sleep’: Frances Whiting on discovering source of her insomnia

The good news is that, after many, many years of sleepless nights, I believe I have found the root cause of my inability to go to sleep.

‘No wonder I can’t sleep’

Firstly, thank you to all of you for sending in your suggestions for a reader on how to be happier. I appreciate it, and I am compiling them all for a future column that I hope our friend who wrote in will read.

Anyway, your letters tell me so much about you all – mostly about your humour and compassion, but also that many of you are insomniacs.

I know this because I can see the time some of you have sent in your letters, and why you are writing to me at 3am instead of being tucked up in bed, I do not know.

Well I do know because I am up reading them.

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‘I have been doing so my whole life’: Frances Whiting’s surprising confession

The good news is that, after many, many years of sleepless nights, I believe I have found the root cause of my inability to go to sleep. It’s because I’m Catholic. Or at least, I was raised Catholic, and this means several things.

One, I am very attracted to any hilltop real estate, and two, I am consumed by guilt.

Just generally, it doesn’t matter what; you name it, I’ll feel guilty about it.

I’m also a woman. And a mother. If you put that all together – Catholic, woman, mother – that’s the trifecta of guilt right there.

And lastly, being raised a Catholic means that as a child I went to church every Sunday, and said my prayers every night before bed.

Specifically, this prayer: “As I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord, my soul to take.”

NO WONDER I CAN’T SLEEP.

Frances Whiting. Picture: David Kelly

I mean there I was, a little girl kneeling beside my bed, hands clasped together in prayer, basically making some sort of deal with God, that, should he choose to knock me off in the middle of the night, I might at least get some sort of VIP entry into heaven.

Now, I had forgotten all about this particular prayer until very recently when a woman I know asked me if I too had made what she called “the death pact” with the Lord every night.

Then, every word came back to me, and it is only now, as an adult, I realise how appalling it really was.

Now, I’m not sure if it was just we Catholic kids who recited it – let me know my Protestant, Church of England, Presbyterian, Hindu et al brothers and sisters, will you?

Although I’m fairly sure the Buddhists wouldn’t have done it.

But as for the rest of us, I do believe I have found the root cause of why we cannot go to sleep at night.

Because we are terrified to. Because, somewhere, deep down inside of us, the small child inside of us is just waiting for the hand of God to come down from the heavens and smite us. That’s right, I said smite.

I really think I’m onto something here. I think that is why some of us toss and turn all night, unable to fall into a deep and peaceful slumber.

Either that, or it’s the perimenopause.

Originally published as ‘No wonder I can’t sleep’: Frances Whiting on discovering source of her insomnia