I was afraid that he would die while he was sleeping despite being alone in my 20 years: Sarfraz Manzoor reveals how his father’s sudden death left him obsessed because he would go to bed and never woke up.

For a long time I had problems sleeping every time my wife and children are out. It sounds nice, as a physical manifestation of how much I love you. But it is actually a nightmare. I fear the days I’m ready to be alone.

Start weeks before any trip. My wife Bridget takes our daughter Laila, 13 years old and the eight -year -old boy Ezra to see her family in Dumfriesshire and Northumberland several times a year (I’m going to Easter and Christmas and on summer holidays, but Bridget likes it for longer and more often, I often have work commitments). I imagine the empty house at night. A house stripped of snuffles. Bridget’s carefree bed. Children’s rooms are as calm as fallen snow.

Once they have gone, I can spend the day reasonably well, but I know that the problem is ahead, when it’s time to sleep. I try to fill the night with noise and distraction, music and television. I should spend this time just reading, resting and taking some peace. In practice, it took me hours to fall asleep, then wake up at 3 am, again at 4 am and then I stay awake until morning.

“My body was so deprived of sleep, when the family arrived at my travel house, it would be a physical shipwreck,”

Why am I so? I think the roots date back to my father’s death. He was 23 years old and he died of a sudden and unexpected heart attack at the age of 62. It was a brutal lesson about the fragility of life. The fact that my father had bedded the night before not realizing that he would be his last obsessed. The idea that we do not know when the terrified death could come.

Throughout my 20 and 30 years, I would lie down and wonder if I would suffer a fatal aneurysm. I would be terrified to fall asleep because I feared I could never wake me up. These anxieties always decreased when I was in a relationship. There was something comforting to have another person by my side to sustain every time panic arose.

After knowing and marrying Bridget in 2008, my anxiety decreased when I was in bed with me. That tranquility came at a price: I discovered that it depended on others to make sure I slept well. After having children, my anxiety worsened even more. My fear of dying while sleeping now carried the pain of leaving two young children without a father.

Over the years I have tried several strategies to help me leave. I found podcasts about the most arcana subjects to sleep to sleep, such as ‘1925 transatlantic to the east of passengers’ and ‘1912 Ford Motor Cars Model T Instruction manual, part one’, but unfortunately the more arcane is the most fascinating subject I found them.

I created reproduction lists with relaxing songs by Ludovico Einaudi and Tracy Chapman. Nothing worked. It would be like that for all the time my family was out. By the time they returned, it would be a physical accident because my body was very sleepy.

My Bridget dependence to sleep well at night has never caused sympathy when shared with others. The most common answer was: “That is so adorable that you must love your wife and children so much.” But Bridget found him exhausting. She did not think about it as an indication of how much she loved her.

She would return from a weekend with the children and tell her how difficult my time had been. I would love to have some time on my own! She would say before urging me to receive help.

Then, last year, 52, I looked for help.

Recently I had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and talked to my header doctor that this news was shocked. The header offered me cognitive behavioral therapy (TCC) through the NHS. I reserved 12 sessions but I told the therapist that it was fine with the diagnosis of diabetes. What I really wanted to talk about was not being able to sleep.

I wasn’t sure to see a therapist would help. She was much younger, which made me feel a bit silly. The sessions were in Zoom, who felt remote; And his suggestions, to program a few minutes a day for worries, to write what worried me, felt simplistic.

There was also a task: I had to think about the worst that could happen and how realistic it was really that any of the fears kept me awake at night. How realistic was that he would die while he slept when there were no indications that it wasn’t bad?

However, the very act of talking to her and the opening caused many of my concerns to now seem ridiculous to me, of course I was not going to die while I slept! And if that was unlikely, what was so afraid to go to sleep without my family?

A few weeks later, my wife and children left for a trip and again I stayed alone at home. The day they left, I could feel the old anxieties resurfaceing, and that night I retired to my room completely waiting to be awake all night. Instead, I fall asleep and woke up until 6 in the morning. He felt like a miracle.

The relief I felt when I realized that I had achieved a full night was immense. Somehow, my brain had internalized what I had discussed in the therapy, and was on the way to conquer something that had plagued me for decades. The next day was the same.

While I am reluctant to say that I have completely defeated my fear of sleeping alone, I am no longer full of anxiety at the time my wife mentions that she is thinking of leaving for a few days. The impact of my therapy has reached beyond my sleep problems.

As we age, we can become more sure that we are as we are, and it is too late to change. But this last year he has shown me that this is not true and for that I am more than grateful.

Follow Sarfraz @sarfrazmanzoor.bskysocial

Tricks to try whenever you want Shuteye

By Imogen Werneke

Breakfast for dinner

Change your dinner for breakfast foods containing tryptophan, such as eggs (protein rich), oats (rich in melatonin) and bananas (rich in magnesium), since it can promote sleep.

Brown is the new target

Brown noise is the other deeper and deeper half. With its low frequency course (think of the ocean waves or a distant plane buzz), brown noise can help minimize internal monologues and external noise stimuli, helping us to fall asleep faster.

Go command

Sleeping naked helps to regulate the temperature of your body. Keeping it at that ideal point between 15.6cy 19.4C is key to align its circadian rhythm, which prepares the body for food and activity times, as well as to sleep.

Rethink your breathing

Practice Chandra BhedanaA yogic breathing technique that involves inhaling only through the left nasal grave (keep the other closed with a finger) and then do the same with the right to exhale. The effect calms the nervous system, which leads you to relax and fall asleep.

Blow bubbles

Although it sounds absurd, neurologists have suggested that blowing bubbles before the bed imitates deep meditative breathing, while reminding us childhood. By reducing stress and promoting relaxation before bedtime, many will claim, will relieve it to sleep.

Get out of bed

‘Bed-Sleep’ is a form of stimulus control. Your message: If you are in bed but do not sleep, don’t be slopes there, get up. The mantra is used in cognitive behavioral therapy to reinforce a physical association with the bed as a place just to sleep, so minimize or even eliminate insomnia.