My insomnia left me in tears every night – here’s how I manage it now

Carly Avener, 45, is the chief executive of Leo UK, a creative advertising agency

It is 3am and once again, I am lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, unable to close my eyes and drift off to sleep. My brain is whirring and I am convinced that tomorrow will be a disaster. Thinking about everything I need to face the next day, I panic that I will make a mess of everything.

“If I have just one good night’s sleep, everything will be fine tomorrow,” I tell myself over and over again. Of course, focusing on trying to get the perfect night’s sleep just makes me more anxious. I lie there crying and feeling guilty for not being able to cope with something as natural as sleep.

Exhausted and riddled with anxiety, I cannot help but wonder whether I will ever sleep normally again.

That was me nine years ago.

In the past decade, my life has changed beyond recognition. I became the managing director, then the chief executive, of Leo UK, a multimillion-pound advertising agency; was tasked with reinvigorating the company during the depths of the Covid pandemic; and gave birth to my daughter.

Every day is a whirlwind of meetings, conference calls with clients across the world, debates, presentations and brainstorming sessions. My team is incredible, and I have tried my best to create a happy working environment, while being honest about my own life and setbacks.

While running the agency and raising my daughter as a single parent, I have dealt with the other, more insidious, challenge of insomnia. Sometimes, I come into work having slept for just a few hours or randomly woken up at 4am. After giving birth, my insomnia was at its highest – a constant and unwelcome companion that resulted in far too many sleepless and anxiety-ridden nights.

This is how my struggles with sleep changed my life – and how I learnt to cope with it.

Anxiety as a new mother

When I got pregnant with my daughter in 2017, I was a managing partner at another advertising agency. I was counting down the days until I would give birth, ready to bask in the utopia of being a new mother.

However, as I attended my weekly antenatal classes, where we were essentially taught how to keep our babies alive, reality soon set in. While I knew that raising a child by myself would be challenging, I grew anxious about keeping her safe, happy and alive. I was obsessed with making sure that everything was perfect – and this soon extended to the realm of sleep.

Until then, I hadn’t struggled with sleeping. Now and again, I had had the odd restless night, but after I gave birth, my anxiety and paranoia grew. My mind was constantly whirring. I would worry about my baby dying. On other nights, I would simply think about the fact that I couldn’t fall asleep and how it made me a bad mother.

Desperate for distraction, I would often end up scrolling through social media on my phone or doing a mundane task such as the washing-up. This rarely helped. My insomnia worsened as my thoughts and fears escalated and after a few months, it had become unbearable.

Will I ever sleep normally again?

In desperation, I began researching anything and everything to help me sleep. My first step was to beg my GP for sleeping pills. However, he refused to prescribe me the strong ones. At the time, I was confused, but in hindsight I’m so glad he hadn’t because I realise now how addictive and damaging they can be.

I have always been a fan of holistic therapies so I decided to give hypnotherapy a try. I remember the practitioner “hypnotising” me and opening my eyes to discover that my arms were up in the air (which was a surprise to me), so something had definitely happened; however, it didn’t help me sleep. That was disappointing because I was so desperate for a quick fix.

After these failed attempts, I began exploring the world of probiotics, herbal teas, lavender sprays, lotions and potions for better sleep. Of course, again, they had little effect. I was practically pulling my hair out by this point. My baby girl was growing up in front of me and I was constantly distracted by crazy methods to try to sleep.

The turning point

Then, one night when I was at my lowest, I had a chat with my dad about everything that had been happening. By this point, I felt burnt out and completely wired from the lack of sleep. “Just stop worrying about it,” he said to me, “it’s not a big deal. Even if you don’t sleep, you’ll be fine.”

I thought he was completely mad. “How could you say that to me?” I thought. “If I don’t sleep, I will never make it through the day on my own. My baby will suffer from being looked after by the world’s worst and most exhausted mother. You just don’t understand.”

However, the more I thought about what he had said, the more I realised that he may have been on to something. Even though my insomnia was crippling, I still managed to get through the day. Nothing bad ever happened, despite what I told myself at 3am most nights. I realised that fighting my insomnia was actually making it worse and causing me more anxiety.

I continued to search for a cure but my mindset had shifted. My self-deprecating thoughts began to subside and although I still couldn’t sleep, I felt less stressed. Then I came across The Sleep Book by Dr Guy Meadows and everything changed.

There are two key messages at the heart of Dr Meadows’s method. The first involves acceptance and commitment therapy, which was very similar to what my dad had tried to tell me just months before. The book taught me that even if I couldn’t sleep, my body was still resting and recovering. Even if I spent the entire night awake, I would be fine and I would make it through the day. Perhaps an apology was in order for my dad!

The second part of Dr Meadows’s method involved understanding your body and how your brain functions. When we lie awake in the middle of the night, our primal brain comes to the fore and there’s an evolutionary need to protect ourselves from predators attacking under the cover of darkness. Your rational brain is secondary, so at that time of night, we end up perceiving everything as a threat.

It explained why I would sit there in the middle of the night berating myself and catastrophising everything. My anxious and primal brain took over, fuelling my insomnia; however, my fears disappeared when my rational brain came to the fore in the morning. Learning to understand that my late-night fears and anxieties were irrational, and didn’t match up with reality, was really helpful and actually quite comforting. It took a lot of the power out of those thoughts and feelings.

Dr Meadows has an app and a therapeutic practice, which I also used, and I learnt meditation, mindfulness and breathing techniques to help me relax and unwind at night.

My Achilles heel

Learning to be comfortable with my insomnia was essentially half the battle and the entire experience was life-changing. By this point, I had convinced myself that I would never sleep again. But as the months went by and I religiously stuck to Dr Meadows’s guidance, my sleep slowly improved.

Of course, none of this was a quick process. Despite desperately trying to fix my insomnia with a pill or potion, I realised I would need to build in habits and a new mindset to tackle the root cause of the problem, which was essentially my anxiety-ridden brain. Going back to work after maternity leave was hard as I no longer had the time to prioritise the practices that had helped me, but I slowly discovered new ways to cope.

Now, I put my phone away in the evenings, don’t snack after dinner, and try to avoid alcohol where possible. I do yoga most nights and always wear an eye mask when I go to bed. On these nights, I clock up six to eight hours of healthy sleep, which feels amazing.

However, I can’t always stick to these habits. I am a busy single mum raising an eight-year-old daughter and the chief executive of a leading advertising agency. There are plenty of times when I have to fire off a late-night email on my phone or am invited for a couple of glasses of wine with my colleagues after a busy day. The important thing is that on those occasions, I accept that I may not sleep or could wake up at 3.30am and know that I can make it through the next day.

At work, I am very open about my struggles with sleep. Being honest with my colleagues is really important to me. However, I’m busy all the time and have a dynamic job so I don’t even have much time to think about how tired I feel.

I suppose I’ve become used to functioning on less sleep. It’s a part of who I am and while I think the worst of my insomnia is behind me, I know I have the mindset and tools to cope with it now. In fact, I think that sleep will always be my Achilles heel, but I no longer worry that it will hold me back in any way.