What a Psychic Taught Me About My Lifelong Sleep Issues
So, this post is going to be a little bit more “cuckoo for cocoa puffs,” if you know what I mean, because it involves an interesting and bizarre story about a session I had with a psychic in February of 2025.
I went into this session thinking I was going to go in about something else entirely but because I hadn’t had any sleep the night before, everything changed. To be quite honest I can’t even recall at all what I was originally going to ask. It doesn’t matter. How it happened was divine. I have since been using this information in all that you see in this blog.
The Session
When I arrived, I was greeted by the psychic, and she asked how I was doing. I replied that I was okay but that I’d had a hard time sleeping the night before. She paused and looked at me and she said, ‘why is your spirit afraid to leave your body at night?’
There was something about her question that struck a deep chord in me. I instantly started recalling a fall I had as a toddler, a fall I don’t consciously remember, but one I’ve heard about my entire life. This was something that I hardly ever talked about. I told her about how I’d fallen off a bunk bed when I was just two years old.
The reader began scanning me. Then she said something that, while simple, hit me with surprise; “Your body is afraid that you’re going to die. It acted this way as a way to help you survive at the time of the incident, but that time is over now. But it’s still afraid to fall asleep, it’s still not trusting. It still believes that sleep isn’t safe. But you are not going to die. You are safe.”
I found myself being brought back to a moment in 2021, during a particularly difficult time in my health journey. It was strange for me at first that this suddenly came to my attention.
I had just moved into a new apartment and was physically and emotionally drained from the transition. I had also been overdoing it with Qi Gong. And yes, it is absolutely possible to overdo it with Qi Gong. One lesson I’ve learned through all of this is that anything, even a healing practice, can become too much.
That period marked one of the lowest points in my health. I was consumed by a terrifying belief that if I fell asleep, I might not wake up. My greatest fear was that my heart would stop, or that I might suffer a stroke. For three months straight, night after night, I struggled to breathe and would jolt awake at the slightest sound. I kept asking myself why the fear felt so overwhelming, so irrational, yet so real. It seemed completely out of place. But everything was in turmoil at the time, it became just one of many strange and unexplained experiences I eventually pushed aside once it subsided and I kind of just forgot about it.
But after hearing the reader’s words, two significant moments seemed to be connected: the bunk bed fall at age two, and that terrifying stretch in 2021. I truly believe that what was happening in 2021 was my body trying to process that old trauma from childhood. It was a traumatic event that I couldn’t consciously remember but my body, my nervous system seemed to. I wished I had known better. If I had, I would have allowed for my body to process it but I was still quite a ways from knowing how to do that, especially at that point.
It was in this moment that I started to understand that the fall from the bunk bed was perhaps, a lot more impactful to my life than I could have ever realized.
After the Session
I thought a lot after the completion of that session, pondering my chronic sleep issues and many things started to become much more clear to me.
I’ve never slept well ever all throughout my life. That’s a problem. Without sleep, healing becomes almost impossible. It’s as if my body, terrified that sleep equals danger, has been rejecting the very thing it needed most. You have to get good rest in order for the body to repair itself and that time period of 2021 left no room for that, and honestly, I haven’t had much healing rest my entire life. No wonder I’ve been stuck in several unhealthy cycles for so long.
I’m still working through all of this related to chronic sleep issues. But I’m glad that I know, and there is a sort of relief I have now.
The most helpful tool I’ve found so far is the Havening technique, which helps calm my nervous system and build trust that it’s safe to sleep. If you struggle with chronic sleep issues, I see you. I know how confusing and isolating it can feel.
**UPDATE** Here is a link to a new blog post going much deeper into my personal sleep issues using ChatGPT.
LINKS
Hyperarousal and sleep reactivity in insomnia: current insights | NSS
