Sleep disorders are common in the population, especially insomnia; about one-third of the population reports insomnia; possible causes include hypnomania or an obsession with sleep, although this can also result from insomnia itself. vicious circle forms.
Many people have difficulty starting or maintaining sleep, which is important because sleeping obsession can also be the cause of other sleep disorders, such as excessive daytime sleepiness or hypersomnia and other mental disorders, such as depression.
- Throughout this article we will learn more about this condition.
- Its symptoms.
- Its causes and treatment.
- As well as the possible relationship with other psychological and physical problems.
The name hypnomania comes from the union of two Latin words: hypnos, meaning “dream”, and mania, meaning “madness”. This term refers to the intense and uncontrollable desire to sleep, the constant need for sleep, to the point of becoming an obsession.
This desire can be independent of the number of hours of sleep and the feeling of awakening, although it is often related to problems such as insomnia, so it is important to differentiate hypnomania from other similar terms, such as clinomania, narcolepsy or hypersomnia.
The chilinomania refers to the desire or obsession of remaining constantly lying down, shouldn’t it be confused with the classic, five more minutes?It follows the sound of the alarm clock. Thelinomania implies the absolute abandonment of other daily activities to stay in bed, but not necessarily sleep.
Hypersomnia refers to excessive sleepiness after sufficient sleep, at least seven hours. The person with this disorder may even have difficulty staying fully awake after waking up.
Narcolepsy, in turn, is an organic (non-mental) disorder in which there is an irrepressible need to sleep, accompanied by periods of cataplexy, during which muscle tone, hypocretin deficiency (also called orexin) and REM sleep reduction are suddenly lost. latency (less than or equal to 15 minutes).
Hypnomania can cause and result from other disorders and may even mask others. Insomnia can be a source of hypnomania because reducing quality and the amount of sleep leads to an obsession with sleeping more.
What’s the matter? The obsession with sleeping more can be the cause of insomnia, so there is a vicious circle in which both factors affect.
In the case of hypersomnia, constantly thinking about the need for sleep (due to the belief that you have not slept enough) can cause drowsiness even without drowsiness, which can result in the inability to maintain the right level of alertness and affect performance.
In addition, we may encounter another additional problem: going to bed without sleep will make us spend hours lying down believing we are sleepy, but we cannot fall asleep, resulting in the feeling or belief of suffering insomnia.
“Sleep is not a small art: for this you have to stay awake all day. “Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche?
On the other hand, hypnomania can mask a bigger problem, people with depression can spend all day thinking about bedtime, as it is the time when the day ends and they can stop thinking and suffering.
Melancholy depression is usually accompanied by problems falling asleep and waking up early, however, in the case of depression with atypical characteristics, the predominant sleep problem is hypersomnia.
In case of suspected hypnomania, it is necessary to verify that the other diagnostic criteria of depressive disorders are not met, in order to make an appropriate differential diagnosis and choose the most effective treatment.
First, to find the right treatment it is necessary to carry out a correct assessment to verify that hypnomania is not the result of a major problem, so it is necessary to do an appropriate functional analysis to know the context and consequences of the problem. .
If after the evaluation the professional concludes that hypnomania is related to a insomnia disorder, different interventions can be performed, it is necessary to intervene, since this may be the source of the problem, thus increasing the number of hours of care. sleep or its quality, it will be possible to reduce the obsession with sleep. We can use:
When hypnomania is the cause and consequence of insomnia, the latter technique is very useful, in these cases the fact of little or bad sleep generates the thought “I need to sleep more”, becoming an obsession. This obsession is, in turn, what prevents the person from sleeping normally. To break this vicious circle, paradoxical intent is used.
This technique involves asking the person to spend as much time as possible in bed awake. When you send him the order, “Do you need to sleep?” instead of “you need to be awake,” the need to sleep is no longer an obsession. The person moves the spotlight and is therefore able to sleep.
“The best remedy for insomnia is to sleep a lot”. ? W. C. Campos?
The relationship between hypnomania and insomnia is a clear example of how the brain sabotages us. Worrying is good and can allow us to find the solution to a problem, but too much worry can make the problem worse. It’s as if our brain has a ‘tolerable anxiety limit’. and when we overcome it, we lose the ability to solve the problem, even when we have the solution at our fingertips.
We attach so much importance to the worry about sleeping less than usual that we end up turning it into a disorder, we don’t want to convey the idea that you don’t have to worry about sleep patterns, but you need to worry in a useful and constructive way, thus preventing anxiety itself from taking you out of sleep.
“Nothing in life is as important as we think when we think about it. “Daniel Kannehman?