Ever fought off sleep as a child, brimming with the fear of missing out? That was me – from falling asleep on the stairs, trying to sneak back into the living room, to seeking comfort in the smallest spaces, sleep and I have been at odds. This episode peels back the layers of my complicated relationship with sleep, inviting you to journey with me from my childhood stairs to my bedroom today.
We explore the origins of my sleep aversion, tracing back to the battles I had with the sandman as a child. I share stories of my parents' struggle to get me to sleep, my brother's devious attempts to induce nightmares, and the weird love of breakfast in the wee hours. My lifelong struggle with sleep, marked by the fear of missing out and an inexplicable preference for smaller sleeping spaces, are laid bare for you to comprehend and perhaps relate to.
We then bring things back to the present day, where my struggle with sleep continues. You'll learn that holidays actually see me sleeping less, and my ludicrous attempt to manage my sleep better. Let’s navigate this sleep journey together, sharing personal experiences, tips, and tricks along the way. Join me on this journey into the world of sleep - or rather, my lifelong aversion to it.
Ever fought off sleep as a child, brimming with the fear of missing out? That was me – from falling asleep on the stairs, trying to sneak back into the living room, to seeking comfort in the smallest spaces, sleep and I have been at odds. This episode peels back the layers of my complicated relationship with sleep, inviting you to journey with me from my childhood stairs to my bedroom today.
We explore the origins of my sleep aversion, tracing back to the battles I had with the sandman as a child. I share stories of my parents' struggle to get me to sleep, my brother's devious attempts to induce nightmares, and the weird love of breakfast in the wee hours. My lifelong struggle with sleep, marked by the fear of missing out and an inexplicable preference for smaller sleeping spaces, are laid bare for you to comprehend and perhaps relate to.
We then bring things back to the present day, where my struggle with sleep continues. You'll learn that holidays actually see me sleeping less, and my ludicrous attempt to manage my sleep better. Let’s navigate this sleep journey together, sharing personal experiences, tips, and tricks along the way. Join me on this journey into the world of sleep - or rather, my lifelong aversion to it.
Hello, welcome to Steven speak. On this episode. I'm gonna be talking about sleep and the need of it, but also the innate hate of it that I have. You could say it's a bit FOMO, which I don't like to say that I don't know why I said that. Don't. I don't say that. Take that back you. Welcome to Steven speak.
Stephen:
The podcast, unscripted prattle, everything, nothing. Welcome to another episode of students peak. Apologies that this one's a little bit late. If you're listening to it after the fact and you weren't waiting for it to come out, then you're not any different. But you'll know is this came on a Monday? I don't know. At least things are not Sunday. So apologies if you've been Awaiting this episode with with anticipation. You fool Again, excited about my podcast, I don't know. But thank you. Thank you very much.
Stephen:
Yeah, I was away in London at the weekend, which isn't the the theme of this podcast. If there is a theme of any of my podcasts, I suppose there is. Yeah, I was way in London, so I was planning to do it when I returned and when I got back by time We'd sort ourselves out and had something to eat, etc. It was late and I was very tired. Yeah, it was quite a time, it was great two days, which is very tiring and Decided. Don't really like London that much. Other people came across, a lot of rude people, and that's an episode for the day. I kind of covered one my previous podcast about the people in London being very, would you say, like in it for themselves and busy and you know, not waiting for a tube train. That's like a minute away when one's really full, yeah.
Stephen:
But this weekend it was just got to me a little bit anyway, with not having a lot of sleep because we say it somewhere, we I kind of booked like kind of the cheapest thing I could, so we literally just booked a room with a couple of beds in, and I think I'm thinking about like sleep and the whole need for sleep. But I've never really liked sleep and it's a necessity to me, necessity to everyone. Obviously everyone has to sleep. Apparently it actually kills you if you don't sleep. If you actually try and stay awake, it like actually your body kind of shuts down and you can die and I think it's like something. It's not even that long. Neither it's like is it like five days or six days. If you stay up like six days, like you're at your death's door basically, and it may be sure that actually, but yeah, your body does loads of repairs and stuff at night and it's a download of your brain and lots of other things and you repair and yeah, yeah, you need your rest. You know your muscles work hard all day. You know your heart rate needs to kind of get lowered and return to like a, you know, just just be a lot lower than it is, just walking around.
Stephen:
I'm not a doctor, as you can tell, so, yeah, so, but when I was a kid, I was terrible like my mom Would, my dad obviously as well. He was that it was a terrible time trying to get me to go to bed. Now, it wasn't the fact that I don't say it's a fear of missing out, it kind of was that I also them to be like going sleep. I think it's because I used to have really vivid dreams and my dreams were like so they are now as well. Actually, I think we've covered a couple of vivid dream situations that I've Explained to you, and I think when I was a kid I don't know it was like I Used to get scared ace for really vivid nightmares, but I probably was fair me, being being scared of missing out on something, and I also didn't need a lot sleep. I was a kid so I didn't feel it was a necessity for me to have like a nap during the day. I felt that was good enough and I was kind of like lived on the thing of I'll sleep when I feel like I have to, which happened quite a lot. It was like my body would shut me down, like I put when you get a puppy, you know, when you have a puppy and you play with them for a little bit and they have no, no desire to go sleep, but they just have to, like they have to, just, they just fall wherever they are and they just go sleep.
Stephen:
I was kind of like that as a child up to quite an old age Say old age and I would I would say probably like eight or nine like I would have naps and not realize I'd fell asleep or just do something that was really relaxing and like semi-sleep, you know, put a film on the background. You only do that weird like it's like a dream state. You kind of vaguely know what's going on in the room. So if you're watching something, you kind of following in your brain but you're also on that warm, cozy Like trip to to sleep. I used to do that quite a lot as a kid and then now that that seemed to give me enough energy, that like three, four hours a night would do me like and I'm not even joking like I would fight and fight and fight and fight sleep.
Stephen:
My mum, dad probably sent me to bed when I was younger, like a toddler age, to like. I'd probably go bed about seven, eight o'clock at night and If I was asleep before midnight those that was a great thing and I didn't necessarily like come downstairs. A lot died nights when I would do that. I would come down and creep down and try and like sneak back to the living room or just sitting when our stairs was in the house where I Mainly growth. I was quite young when we in my first house but we moved when I was about three or four and I used to keep onto the stairs and Watch TV through the banister if the living room doors open and many a night Like I'd fell asleep on the stairs. I think my mum dad quite scared that I was like gonna fall asleep and then roll downstairs and die and Even the problem. That was actually that much that these were kids gate, like a child gate across the top of the Landing stopped me coming down the stairs. But I was with an injured as a kid and in our first house I used to climb out of bed and then climb over the child's gate and, like, make my way along the banister rail and drop down into the stairs. Don't recall doing this. I can't remember climbing over it once in in the house we moved here when I was a bit older. Yeah, but you know what TV you've got on which TV, so I buy it.
Stephen:
I think it was more the comfort of not really missing out, but the comfort of being near someone. Maybe that's what it was actually. Have I thinking of it? I think it was probably more that the comfort of, you know, not being on my own. Maybe I was just really needy as a child. But yeah, I just, I just recall like Actually having a favorite going bad, like just not wanting to go to bed, not wanting to be out of that, like, like living room environment and I know so it's the older I got as well, my brother's like five years old at me, so that kind of like added to it because I also didn't want to. I also didn't want him doing stuff that I wasn't doing and also wanted to try and be older as well. So if he was a boy, I wanted to be up.
Stephen:
Yeah, complex, complex, but basically I hated sleep and I, I I actually remember thinking to myself as a child why do we sleep? This is pointless, we go bad, we do nothing like we, I'm not getting anything done, I'm not coloring in, I'm not in the garden, I'm not playing and not watching my films. You know, I, genuinely I was. I was just like this is like wasted time. God, if only I could have carried that motivation through in that thought process through, because if you've ever, if you've read Arnold Schwarzenegger's, arnold Schwarzenegger's Autobiography his in part of that it basically says that he kind of felt the same like sleep was wasted. So when you're awake, you've got me the most of it. Um, if I keep taking that like child kind of like thought process and put it into my adulthood, like I'd have probably achieved so much more in my life at 40. It's kind of depressing, but that's that's how I felt.
Stephen:
Like going bed was a For me, like a, like a big event. My brother didn't help. He's to like kind of induce nightmares. And I remember and he said he didn't do this. But I'm pretty sure he did. But you know, maybe he didn't.
Stephen:
But I was really terrified of the gremlins when I have said this before, I was really self-right gremlins when I was a kid, love it now I don't know why. I think I just saw a clip of it when I was really too young to have seen it and it just terrified me. Didn't even know it was a comedy, I just thought they were evil little bastards and they'd murdi in your bed and my brother had like a little Stripe figure and I used to play with it. Weirdly enough, I was also terrified of it. It was like a co-op mechanism. I was trying to like desensitize myself to it and I remember going bed all night and he was, it was in my bed and I was and I said to him like how did it get there? And he was like, oh, I don't know, it's obviously crawled into your bed. So now I was thinking it was a lie. Yeah, it was not good times. I think he said that the real Gremlin have put in me bed as well or something. Maybe I can't remember.
Stephen:
I remember being absolutely terrified and I was convinced this little toy or a gremlin was gonna be bad. So for a while that stopped me going to bed. And Aliens stopped me going to bed. Once, like that, you know, like the grays with the big eyes, I'd watched a film with my brother Probably shouldn't have watched called communion, and then that freaked me out. We used to watch UFO programs all the time and the X-Files and stuff. When I got a bit older but I was probably eight or nine we watch this film and I was. I was literally every time like a light came on outside, I was convinced that it was a tractor beam and the aliens were coming for me and yeah, I just, I just didn't like sleep, one because I hated it, because it was like a waste of time, and two because I was scared of having nightmares and, yeah, you're alone, like I was quite lucky when I was a kid because I had my own bedroom and I had the biggest room and I don't know how that came about.
Stephen:
Actually, when we moved house when I was about three or four, I actually had like the medium sized room. So I remember I had the biggest room, I had the medium one. Maybe I had like the box room and maybe I really used to play in my room that was kind of like the playroom as well as my room, and then I was always jealous of what he had. So I begged and begged, and begged and begged my mum just to move room so I could have the small room. And she was like, are you sure You've got the bigger room? But you know, as a kid you don't think logically and I kind of like small spaces.
Stephen:
Anyway, I like being cosy, having my stuff around me. If you could see this room you would be like, oh, I can see that. So I like kind of to be enclosed. I suppose it's kind of like a safety thing. You feel secure. So I kind of enjoyed when I swapped rooms, to be honest, until I got to a certain age when I was like, why did you make this stupid decision? So as soon as he went to university, straight back in that room. I have no idea where this was going, yeah, but we swapped rooms. I never felt comfortable in that other room. To be honest, I never felt as safe in the other room. But he used to wind me up all the time about things being in my bed or aliens, and so that came from it.
Stephen:
But yeah, I just don't really like sleep now. If I'm honest with you, it's a thing I am more tired now. I'm getting old, you work and you have to do housework, so you kind of do need sleep when you're an adult Because of all the things you do in the day. It's not just for physical activity especially for me at the moment, like my work is not very physical, it's just mentally draining. So yeah, you kind of do need to sleep and I do like going to bed. Now I do. I'm like, oh yes, I can go and get some sleep, but it's still in the back of my head. That it's. I do like to get the minimum amount possible and I like to be out and do and stuff, especially if I'm somewhere. Like we went London on the weekend. So if I'm away my holidays or I probably spend less time in bed on holidays than I do when I'm at home, probably Because I'm away and I'm at my normal environment and I want to do things.
Stephen:
So at the weekend when we were away, I was up at like 7 o'clock most mornings. We did have some noisy neighbors in the other rooms, but I was up at 7 and I would literally have just got up and gone out, but my mate and my wife basically slept till about half 8. So I was literally on my phone for an hour and a half just scrolling as you do nowadays. But if I'd have been on my own I would have literally just been. I'd have woke up and been out of the door and just wondered. It wouldn't have bothered me and I'd have gone to bed as late as I possibly could, because I still can get away with about 6 hours sleep and be okay. But when I was a kid like, yeah, it's going back to this fat Jesus, you can tell I'm a bit tired because my brain's worse than usual. Sorry, okay, cliff Notes.
Stephen:
So far I don't like sleep. Even when I was a child I could have been in the fear of missing out. I could have been because I had nightmares. I could have been because I had some old rooms, I don't know. Yeah, when I was a kid, literally I used to. I have three or four hours a night. If I had any more than that, it was a real bonus for my mom and dad and looking back, I don't think it was every night, but most nights it was a struggle for me to go to bed and they had to really convince me to go to bed, to stay there at least anyway, and they used to just say lying bed awake, and they didn't mind me lying in bed as long as I wasn't getting up and trying to come down.
Stephen:
I think their view was, if I lay in bed I would eventually go to sleep because nature kicks in it's nighttime. You know, we're not night creatures, are we. We're not. Nocturnal is the word I was looking for. So eventually my natural brain would be like oh, you're in bed, so you're lying down, you're comfortable, and then I would just fall asleep.
Stephen:
Didn't really happen for me. I used to just lie there and think about stuff. I'd lie there singing, just use my imagination, like making things up, talking to myself, talking to my tatties, doing like I used to sit on my bed. I'd sit on my bed playing with my bears and this dog toy. I'd lost quite a lot of dogs and bears and I used to just like sit down and just chat to them and then that would lead on to me trying to get all the toys out and I'd normally get told off of that because I'm not the most quiet person. I get in my own head and then I just don't really.
Stephen:
I think I try to be as like accommodating as other people, but if I'm in the zone I don't really know my own noise. The kitchen is probably the best example of that. If I can get something out of the kitchen, I can just slam cupboards and stuff. Other times I'm super like aware of that and I'll just be like closing the most gentle that you can close. And I was like that as a kid, so I'd get told off, I'd read a lot in bed and that used to send me to sleep. We should try that now. But yeah, three or four hours you'd do me.
Stephen:
But that meant that, as I've said, it was normally about midnight when I actually finally got to sleep. So that's normally when my parents would come to bed, like 11, 12 o'clock at night. So by the time I'd actually drifted off. I'd get three or four hours sleep. I was awake at four in the morning, so I would either go and call into mom and dad's bed and they'd let me at that point normally like sleep them a little bit. Depend on my dad, really, I think, what he was working and whether he was on night's or not, and sometimes they wouldn't let me get into bed, but I was like a ninja. I could literally go into that room and creep into their bed and crawl up from the foot of the bed and crawl up underneath the covers and fall asleep. Sometimes I'd just fall asleep in the bottom of the bed like a dog. I always thought the dog was my spirit animal.
Stephen:
Yeah, so I used to do that, but when I got a little old, because I used to wake up hungry, because I used to love breakfast. So I've always been the sort of person to wake up, eat. And when I was a toddler I was skinny, I was super skinny. It was like the only meal I ate. So dad used to. They got me a TV for my bedroom and this was when I was in the bigger room and they kind of agreed that I could get up and they'd set some breakfast stuff out downstairs. So all I had to do was put some milk on some corn flakes or whatever and I could bring it back upstairs and just watch TV for a couple of hours and eat my breakfast, and that's what I used to do, so from probably like the age of six maybe, I used to prepare my own breakfast and little drink and bring it upstairs and just go just sit in my room, and sometimes I'd fall back asleep again as well. So it was kind of a win-win for mom and dad. I'd fed myself and I was maybe possibly getting a little bit of extra sleep, and it was a win for me because I felt like I was older, because I was getting my own breakfast and I wasn't having to lie in bed doing nothing. So I would get my toys out and play, as long as it was quiet stuff, like again, no real sense of my own volume sometimes, but yeah, that's what I used to do.
Stephen:
And, um, I used to hate falling asleep in the car as well. Oh my god, if I was going anywhere, traveling back in the car, like If I Was enjoying the journey, like it's a thing as a kid, you don't, you don't always know when you're gonna fall asleep. As a kid it's very, very bizarre. Like as an adult, you purposely go to sleep, don't you? You like think I'm going to have a nap or I'm gonna go to bed, but as a kid you just fall asleep. And if we were coming back from it. This is normally where I would. I would kind of get upset, I would get a bit gnarly if I was aware, and sometimes a throw paddy. But if we were just woke him back and I fell asleep during the journey home and woke up at home, oh my god, I hate it, because that was Definitely fair of me to now. It was like I missed the journey home.
Stephen:
I like to see, you know, just see the places we were going through and Ask questions about stuff and see the motorway journey or see the countryside, etc. Even if it was dark, even if you know it was pitch black. I used to like watching my dad drive. Weirdly enough why that was, I don't know why that was. Maybe I just aspire to drive one day. And, yeah, I really hate that and I Remember what women would have managed to carry me upstairs once and put me into bed.
Stephen:
And then I woke up in the middle of night and I was like, oh my god, I'm in bed. How the hell did I get here? And I was really upset that I'd even missed like saying goodnight to mom and dad. Basically, what I'm saying is I was a little, I was a little shit, I didn't like to sleep and I was very needy. I think is the summary of this podcast, which makes me sad because I thought I was quite she, quite a sweet, non-pestering little little. That was the case, I think pretty much mom and dad me probably would actually completely disagree with that, so maybe I can't get away with saying that, well, that was a, that was a random Journey, wasn't it of words?
Stephen:
Thank you very much for listening. If you've got to this point, well done. If you're still awake, well done. Yeah, thanks for listening, and I've been a bit rubbish with the whole social media and Websites over the moment. I'm trying to set some stuff up in the background.
Stephen:
I'm really slow at doing stuff. Sometimes. I have to be in the right mindset, and I love doing this podcast. It's probably one of the things I've stuck at the longest for the for the longest time as well, so that goes to say something. So I'm really appreciate Any regular listeners.
Stephen:
If you are a regular listener and you like what I do, please reach out. It's there's something with this. I don't. I can't see anything. I don't know what people are thinking. I don't get a lot of feedback apart from the downloads and stuff. So it would be nice just to know, like, what people are thinking about the podcast, though Just just reach out and you can contact me via the website if you're interested in being a guest.
Stephen:
You've got something interesting to say. You need like to have a chat? Yeah, but until until the next episode, which I Generally don't know what it's going to be about. And yeah, just Just chatter away, like I do, just take the opportunity to listen as well. That's that is important. I need to. I need to learn that lesson.
Stephen:
I go in a roll and and I need to shut my mouth. As a wise man once said, you have one mouth and two ears for a reason. Nice words to live by. Okay, I'm gonna shut up now because I'm annoying myself. Thank you very much for listening. Check out the website. Updates coincide. I'm doing social media at Steven speak PC, and if you would like to be super generous and subscribe and Pay me a little bit of money to support what I do, I would be eternally grateful and the links in the description for that too. So take care of yourselves and I will speak to you all soon. You've been listening to you, steven speak the podcast. Thanks for listening to my unscripted prattle on everything and nothing. Visit Steven speak comm for updates, information and my blog. You can follow more updates on social media and Steven speak PC. Thanks very much and I'll speak to you soon.
