My Secret To Good Mental Health

The secret is just sleep.

My mental health got good after I got enough sleep every week for about three years. So yeah, it’s that easy. Almost five years of therapy might’ve helped too, and I learned a lot of tricks to help keep my brain under control from those sessions, but it took more than three years from my last therapy session, and getting disability (uføretrygd) in Norway before my brain finally got quiet.

This obviously won’t be much help to anyone, as a course of action, but my genuine advice is to prioritize your sleep. I know it’s hard at times, and it’s next to impossible to get enough sleep if you have to work full-time or even part-time or several part-time jobs.

I’ve had several periods of my life where I couldn’t sleep much at all, staying awake all night and maybe snoozing for a few hours in the early daytime. It was only after my last workday, in a trial before getting disability, that I was able to find out how much sleep I actually need. It turned out I need about nine to ten hours a night, which is obviously a lot, and I wish I could get by with less, but I know from experience that if I get less sleep for an extended time, a couple weeks, my mental health suffers dramatically.

I can’t say for sure I’m as sensitive to this decline in mental health due to less sleep now as I was eight years ago, but back then, while still trying to work, the decrease in wellbeing was rapid when I didn’t get enough sleep.

I’d been using sleeping pills, prescribed melatonin, for a good while back then, I don’t remember exactly how long but it could’ve been anywhere between six to twelve months. I’d take them a couple hours before my bedtime, and they helped, although if I missed my window and took them just ten minutes later than I should, I’d be more awake than I was before I started using them, lying awake all night.

When it was decided I was gonna try to work again, I realized I couldn’t take them the evening before I was gonna go to work, because they made me sleep through alarms and phone calls. So I didn’t get enough sleep while I was working the last time either, and I seriously considered getting myself into a mental hospital again for the first time in a couple years.

However, there was a holiday, probably Easter, and we get a lot of days off around dumb old holidays over here in Norway, so due to those days off and my schedule at the time, I got about a week off, and this was when I noticed how much I needed my sleep. I went from being one day away from telling my therapist that I needed to be committed again, to being back to what I thought was healthy back in those days. And when work started up again, I noticed how just a couple days with less sleep over a couple weeks made me crazy again, and since then I’ve tried to get between eight to ten hours every night.

And with Norway’s social benefits and generally wanting to help and take care of its citizens, I’ve been feeling good to great for more than five years now. My brain has been quiet. The old noise, a brain going at 100mph at all times, with no stop switch, has stopped. Something I never thought was possible back in my twenties. And the secret to that was just getting enough sleep.

I know this won’t be much help for most people reading this, because most people have to struggle under the boot of capitalism and getting benefits and help from the state isn’t possible in most countries. And earning enough money to be able to prioritize your own health isn’t a luxury afforded to the vast majority of people on our planet either.

And even if all these things were to somehow line up, it still took three years of more or less ten hours of sleep every night before my mental health took the final leap from Okay to Good.

My secret to mental wellbeing is nonetheless sleep, and enough of it. As much as it is possible for you, try to get the sleep your brain and body needs. You probably won’t need ten hours every night for the rest of your life, but if you need eight or seven, try.

Hopefully this was useful for someone! I’ll be back.