What did I do wrong today? Understanding the dilemmas in contemporary sleep

"Why are you reading an article about sleep?" A colleague asked as she walked into my office. My response was simple: Why not? We dedicate a third of our lives to sleep, and it's a symptom commonly reported across various mental health challenges. Yet, in our contemporary society, sleep has been unfairly stigmatized, often equated with laziness or falling behind (Guzel, 2019 p.385). Expressions like "wake up, are you sleeping?" or "stay woke" subtly imply that to sleep is to be disengaged from life, constantly pushing us to be "doing" instead of simply "being".

Sleep science offers valuable insights, like how blue light from screens can disrupt our slumber. However, the deeper issue often lies not just in our devices, but in the relentless demands of modern life itself. Ironically, we now find ourselves using apps on our phones and computers to protect us from the very demands these devices facilitate, creating a cyclical, almost absurd dependency.

This continuous pressure to both "self-evaluate and be evaluated" fosters an intimate, often guilt-ridden internal dialogue: "What did I do wrong today?" The burgeoning sleep industry, with its array of products and "rules" – "get on a sleep schedule," "don't look at your clock" – often capitalizes on this underlying sense of guilt. This neoliberal logic frames any struggle with sleep as a personal malfunction, promising health and happiness through a long list of instructions on everything from mattress-types to ideal sleep hours.

Perhaps it's time to re-evaluate our approach. Instead of focusing solely on individual "fixes," we should consider that widespread sleep issues might be symptomatic of a larger problem within modern social life itself – particularly its invasive and unyielding demands. Understanding this broader context is crucial to genuinely addressing the crisis of contemporary sleep.

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