So, the snakes are still here

So, the snakes are still here.

Last week I wrote to you in the middle of a bad stretch of restless legs, and I’m sorry to report the legs have not read the newsletter. A lot of you wrote back with things to try, and I’m grateful. I’ve already known about many of them; there are a couple of new ideas to look at, and there’s a blood panel coming. I’m working on the problem.

And that’s where I want to start, because last week I think I made it sound like lowering resistance was the only lever we could pull.

We tend to file our hard things into two drawers. There’s the Serenity Prayer version of it: grant me the serenity to accept what I can’t change, the courage to change what I can. Useful. But it can leave you thinking everything sorts neatly into one drawer or the other. Accept it, or fix it.

My legs won’t go in either drawer. I’m doing everything I can, and I still have to get through tonight.

The truth is most hard things don’t sort cleanly. You do what you can about them. And then you still have to live with what’s left.

And what’s left is the part we talked about last week. It’s the suffering you build on top of the pain with your own mind. Last week I asked you to notice it. This week I want to give you a tool to turn it down.

It’s three questions. Let me run one of my own 3am thoughts through them.

The thought is this: I’m not sleeping, and poor sleep is supposed to raise your risk of Alzheimer’s, so I’m probably giving myself Alzheimer’s.

So the first question: What am I making this mean? This one catches my mind’s meaning-making machine in the act. I’m taking a few bad nights and a half-remembered headline and turning them into a failing brain. At 3am it felt true. Just naming what I was doing took some of the air out of it.

Then: What else could it mean? The “could” is the key. I’m not trying to force a happier story, just prove to myself that other potential meanings exist. It could mean exactly what it is: I’m having a rough stretch of a condition I’ve managed before and am working on again. It could mean a few bad nights are a few bad nights, not the first chapter of a long decline. People lose sleep all the time without losing their minds.

And last: What meaning is most useful? “I’m giving myself Alzheimer’s” keeps me awake, which is a pretty good way to actually hurt my sleep. “I’m having a rough stretch, and I’m taking steps,” lets me get up and take the next one. So why not choose the meaning that empowers me and reduces suffering?

Try this: This week, take a difficult situation and run it through all three questions. What am I making this mean? What else could it mean? And which of those meanings is the most useful to me right now?

Reflect on this: What’s something hard right now where you’ve settled on what it means, without ever stopping to ask if that’s true?