Heather Bellamy spoke with Sophia Barrett from !Audacious Church, about her battle with insomnia, her new book and how meditating on God helped heal her.

Sophia Barrett

According to a survey by YouGov and supported by the Sleep Apnoea Trust Association, almost half of British women say that they are not getting enough sleep. Insomnia can have a life changing impact on mental health and the ability to do day to day life. One person who knows what chronic sleeplessness is like and has found a way through it, is church leader and author Sophia Barrett. Heather Bellamy spoke with her about her experiences and the solution she has found.

Heather: When did sleeplessness begin for you?

Sophia: That was in 2010. I was going about my life quite happily and one night I just didn't sleep and that began an ongoing issue of sleeplessness.

Heather: To what extent could you not sleep? What was life like for you in that?

Sophia: I think everybody knows what it is like to have a late night and perhaps to burn the candle at both ends, but this was something different. This was something that I couldn't control, or I couldn't make up for. So what would happen is that I would just go to bed, but I would absolutely have no ability to fall asleep. It was almost like my body was wired and I could have run a race at that time. It was a frightening time for me because I didn't know how to fix it.

Heather: How long did the insomnia last for?

Sophia: It lasted a few months. Chronic sleeplessness lasted for about eight to 10 months, but I began to learn how to how to deal with it better; how to understand what was happening to me and how to find a solution in my relationship with God that actually saw it improve. I think probably within 12 months I was starting to sleep a lot better.

Heather: In that time when you were struggling with the insomnia, what effect did it have on your health and your life?

Sophia: A year previous to this occurring, my husband and I had taken the big decision of taking our two children out of primary school and I was home schooling them. So it had a massive effect. Anybody who knows what it is like to have some sort of sleep deprivation, whether it be with babies, or shifts, they would know that sleeplessness does have an incredible effect on your physical body. You become emotional; your ability to make decisions is affected and just getting through the day can be hard work. On top of that though, my body started to shake uncontrollably at times and that was pretty disconcerting. So physically it had a massive impact.

Heather: Why did you struggle to sleep during this period of your life? What was it that was causing the insomnia?

Sophia: This is why it was so concerning for me. I could not pinpoint anything. My life was great; Glyn and I pastor !Audacious Church in Manchester and we were three years old and things were going great. The church was growing and everything was going really well. Is it stressful? Absolutely, but everybody deals with stress, so there was nothing that I could point to that said this is the reason.

Heather: But you did go on a journey didn't you, where you discovered that something to do with your past and shame, were some of the root causes. Is that right?

Sophia: Absolutely. What happened was that I was immediately thinking, what's the situation? What's wrong? What's the problem? How can I fix it? And I couldn't, because I couldn't pinpoint anything specifically.

I began to get quite concerned thinking, well this must be something even beyond my awareness. I went to the doctors to see if they would help me, just to get a good night's sleep, because I really felt that if I could just sleep, then all of this would be solved, but they were reluctant to give me any kind of sleep medication, so that was a closed door.