The best best books on insomnia

This comprehensive book provides information on the impact of COVID worldwide as it is currently understood, so future researchers will have a basis for comparison. The book’s authors address factors such as lockdowns, job loss, grief, and uncertainty that have led to depression, distress, anxiety, and PTSD. Also covered is how different world populations as refugees, at-risk populations as the elderly and frail, and roles as parents have been both mentally and physically impacted. This information will help communities develop programs to help relieve mental health concerns and protect people against similar threats in years to come. The book also includes wellness activities like meditation that help reduce the negative effects of COVID on mental health.

DeSanctis is a witty and lyrical writer, and she observes the world with astonishing acuity and insight.

I read this at a moment of feeling unbearably stuck emotionally and I was transported to a worldly sense of fresh possibilities and rich adventures. Restlessness can be a superpower and finally I got validation for being a restless psychotherapist (a profession that prides itself on patience).

This book made me come alive and it bolstered me psychologically in a way that felt incidental and not forced the way self-help books might. It sparked my appreciation for oddities and eccentricities and I urge anyone looking for mischief to start reading this immediately. 

This is the definitive book on sleep!  It is loaded with gems: Your sleep drive keeps an exact tally of accumulated waking hours. Like bricks in a backpack, accumulated sleep drive is a burden that weighs down on you. Every hour that you are awake adds another brick to the pack. The brain's sleep load increases until you go to sleep when the load starts to lighten.

The author emphasizes that your brain keeps an exact accounting of how much sleep it is owed.  Each successive night of partial sleep loss is carried over and the end effect appears to accumulate in a precisely additive fashion. Accumulated lost sleep is like a monetary debt: "It must be paid back." 

Books teaching kids not to be afraid of the dark can be cliched and a bit preachy. I stay away from books that “talk” to kids. However, while this book does deal with fear and bravery, it does so in a subtle way and feels genuine. The lessons come from the characters and not the writer. This is a sweet story and you will find yourself rooting for Martina.

Every once in a while, when I’m under a lot of stress or experiencing emotional turmoil, I struggle to sleep. At one point a few years back. I went more than a week where I was only able to sleep around an hour or two per night. Needless to say, I was not myself. I love how this story explores the importance of sleep, the long-term effects of not getting a solid amount of it, and what it’s like to lose large chunks of time that you can’t account for. Plus, stalking. There’s a lot of fascinating psychology in this story, along with a best friend whose sense of humor brings valuable comic relief to the situation. Yeah. Another must-read!

The title says it all! We are so busy doing in our day, we aren’t stopping to reflect on what choices we should be making in support of our authentic selves. In the book she talks about the four “thieves of time.” The one I most resonated with was “Drive.” Not too much… but too little. Because I was in a season where I hadn’t created clear professional goals for myself, I was letting too much time be used for things that didn’t really contribute to my success.

Mindfulness has become a more popular concept in the realm of relaxation training, wellness, spirituality, and health, but many books are focused on adults. Children can also practice mindfulness which is having a reflective stance in daily life including appreciating experiences in the moment, being mindful of how you speak to people and of your relationships, incorporating a meditative element to daily life, and reflecting deeply on experiences and learning from those experiences. The author was involved in developing a mindfulness curriculum for school children which has been deemed quite effective in increasing focus and calm and decreasing discord and behavioral problems among children in the toughest classrooms. Check out this book, then try a book on mindful parenting!

When bedtime arrives, where is Fred? A big, fluffy dog, he’s busying himself with everything else, except getting ready for bed. He runs through flower beds and mud, needs a bath, plays hide-and-seek, and finally ask for one more story. Mirroring behavior of any toddler avoiding bedtime, Fred finally gets ready for a good night sleep. Drawn loosely in ink and watercolor, Fred will run away with your heart as well.

I loved the adventure and world building in this book. Odan Terridor is a fantastical world hidden from most eyes filled with dragons, curious beasties, and a mysterious, powerful stone that makes the main character, Enzi (aka Mackenzie) invisible. As usual, the characters pulled me in. Enzi isn’t your beautiful-but-clueless heroine—she struggles with school, her weight, and a past trauma that’s truly heartbreaking (but tastefully done). It makes her victory at the end of the series so satisfying.

This book evoked so many memories from my life in Tonga.

Prior’s humorous accounts of his travels in this island kingdom brought back to me the laidback lifestyle, the flexibility one needs to have when living and traveling in “Tongan Time”, the different foods, customs, and attitudes, and most of all, the friendliness of the people. Having been there myself, one thing was clear: Prior did experience the real Tonga.

And having visited several uninhabited islands there, I especially enjoyed the vivid descriptions of his breakaway to a deserted island, which was full of adventure, tropical bliss, and unexpected hiccups. Simply Tonga as it lives and breathes!  

Dashing Through the Snow tells readers what it’s like to compete in the Jr. Iditarod. This nonfiction book was a great resource when I was doing research for my book. Not only was the text great, but there were photos showing various aspects of the race, including what it’s like to sleep on the side of a sled-dog trail. Anyone who’s interested in the sport and hasn’t heard of a “gangline” or a “dropped dog” will find the definitions in the glossary useful. 

Kilham was an early promoter of kava as an herbal treatment for anxiety and other disorders. Kava, in fact, has proven therapeutic benefits and, along with anxiety and insomnia, treats depression, stress, muscle pain, urinary problems, and much more. It also has an emotional leveling effect, promoting temporary feelings of happiness and peace. Kilham brings readers along to Vanuatu and other Pacific Islands as he investigated kava’s local uses and its potential for consumers everywhere. Readers will appreciate the description of his first kava taste of kava that sparked his passionate promotion of the plant.

A precocious and inquisitive child Oskar goes on a treasure hunt around New York to solve a mystery left behind by his father who had died on 9/11.

In his quest, you see a child seeking to stay close to his father a little while longer. In his streams of consciousness and hyperactive imagination, you feel him trying to fill the void left behind by a supportive father figure.

With the sheer weight of his innocence, he gets strangers to open up to him, let him into their lives, and add to their life stories. In a moving manner, the narrative follows the path that Oskar, his mother and his grandfather take in dealing with trauma and finding closure in their own personal ways.

Tory Bilski hooked me with her first line. I searched riding trips sites by the end of the paragraph. Wild Horses of the Summer Sun is a crafted odyssey. The book gifts us with Icelandic horses, foreign travel exploration, and the human (and herd) dynamic of a group of women who crave to “be Iceland.”

Tory is a writer in all that the craft implies. Her storytelling speaks to the explorer in us. She guides us around each mystical curve and through a physical (and emotional) blinding fog. She swims us across a (gulp) deep lake. We encounter “Tippi Hedren-esk” killer birds and truculent bulls. We hunger for the “gifts of the earth” meals and well-earned, decadent desserts. Ancient Nordic Sagas of trolls, ghosts and a fatal love affair spice the travelogue.

My copy is the sixth edition, but this groundbreaking workbook now offers a seventh edition and is based on the authors’ decades of clinical experience working with clients suffering from varied symptoms of stress including insomnia, worry, hypertension, poor digestion, depression, and anger. This hefty book offers a comprehensive compilation of stress-reduction strategies—including techniques for relaxation, managing time, dealing with stressful thoughts and feelings, and effective communication. The workbook format provides helpful guidance to create a personal action plan for stress reduction.  

Matilda moves to the small New Mexico town of Goodnight after inheriting a house, a small newspaper, and two dogs. She learns just how odd the town is when she starts investigating the murder of a reporter. The town of Goodnight is pretty bizarre, but speaking as someone who lives in a small town in New Mexico, Goodnight is more believable than it might seem to an outsider. I prefer books where weirdness is something to celebrate, and here the characters embrace their crazy with enthusiastic joy. This story is part screwball comedy and part mystery, and both work.

Abbott Awaits follows the spectacularly ordinary life of a father with a two-year-old; husband to an insomniac, pregnant wife; and university teacher. Bachelder evokes beauty in the mundane, dazzling splendor in domestic tedium, and in the middle of cleaning up his daughter’s vomited-up raspberries, a revelation that gets to the heart of Abbot’s heart-crushing yet devastatingly funny tour of his wildly imaginative inner life: “The following propositions are both true: A) Abbott would not, given the opportunity, change one significant element of his life, but B) Abbot cannot stand his life.”

The one book on my list that doesn’t involve a military veteran, The Guilty One isn’t that much of an outlier as the protagonist is a law enforcement officer.

I thought it important to include amongst my picks not only for the PTSD symptoms present and expertly portrayed by Schweigart, but also for the reminder that a PTSD diagnosis is not relegated to veterans alone.

Military, first responders, and civilians alike that are exposed to and suffer from experiencing trauma are all susceptible to symptoms. PTSD doesn’t discriminate in who it affects. 

What I really liked about Bill’s take was how he incorporated the well-documented physiological effect of the brain’s ability to protect the host in response to trauma.

In the case of his protagonist Cal Farrell, who is the first officer to respond to an active shooter event, he comes upon a scene so horrible that his mind closes… show more.