The Insomniac's Search for Creativity

I have been putting off writing my first entry for this blog for months and months. But now I am stuck on a train in the middle of nowhere after a power cut and with only four hours of sleep. What better time than now to let the creative juices flow? Interestingly, this is what many cite as an opportunity for inspiration: lack of shuteye.

"Let It Be" was created “somewhere between deep sleep and insomnia.” And what kind of world would we live in without "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" or "Every Breath You Take"? I had firsthand experience of this when I met Rose*, whom I was supporting through Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for insomnia (CBT-I). She was a local artist and had been having difficulties with sleep for over 50 years. Often she would wake up around 4 a.m. and, unable to fall back asleep, would grab her sketchpad and pencil and create her newest piece of art. These types of stories have been validated by research studies showing increased rates of creativity in individuals with insomnia.¹

What seems to contradict these anecdotes is the abundance of research demonstrating that enhanced creativity is actually linked to more sleep,² not lack thereof.³ Others again have proposed that it is specifically REM sleep (the stage where our bizarre dreaming occurs) that is responsible for enhanced creativity. For example, scientist Matt Walker found that if woken from REM sleep, participants were more likely to solve complex puzzles compared to those who were woken from non-REM sleep.⁴ Perhaps this explains the link between insomnia and creativity as experienced by Rose. She was most creative around 4 a.m. in the morning, which is the part of the night where most of our REM sleep occurs.

Potentially, it depends on which stage of sleep you wake from. Perhaps it is also important what happens during sleep. A group at the University of Cardiff in the U.K. are working on a theory that the REM and non-REM stages of sleep interact with each other to enhance our creative problem-solving abilities.⁵ So perhaps it is not the quantity, but the quality or type of sleep you get that contributes to your creativity. And certainly, that should be reassuring for those of you with insomnia. It is not so much about how much you sleep, but how good it is. Of course, it is also important to remember that creative problem solving is different from being artistically creative.

Now, Rose's story didn’t end here, and this is the real puzzle to solve: As treatment progressed she reported losing her creative touch. While she was experiencing substantial improvements in her sleep, she just was not receiving any bursts of inspiration. One possibility is that she could have simply been too sleepy to function creatively. In fact, many individuals who complete CBT-I do experience a short-term increase in sleepiness before things improve during the day.^6,7 Interestingly, one study showed that creativity was enhanced in individuals with problems at night, but actually reduced in those who were also not functioning well during the day¹.

Luckily, Rose persevered with treatment, and now she has merely redefined what creativity means to her. Rather than counting on a scattered and unstructured burst of ideas, many of which remained unfinished, she now focuses on her core projects and ensures they come to fruition. But, I do think this example speaks to a phenomenon we often neglect in psychotherapy: secondary gain.⁸ Healthcare providers often focus on the positive gains of treatment and curing the disease and often neglect what aspects of the illness might be benefitting them. Clearly, Rose's secondary gain associated with her insomnia was her opportunity for creativity. Thankfully, the benefits of treatment outweighed the benefits of the disorder for Rose, but others may not have felt this way.

But that is for another blog post; the train has finally started moving again and I am due to get off at the next station.

*Her example is used with permission.