Somniphobia is the fear of sleep. In extreme cases, a fear of dying in your sleep. It causes a deep sense of anxiety as bedtime approaches, and those suffering tend to put off sleeping, often experiencing severe distress and sometimes panic attacks.

Neel Syed, a 20-year-old student from London, spoke about his experience with Somniphobia and how it developed and affected him.

“It was around the start of January 2021, right after we went into the 2nd lockdown, the winter lockdown. Prior to this time, I’d never really experienced any issues with my sleep; it was something I always just did. Effortlessly.”

For most, sleep occurs naturally without any second thought. The second lockdown was a big turning point for Neel, who prior to this, didn’t have an issue with his sleep.

“You would get the odd night, whatever became an occurrence. I never dwelled on it, nor did I feel the need to address it. I would just go about the next day as usual, have a nap, or just get an early night.”

Sleep was just folded into Neel’s routine, something he did and would forget the next day. However, it often plays a big factor in mental changes. At 16 years old, your brain starts to develop and rewire itself.

“I didn’t think about sleep at all, it was just something that happened. It was almost as if I was on autopilot. When I turned 16, though, everything changed. I started to experience more general anxiety.”

The mental change set the precedent for those fears and irrationalities to come. With increased general anxiety, came a shift in Neel’s perception of sleep. A sudden family disaster only intensified things further.

“Over the January period during lockdown, an uncle of mine roughly in his 40s, so not that old at, just passed away in his sleep and it was just so unexpected. He had no health issues, he was completely fine. He was very active I’d say. And then suddenly he just dies in his sleep, completely out of the blue.”

Often in life, losing a loved one, especially in shock and unexpected circumstances, can act as a trigger for new thoughts and emotions. 

“It got everyone thinking. We were all a bit shaken. I think that was the point where I became conscious of my sleep. The point where I began to develop a fear of sleep, the fear of something as tragic as what happened to my uncle happening to not only me but also to my other family.”

In Neel’s case, the tragic loss of his uncle sparked a new fear, a fear of sleep. What was once a simple, calming process became one that resembled death and suffering.

“That was a tough grieving process for us especially considering it was a lockdown so we couldn’t all be together. So that month of January was a tough one for me but we got through it. However, I would say what happened to my uncle made me conscious about my sleep in the sense that I would place much more focus on it than I used to.”

The pandemic and the loss of his uncle introduced the fears and anxieties regarding sleep. However, the worst of it was yet to come.

“I didn’t actually have issues with my sleep during that period. I feel like we were all so distracted by the actual grief from losing my uncle than focusing on what happened to him. My fear of sleeping properly began around February.”

February was the precise onset of Neel’s Somniphobia. It was after the grief over his uncle had settled. It was a separate event. One that well and truly established his fear of sleep in ways even he couldn’t imagine.

“I hadn’t had any bad experiences with my mental health up until that point but that all changed very quickly. I met up with an old mate of mine and was sort of peer pressured into trying marijuana for the first time. Well, I say peer pressure, but part of it was out of my own curiosity, too. I mean I was 16 years old. I think it is understandable and pretty much everyone else I knew had tried it.”

A moment of curiosity quickly turned into a nightmare. An overwhelming response to a new substance pushed Neel into a state of panic that would come to haunt him for the foreseeable future.

“It was my first and last time. I reacted to it in such a bad way. I kept passing out then waking up but was unable to control it which was really scary and everything just started spinning. I became so paranoid and started to really struggle. You know that fight or flight stage where everything just becomes so intense in that very moment. I went into that stage and it was horrible.”

The anxiety and panic from everything imprinted itself onto Neel as he battled on his own with the lack of any support from his family, which all stemmed from further fears.

“I would describe that experience as traumatic for me because I hadn’t felt anything like it in my entire life. That night after everything passed, I was still very shaken up from it all. I couldn’t talk to my parents or my sisters though because I was so scared of how they would react to it all.

Neel found himself unable to move past the situation, trapped in his thoughts, unable to escape the dread of somniphobia.

“That night as I tried to sleep my mind just wouldn’t let me. It was just throwing these racing thoughts at me like a roller coaster. They were so vivid too, almost like hallucinations as I was trying to sleep. Every time I would begin to drift off it would happen. That was the first time I had a really bad sleep experience from what I can recall.”

The racing thoughts and hallucinations almost acted as a manifestation of the toll somniphobia can take on one’s mental state.