Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1: How I (Unexpectedly) Fell in Love with Sleep
I’m sure you’re wondering, “How on earth did you get involved in sleep stuff?” Quite frankly, I wasn’t expecting to become a psychologist, let alone help people with their insomnia. Ironically, I struggled with sleep difficulties in the past, but never really cared about my sleep health at all. Sleep difficulties also run in my family. My brother was a night owl, who would stay up all night long to get work done and sleep during the day. I never got a full night of quality sleep because of my work. To be honest, my poor sleep health wasn’t on my radar because I was focused on surviving life. I was more focused on working through trauma, managing rotating shifts as an EMT, and trying to reconnect with myself to be a better person.
As you can see, it’s kind of a long story, so let’s travel back in time before Kristen was Dr. Casey. But before this, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. It’s going to be a bit blunt so buckle up.
The Elephant in the Room
We all know that some people get into the field of mental health to learn more about themselves. In hindsight, I wasn’t really interested in the mental health field just yet, I was simply trying to figure out how life worked and if my life was normal. I’m sure this is a collective thought for most of us.
It’s important for you to have somewhat of an idea of who I am and where I’ve come from so you can identify if this book is a safe space or not. Of course it’s my intention that this is a safe space for you to learn about sleep, but it’s ultimately up to you to decide if it is or not. The reader-author connection is kinda like developing the patient-provider rapport in therapy: without trust or understanding, it’s hard to see any growth or progress. If you think your therapist doesn’t hear or see you, it’s hard for you to want to learn from them or share things with them. The same goes for reading a book about mental well-being; knowing the intentions of the author is essential.
I have all the credentials that any well-versed clinical psychologist would have. I received my Doctor of Psychology degree from Midwestern Universityin Arizona, an APA-accredited program. The American Psychological Association (APA) regulates and accredits certain psychology training programs to ensure they meet certain standards. I completed an APA-accredited internship and optional post-doctoral fellowship at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), my top choice for internship. I presented research with a colleague internationally in Australia. I was trained in evidence-based psychotherapy and evaluation/assessments. It came really naturally to me and it was incredibly fun to learn. But the training was rigorous and quite difficult. I remember some nights I’d stay up late and just cry, wondering if it was all worth it. I sacrificed so much for this degree, it almost cost me my relationship at one point. It really challenged me to work with people I never thought I’d ever come into contact with. I knew there was a lot to learn, so I always tried to be one step ahead, defending my dissertation early or getting licensed a bit earlier than others. But that doesn’t make me better, it just lets you know that I was so anxious and concerned about succeeding that I did everything in my power to ensure I was as well-trained as possible. I became licensed in two states and then was able to extend this license to twenty-eight states with the help of The Psychology Interjurisdictional Compact (PSYPACT), which is a compact that helps psychologists practice telehealth across state lines to increase access to mental healthcare services. I took my training very seriously and pride myself on always valuing ethics and professionalism in the therapy room and when I conduct assessments.
This sounds great, right? A good training program and everything checks out. Although I have credentials and I’m a well-trained psychologist, not all psychologists have the same lived experiences, clinical training, or lens that they view the world. It is critical to acknowledge this for the people that we treat and the information that we put out for the world to see. I fully acknowledge that I’m coming from a white perspective, and challenge this perspective daily. I might not look like you, sound like you, or live like you. It’s my goal to use this as fuel to make this book as inclusive as possible while also telling you, yes, I still have a lot to learn. I took some time to reflect on this before writing this book, and hope to incorporate these factors into the chapters. So, if your life is different from mine (or providers who look like me), just know that I see you.
Stress: It looks different for everyone
When I started writing this book I was like, “Yeah this will be easy.” [insert frantic research meme here]. Then I started to think about stress and how it affects people differently. It took me a while to figure out how to incorporate this, and I figured I’d do research to figure out how to make an insomnia book easy to read, but to feel inclusive for people who don’t fit the societal norm.
So, it’s impossible to talk about sleep health without also talking about stress. Stress for someone who’s affluent looks very different from someone who doesn’t know when their next meal is. Stress is different for a Black woman in a corporate room full of white men and women. It’s different for someone who is paralyzed from the waist down, who needs help getting in and out of bed each night. It’s different for a Trans woman in a room full of cis women and men. My point isn’t to compare life experiences, but to acknowledge that there are inherent differences in experiences, even when we talk about stress. I consider that not everyone has the ability to fix their stress by fixing their thoughts (which might be loosely based on a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) model), because many of these stressful situations are out of their control and impact their survival experiences. Yes, we can think about them differently, but it doesn’t change the experience of race-related stress, misogyny in the workplace, or feeling inherently undervalued by society because your disability stops you from working a full time job. So, to blindly tell someone to engage in scheduled worry time or to change their thoughts, doesn’t necessarily change the way they experience life. It might invalidate their experience further, so we have to be sensitive to this as we discuss strategies for reducing stress as it relates to sleep health.
That being said, I’m a white, able-bodied bisexual cisgender woman. Not everyone experiences life in this way. There are inherent privileges with living life from this perspective, and it’s important to note that I’ve benefited from these privileges in many ways, regardless if I acknowledge this and work towards reducing my inherent biases. Now I know what you might be thinking, “wait, what’s the point of saying this? Isn’t this a book about insomnia?”
Yes, it is. And, the book isn’t worth writing (in my opinion) if we don’t acknowledge systemic issues that deter people from receiving help or sleep education. I mean, jeeze, there are plenty of barriers to gaining this information in the first place, which may actually start with us as providers. Yes, the mental healthcare system itself needs to be more accessible in several ways, but sometimes this is out of our control. What providers can control are the way we interact with people from other cultures, the knowledge we have of people that are different from us, a deep desire to attempt to understand what different ways of living might be like, actively engaging in policy change by signing petitions, being actively anti-racist, anti-homophobic, or anti-transphobic, knowing that we don’t know it all, and actively taking a stance against white supremacy and misogyny, etc.
It starts (at a bare minimum) with taking ownership of how these systems have benefited the majority of the population and with having a genuine desire to reach populations that desperately need our help needs. Then, it is a continual, lifelong journey to ensure that we are contributing to these systems in the ways that we can, and checking ourselves along the way. We can’t talk about mental health and sleep without also talking about stress because stress keeps people up at night. Knowing the type of stress and the impact is incredibly important. For example, if a BIPOC reader doesn’t feel seen or heard (at a bare minimum), they may not think that these sleep tips apply to them. It’s no surprise that minority voices desperately want (and deserve) culturally competent education materials and mental health treatment, and can often be in the medical room with a provider who is oblivious to the idea of systemic oppression and how that relates to their insomnia symptoms.
