Fear of Sleep
For much of my life I suffered from a fear of sleep, of losing consciousness. I think it was related to a tonsillectomy and appendectomy with either. After the tonsillectomy when I was five years old, I was terrified about the prospect of being anesthetized by either. When I needed to have my appendix removed four years later, my father promised it would be done with a spinal. But on the operating table, they said my father had not requested a spinal and they had to use either.
Fear of Anesthesia
I dreaded a colonoscopy, not fear of the procedure, but fear of not knowing where I was when under the anesthetic. For the first colonoscopy, I tried without an anesthetic, but it was unbearably painful. The doctor became angry at me for groaning. I asked if he could give me just enough to quell some of the pain and he gave me enough to knock me out for a couple of hours. This upped my phobia exponentially.
The doctor who did my next colonoscopy promised to give me only enough anesthesia to make the procedure pain free. First he injected a dose of Valium to relax me, then just enough anesthetic to last through the procedure. I was awake as he was finishing up. I did not even realize I had been asleep. This soothed my phobia a bit.
Brain as a Bit Processor
Then in researching for my blog and book, what I learned about consciousness helped a bit more. Our body sends millions of bits of sensory data per second to our brain for processing – millions – yet our conscious mind processes only 1 to 45 bits per second. We are conscious of only millionths of the sensory information taken in by our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and body. Though our brain is not a computer, the similarity with digital bit computing is that neurons are essentially binary. They fire an action potential if they reach a threshold, but otherwise do not fire. So you can consider neurons as on off bit processing, and we can get a close approximation of the information processing capacity of each of our five senses.
Scientists measure how much information enters our brain through the senses by calculating how many nerve connections send signals to the brain and how many signals each nerve connection sends each second.
The table below compares the capacity of our sensory receptors with our conscious capacity of perception.
Comparison of the Capacity of Our Sensory Receptors With Our Conscious Perception (What We Perceive). Based on Table From “Fundamentals of Sensory Physiology,” edited by R.F. Schmidt.
Astronomical Amount of Sensory Data
The information available to our sensory receptors is astronomical. By the time we are conscious though, we are minus virtually all of this sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch sensory information out there in the world. Sensory information enters from our eyes, ears, nose, and skin and travels along sensory (afferent) nerves to the brain. The total capacity for our eyes is 10 to 7th power: The eyes send ten million bits/second to the brain versus the 40 bits/second we consciously perceive.The skin sends a million bits a second to the brain versus 5 bits/sec we consciously perceive. The human body sends millions of bits per second to the brain for processing, yet our conscious mind processes only 1 to 45 bits per second.
For example, reading silently, our maximum conscious capacity is only about 45 bits/sec. Our conscious capacity for spoken speech is only about 40 bits/sec. Our conscious capacity for reading aloud is even less at about 30 bits/sec. Our conscious capacity slows to just 12 bits/sec when calculating in our head.
Massive Compression of Sensory Data
A tremendous compression takes place when 10 million bits per second is reduced to 40 bits per sec. Compression on this massive scale takes time. Research to discover how much time was done by physiologist Benjamin Libbet at University of California, San Francisco. Libbet demonstrated that the brain takes a half second before a person consciously gets this tiny fraction of the total sensory data. The brain discards almost all of the bits of sensory data offering our conscious mind only a few bits, and lets our conscious mind think it is making its own decisions a half second later. But the brain has already decided one half second before it lets the conscious mind think that it is making the decision.
The Big Hoax
How does this help me counter my sleep phobia? It helps because I realize my brain is doing ninety-nine percent (plus) of the processing of sensory input. After deciding, my brain condenses the bits to a tiny fraction and offers it up at a half second delay to my conscious mind. My conscious mind is able to perceive only one hundred thousandth (0.000004) of my brain’s sensory input – and a half second after whatever just happened. My brain is deciding what my conscious mind needs to perceive.
My brain is “The Man,” I am the worker, slave. I am not the processor. I am not missed. I will not even know when I have been gone.
Fear of sleep is fear of the unknown. A little knowledge relieved the hold of this phobia on me. Not completely, but I actually look forward to snuggling into my cozy futon when I am tired at night. And Ki Breathing Meditation helps even more. This may sound like not very much, but it allows my brain to rest and recover at night. We sleep a third of our lives, so this is huge.
Self-help books that help:
Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus
The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body
