Manias are obsessive compulsive disorders within the much feared anxiety that can sometimes limit the life of the person who suffers to the extreme. In the case of hypnomania or when sleeping becomes a true obsession, we face a problem that may be related to other ailments, from sleep disorders to depression. If you want to know more about hypnomania, we will tell you about it in our dictionary of hobbies.
What is hypnomania
- Hypnomania is the uncontrollable desire to sleep. It is not that feeling of staying in bed for five more minutes, that attachment that you generate towards bed in the winter months or the need to take a nap on Mondays after eating. It is not a desire for bed, it is a need to sleep that accompanies you throughout the day.
- In the imagination of the Greek gods, Hypnos was the personification of sleep and we already know what the word ‘mania’ means and all its implications. Sometimes it is a rarity, other times it is a habit and, in pathological cases, it becomes an obsession. obsession with sleep
- You need to sleep no matter what. It does not matter if you have slept a lot or little, but you wake up with a single thought: I want to sleep. You have to distinguish hypnomania from clinomania, which is the need to be in bed regardless of whether you fall asleep or not. As you can imagine, the uncontrollable desire to sleep can have serious consequences.
Consequences of hypnomania
- The consequences of hypnomania begin with drowsiness. Whether or not it is a physiological matter, this obsessive thought about sleeping induces a state of drowsiness that can be very dangerous because it interferes with your alertness and your daily activities. Can you imagine spending the whole day sleepy? The desire to go to sleep overwhelms everything, so your concentration is reduced to a minimum and you act like an automaton with the automatic pilot on but not paying attention.
- Because all your attention is occupied by sleep and the desire to sleep. Thus, it is common to suffer a drop in work or academic performance, a great difficulty in fulfilling your responsibilities and obligations and you have to be careful with those habitual forgetfulness or forgetfulness. Your head can only think about one thing: sleep.
How to treat hypnomania
- The causes of hypnomania can be varied. On the one hand, there is the anxiety disorder that leads to the obsession with sleep and the compulsion to sleep. In this case, psychological and, in many cases, psychiatric treatment must be sought, due to the need for drugs.
- But before looking for the best treatment, it is convenient to look for the specific cause, since hypnomania can be caused by depression. Depressed people feel the need to sleep as an escape route from that dark reality that grips them. At first you can overcome the temptation to go to sleep, but over time, depression wears you down and it’s almost inevitable to give in to the urge to sleep.
- Sleep to not think, in the case of depression. And sleep to be able to think better in case the hypnomania is due to a sleep disorder. Suffering from insomnia can also lead to this mania and that is when the need to sleep becomes more than ever an obsession. An obsession that, on the other hand, is the same one that prevents you from sleeping normally.
- That is why it is important that if you think you suffer from hypnomania, you seek help from all kinds of professionals. Starting with the family doctor and the neurologist who rule out physiological problems and continuing with a psychological treatment that will help you overcome this obsessive disorder.