We often hear: one thinks better at night, one works better at night… What attracts us to the romance of the dark time of the day? And what lies behind the need to live at night? We asked the experts about it.
They chose night work because «everything is different during the day»; they say that all the most interesting things begin to happen just when everyone goes to bed; they stay up late, because during the «journey to the edge of the night» through the rays of dawn, they can see endless possibilities. What is really behind this common tendency to put off going to bed?
Julia «wakes up» at midnight. She arrives at a three-star hotel in the city center and stays there until morning. In fact, she never went to bed. She works as a receptionist on the night shift, which ends at dawn. “The job I have chosen gives me a feeling of incredible, tremendous freedom. At night, I win back the space that for a long time did not belong to me and which was denied with all my might: my parents adhered to strict discipline so as not to lose even an hour of sleep. Now, after work, I feel that I still have a whole day ahead of me, a whole evening, a whole life.
Owls need night time to live a fuller and more intense life without gaps.
“People often need night time to finish what they didn’t get done during the day,” says Piero Salzarulo, neuropsychiatrist and director of the sleep research laboratory at the University of Florence. “A person who has not achieved satisfaction during the day hopes that after a few hours something will happen, and thus thinks of living a fuller and more intense life without gaps.”
I live at night, so I exist
After an overly busy day of grabbing a sandwich in a hurry during a short lunch break, the night becomes the only time for social life, whether you spend it in a bar or on the Internet.
38 year old Renat prolongs his day by 2-3 hours: “When I return from work, my day, one might say, is just beginning. I relax by leafing through a magazine that I didn’t have time for during the day. Cooking my dinner while browsing eBay catalogs. In addition, there is always someone to meet or call. After all these activities, midnight comes and it’s time for some TV show about painting or history, which provides me with energy for another two hours. This is the essence of night owls. They are prone to addiction to use the computer solely for communication in social networks. All this is the culprit of the growth of Internet activity, which begins at night.
During the day, we are either busy with work or with children, and in the end we have no time for ourselves.
42-year-old teacher Elena after the husband and children fall asleep, goes on Skype «to chat with someone.» According to the psychiatrist Mario Mantero (Mario Mantero), behind this lies a certain need to confirm their own existence. “During the day we are either busy with work or with children, and as a result we have no time for ourselves, no feeling that we are part of something, as part of life.” The one who does not sleep at night is afraid of losing something. For Gudrun Dalla Via, a journalist and author of Sweet Dreams, «it’s about the kind of fear that always hides a desire for something bad.» You can say to yourself: “Everyone is sleeping, but I am not. So I’m stronger than them.»
Such a thought is quite natural for the behavior of adolescents. However, this behavior can also bring us back to childhood whims when we, as children, did not want to go to bed. “Some people are under the false illusion that by refusing sleep they have the ability to express their omnipotence,” explains Mauro Mancia, a psychoanalyst and professor of neurophysiology at the University of Milan. “In fact, sleep facilitates the assimilation of new knowledge, improves memory and retention, and therefore increases the cognitive capabilities of the brain, making it easier to control one’s own emotions.”
Stay awake to get away from fears
“On a psychological level, sleep is always a separation from reality and suffering,” explains Mancha. “This is a problem that not everyone can deal with. Many children find it difficult to face this separation from reality, which explains their need to create a kind of “reconciliation object” for themselves — plush toys or other objects that are assigned the symbolic meaning of the mother’s presence, calming them during sleep. In an adult state, such an “object of reconciliation” can be a book, TV or computer.
At night, when everything is silent, a person who puts everything off until later finds the strength to make the last push and bring everything to the end.
Elizaveta, 43, a decorator, has been having trouble sleeping since childhood., more precisely, since her younger sister was born. Now she goes to bed very late, and always to the sound of a working radio, which acts as a lullaby for her for many hours. Putting off going to bed eventually becomes a ploy to avoid confronting yourself, your fears, and your tormenting thoughts.
28-year-old Igor works as a night guard and says that he chose this job because for him «the feeling of control over what is happening at night is much stronger than during the day.»
“People who are prone to depression tend to suffer the most from this problem, which may be due to the emotional upheaval experienced in childhood,” Mantero explains. “The moment we fall asleep connects us to the fear of being alone and to the most fragile parts of our emotionality.” And here the circle closes with the «immutable» function of the night time. It is about the fact that the «final push» is always made at night, which is the realm of all great procrastinators, so scattered during the day and so collected and disciplined at night. Without a phone, without external stimuli, when everything is silent, a person who puts everything off until later finds the strength to make the last push in order to concentrate and complete the most difficult things.