Orthosomnia: A Wellness Disorder by Design

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

It’s 2:43 a.m. The sky outside is still pale blue—brighter than it should be. Where I live, the summer nights don’t darken; they soften. The sun skims the horizon but never fully disappears.

I stand on the balcony, watching the mountains dissolve into the sea. A bird calls once, then goes silent. Nothing moves, yet the world hums like it forgot to go to bed. I used to wear a smartwatch, but it was too bulky for sleep. So I went with a ring instead—sleek, silent, and always watching.

This used to be a comforting hour. The sea barely breathing, the sky a soft blur between dusk and dawn, as if nature itself had forgotten to sleep. I’d watch the night pretend to be day. But now, even this moment feels like a metric. I don’t enjoy it—I audit it.

I think about circadian misalignment, about melatonin suppression, about how this lovely, glowing horizon is probably shaving points off my recovery score. I don’t ask myself how I feel. I refresh the app and wait for the verdict.

The Score

I remember the first time the number got to me.

I had slept fine—or so I thought. No tossing, no turning. I woke up with sunlight brushing the floor and that floaty feeling that follows a good night. But the app disagreed.

Sleep Score: 67. Recovery: Low. Heart rate variability: mediocre. Deep sleep: below target.

Within minutes, I felt off. Tired, maybe. A little foggy. But was I really? Or was I just interpreting the day through the lens of a number?

I started second-guessing myself. Maybe I hadn’t slept that well. Perhaps that ache in my shoulder wasn’t from golf but from something more systemic. The worst part? I hadn’t noticed anything wrong until the app told me.

It’s strange how quickly something natural becomes something to manage. Sleep—once as effortless as breathing—was now something to optimize, track, refine. A nightly performance with metrics, scores, and expectations. I wasn’t just resting; I was trying to ace something meant to be effortless.

The tools made it worse. Sleek interfaces, graphs, little badges of achievement—”3 nights of high recovery in a row!”—all designed to look like health, but feel like judgment.

I didn’t set out to ruin sleep. I just wanted to sleep better.

Optimization

The changes started small.

No caffeine after 2 p.m. Then noon. Then none. I adjusted my evening light. I stopped watching anything with a plot after 8. Blue-light glasses. Magnesium. Glycine. L-theanine. I downloaded four meditation apps but couldn’t decide which voice sounded least like it belonged in a shampoo commercial.

We used to end the day together, talking, watching a Netflix series side by side. That little ritual meant nothing on a spreadsheet, but everything in real life. Now I disappeared into my wind-down routine by 8:30. Screens off. Lights dimmed. Supplements lined up like little sentries. She stayed behind with her book. I sat in the dark, trying to lower my heart rate.

“Do you really need to look like a hostage to get some rest?” she joked once.

I smiled, but I didn’t answer. Because I wasn’t sure it was a joke.

Eventually, we stopped going to bed at the same time. My schedule was too rigid. She liked to read. I said the light disrupted melatonin. She offered to use a Kindle. I said the spectrum was still too blue.

I started sleeping in the guest room. I said I’d do it temporarily, just until I got back on track.

But I wasn’t off track. I was chasing a number.

I was managing recovery. I was investing in longevity. I was… alone

I did everything right.

No screens after seven. Dinner at six—wild salmon, broccoli, no starch. Magnesium, glycine, tart cherry juice, and ashwagandha. Blue-light glasses. Breathwork. Gratitude journaling. The bedroom is at 18°C, blackout curtains sealed like an operating room. No pets. No partner. No sound.

I even remembered to tape my mouth shut.

I fell asleep easily. Dreamed of something soft and woke up clear. For a moment, I thought: maybe I’ve cracked it.

Then I opened the app.

Sleep Score: 58. Recovery: Low. Deep Sleep: Critically insufficient.

I refreshed the screen. Closed the app. Reopened. Nothing changed. I stared at the graph. REM too short. Heart rate dipped too slowly. The HRV curve looked like it had performance anxiety. I ran diagnostics: Was the ring too loose? Did I breathe wrong? Too hydrated? Not enough?

I felt rested. Until I didn’t. I wasn’t foggy until I acted like I was. I skipped my walk. Declined a call. I told myself I was “protecting my nervous system.”

Really, I was obeying the algorithm.

It wasn’t insomnia. I was sleeping fine. I just couldn’t stop grading it.

The Spiral

After that night, things got… professional.

I didn’t go to bed. I executed a sleep protocol: supplements, red lights, and environmental silence. Sleep wasn’t rest—it was a controlled experiment.

I talked about “sleep windows.” Referred to Netflix as a stimulant. Said things like “sympathetic activation” with a straight face.

Small pleasures became tactical errors. Dinner after 8? Sabotage. Wine? Liquid cortisol. Arguments? Risk factor for disrupted delta waves.

I adjusted everything: meals, movement, light, sound. Even my dog looked worried.

Each morning I opened the app like a stock portfolio. Green? Invincible. Yellow? Functional. Red? Better cancel life.

Once, I canceled a hike because my ring said recovery was low. Never mind that I felt fine. The score was 59. The mountain could wait.

When I felt tired, I didn’t know if it was poor sleep or the mental gymnastics of managing it.

To others, I looked disciplined. Optimized. They had no idea how much effort it takes to fall apart so efficiently.

The Diagnosis

It came to me, like most modern diagnoses, in a late-night scroll.

The headline read:

Are You Sleeping Worse Because You’re Trying Too Hard? Meet Orthosomnia.

I blinked. Ortho-what?

I clicked. Skimmed. Slowed down. It was all there.

People who sleep fine until they start tracking it. People who feel rested but don’t score well. People who rearrange their lives to serve the data.

I lowered my phone, mouth taped shut. Oh no, I thought. It’s me.

Apparently, this was real. Orthosomnia: a sleep disorder caused by trying to sleep perfectly. A disorder invented by the cure. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to be offended. Mostly, I wanted to throw the ring into the sea. I didn’t.

I bookmarked the article. Then, I reopened the dashboard. Recovery: 64. Readiness: Fair. Deep sleep: meh.

Even with the diagnosis, I felt that familiar tug: maybe tonight will be better.

You’d think naming something would make it easier to release.

It didn’t.

It made it feel more official. Like a condition I now needed to manage.

I knew I was over-correcting. But now that it had a name, I had a reason to keep tracking it.

That’s the trap. Even when you know you’re caught, you still want the numbers to improve.

I read about people who stopped using trackers and learned to trust their bodies. I admired them. I did not join them.

Because knowing you’re obsessed doesn’t make it easier to stop. Sometimes it just gives the obsession a name—and permission to stay.

The Cure

Recovery didn’t come in a single moment. It came from forgetting.

Forgetting to charge the ring. Forgetting where the charger even was. Forgetting to open the app.

At first, I panicked. I woke up and reached for the data—and found nothing. No score. No graph. No verdict. I felt… unmoored. Like I’d skipped a ritual and tempted fate. But nothing happened. We drank our coffee. We went for a walk. The sky looked particularly wide that morning.

The notifications stopped. The dashboard stayed dark. I slept without knowing how well I slept—and I survived it. Actually, I did more than survive. I felt better.

I started doing things I’d ruled out. Watching a movie late. Laughing after 10. Reading in bed with someone beside me. Letting myself get sleepy instead of trying to induce sleep. I drank coffee at 3 p.m. with no apologies. I skipped supplements. Some nights I even forgot to do breathwork—and didn’t wake up broken.

One night, I fell asleep in my clothes with the window open. No tape. No supplements. No score. And I slept well. Or maybe I didn’t. I didn’t check. I just woke up. I stretched. I breathed. I let the day begin without a report card.

And I stopped sleeping alone.

Nothing dramatic had changed. Just… everything.

Epilogue: Whiteout

It’s mid-morning, though it could be midnight. The snow has erased everything outside—sky, sea, hills. Just white. A stillness that doesn’t ask to be measured.

There’s nothing to look at. No graph. No glow. No signal. Just silence.

I don’t know what time it is. I haven’t checked.

I might sleep well tonight. I might not.

But I’ll wake up. I’ll stretch. I’ll breathe. I’ll feel what I feel—before anyone tells me how I’m supposed to.

And that, I’ve decided, is enough.