Episode 334: Why Your Story Matters and the Cost of What Happens When It's Missed
Most wellness approaches name the symptom, land on a tidy explanation, apply generic solutions, and call it done. The diagnosis becomes the whole story. The before-and-after becomes the whole truth, sometimes, even when claiming a "root cause" approach was taken.
Using my own twenty-year struggle with sleep, I show what gets missed when the story stops there. For the first time in two decades, I'm sleeping restfully through the night. It would be easy to hand you one clean reason why. Instead, I pull back the layers: the years of remedies, the "root cause" investigation, the temptation to pick a single cause and move on.
This episode is about why the story matters — what the real mechanisms are underneath a struggle and the cost of what happens when the story is missed.
Listen to the Episode:
“What most people overlook is the story. Your story about how whatever you’re struggling with came to be. ”
Read the Transcript:
If you’ve listened to this show for a while, you’ll know that I’ve struggled with sleep for years.
As far back as the past two decades (I can hardly believe 2005 was over two decades ago). But I can remember early mornings in the office complaining to my work bestie about how poorly I had slept and she telling me about Melatonin - that was the first time and first thing I tried to help me get a good night’s sleep.
Over the years I’ve tried Melatonin, Melatonin with 5HTP, Ambien, Lunesta, diffusing lavender essential oils, meditation, breathwork. The pharmaceuticals worked until they didn’t and never really gave me the restful sleep I desperately needed.
Meditation and breathwork definitely helped - I noticed how I carried tension in my body – my jaw, shoulders, hands, hips without even realizing it. But I was still waking up at 3 am without fail. Since 3 am seemed to be my no-alarm-needed wakeup time, there was even a time that I tried going to bed at 8 pm in an attempt to at least try to get 7 hours of sleep. That felt wrong during the summer when the sun was still out.
I’d even eat a little bit of protein before bed to try to address any blood-sugar issues that might have been impacting my sleep. Six years ago I got the Oura Ring which has proven by far to be the most helpful sleep aid yet. It helped me understand how well my body did (or didn’t) recover and how that factored into my quality of sleep, the best bed times for me (which has never failed – I have the best sleep when I go to sleep during the recommended time) and lots of other stuff.
But - I was still waking up at 4 am - which I suppose is better than 3 am, but still not ideal.
Last summer I had lunch with an old friend who told me that she’d been diagnosed with sleep apnea, had gotten a CPAP machine and now was sleeping a full 8 hours like a baby – something she hadn’t done in her adult life.
I was intrigued. Not just about the sleeping part, but also because I had recently started taking high blood pressure medication. Apparently, despite 20+ years of trying to live a healthy lifestyle, I still wasn’t able to escape genetics, and pretty much every adult in my family has dealt with high blood pressure and taken medications for it.
I tried everything to avoid having to take it and asked my primary care provider what I needed to do to lower my blood pressure. I was told, eat less salt (I do not add salt to my meals), to exercise (I worked out all of three days in June) – there really was not much else that I wasn’t already doing and had been doing for a prolonged period of time.
But when my friend brought up sleep apnea, lightbulbs went off in my head.
So I did a bit of research (I asked Dr. Google) and read how sleep apnea is definitely a potential cause of high blood pressure. So I asked my primary care provider who confirmed it. Why wasn’t it suggested as something to look into?!
So, I went back to the internet and ordered a sleep test from sleepdoctor.com. This is how my friend was tested for sleep apnea and vouched for its legitimacy. So, I did it and it wasn’t a bad experience.
They sent me the device for testing, really clear, simple to follow instructions and then I had a call with one of their sleep experts to review my results – that I had moderate sleep apnea. And was prescribed a CPAP machine.
I used it for three weeks and said, “nope.” I truly don’t see how anyone is able to sleep at all with that thing on. My sleep was worse than ever - sleeping less than before I started using it. So I stopped using it.
I went back to my primary care doctor who referred me to sleep medicine. It was 3-4 month wait list. When I finally had my visit, I was enrolled in “Sleep School” – that’s what I called the cognitive-based 8-week sleep program and put through another sleep study – using a different model sanctioned by my sleep doctor. Sleep School was an amazing experience - I plan on writing a Substack essay on it - learned a lot of things that have been so helpful in improving my sleep health.
And this second sleep study showed that I have minimal – not moderate – sleep apnea. I can’t say the first test was inaccurate because there was a six months between both tests and my weight changed (I lost some) which may have contributed to the improved results.
Regardless, the CPAP machine is the gold standard, but since I hated it so much, I was prescribed a mandibular advancement device. It’s a big name for something that’s like a retainer but it advances your jaw forward to open your airways to help your breathing while you sleep. That is also a whole experience in and of itself - let me know if you’re interested in hearing more about it and sleep school - maybe that could be a limited series in the future.
I’m in the process of adjusting (literally) to the mandibular advancement device right now, but as you know, I was also laid off during this time.
I was notified I was being “impacted” in May at which time I no longer had to work, and was officially laid off in July. So I’ve been off work for the past three months and thoroughly enjoying the summer - my first summer truly off with no school or work obligations since 1993. I’ve been saying that a lot so apologies if you’ve heard me say this already.
But - in the past three months, I have let go of tension I didn’t even know I was holding on to. My friends have commented that I am noticeably “free-er” than they’ve ever seen me. And, I have been having the best sleep that I can remember in over 20 years. Not only am I sleeping through the night, and if I do wake up, its been just once to use the bathroom, and I fall right back asleep – and I’ve been waking up after 6 am. It’s been ah-mazing! What’s even more ah-mazing is that it’s been happening consistently. Coincidence?
There's a temptation to tie this to treating sleep apnea. Then there's another temptation to tie it to finally being free of corporate stress.
And there's a whole corner of wellness culture that would hand you either answer and call it done — pick the culprit, pick your solution, post about it. Old me did this too.
Now I'm more about "yes and, everything's connected".
But there’s a trap in that too: it's just as easy to say "yes and, everything's connected" and let that be the stopping point. Saying it isn't the same as going and finding out how.
But what most people overlook is the story. Your story about how whatever you’re struggling with came to be.
I just shared my sleep story with you. The years I’ve struggled with it, what I’ve tried, possible contributing factors, how things have evolved over time, family and health history.
The medications, the supplements, the self-care, the personal growth efforts - they stop at the surface and will often jump straight to “oh this is why” – the moral of the story – without looking at the mechanisms – the story – your story – that created the situation.
There’s a real cost to this. Jumping to the conclusion, the before and after’s, putting a bow on the cause and effects without digging into the stories behind the moment leaves layers uncovered. And then we wonder why the problems come back again.
And before you know it, you’ve been suffering from poor sleep for over 20 years.
Digging in and peeling back the layers requires gathering a lot of data - your own health history, your family’s, tracking your daily habits and present moments, acknowledging some things that maybe feel uncomfortable and difficult to acknowledge – and having a deep sense of awareness of who you are – not who you’ve been conditioned to be.
It would be very easy for me to wrap this episode up by saying "treating the sleep apnea solved my sleep" or "being free of corporate stress solved my sleep."
Both things can be true — and there can be so much more to it. So, do I actually know why I'm sleeping through the night for the first time in twenty years? The mouthpiece device, the stress finally gone, something else I haven't even named yet? Honestly — I don’t fully know yet. And that's the most honest thing I can tell you.
I spend a lot of time noticing and documenting — not just my sleep, what I eat, how I move, calming my mind — but also, is this me, or is it how I've been conditioned to be?
I'm years into this. But if this is new to you and you want a place to start, I created something new — Decode Yourself: The You Underneath the Conditioning.
It's a private audio session, kind of like this podcast episode — it’s about 12 or 13 minutes — and comes with a short series of emails with daily practices designed to show you where conditioning might be running your life.
I call the audio session “The First Read”, because it's also what an actual decode with me is like in real time.
It's free. You can find it in the show notes for this episode at livefablife.com/334.
Thanks for being here for this episode and the last one, coming back from a seven-month hiatus. And thanks for sitting through the messy, unresolved parts with me instead of demanding a tidy ending with a bow on top.
That's it for this series. Two episodes — where I went, and why story matters more than just the moral of the story.
I don't know yet when the next series will drop, but that's kind of the point now. No weekly schedule, no forced content. Just limited series when I feel there's actually something worth saying.
In the meantime, come find me over on Substack for cultural commentary essays at The Things We Thought We Knew and on Instagram at @livefablifewithnaomi.
Bye for now.
Naomi Nakamura is a Human Design guide and body literacy practitioner, and the founder of Live FAB Life. She decodes the conditioning underneath the symptom — using Human Design as the framework and the body's own patterns as the data. Her writing lives on Substack at The Things We Thought We Knew, and Decoded, her monthly letter to her email community, collects it all in one place.
She resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can often be found exploring the area with her puppy girl, Coco Pop!
Connect with Naomi on: Instagram
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