Like Sex and the City character Samantha, who didn’t get much shut eye because of her rampant bed hopping, Kim Cattrall isn’t getting any sleep, but not for nearly as fun of a reason. The 59-year-old actress recently confessed to Britain’s Radio Times that she has been battling chronic insomnia, which forced her to bow out of a play on London’s West End.
Kim, who said that her condition felt like a “gorilla sitting on my chest,” was forced to drop out of the play Linda two weeks prior to its premiere back in November of 2015. According to the interview, while rehearsing for the play, she initially thought she was just dealing with “jetlag, too much tea or another stage of menopause.” She later quit the play citing doctor’s advice and was replaced by British actress Noma Dumezweni, who recently made headlines when J.K. Rowling cast her as a grown-up Hermione in the London stage production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
It turns out Noma has been garnering rave reviews for her role in the play, which deals with a 55-year-old woman coming to grips with working for a young boss and dealing with her husband’s affair. Too bad for Kim, as she could probably have used the career boost. She decided to come clean about her insomnia to let women know that, “I’m not a one-off; there are lots of women like me out there.” Here are some other highlights from the interview:
On why she decided to leave the play: I didn’t understand the debilitating consequence of having no sleep. It becomes a tsunami. I was in a void. I didn’t want to let down the audience, the theatre, playwright or the actors.
On the thoughts helping keep her awake at night: I didn’t go to university. I have no children, and I have no husband…I’m guilt-ridden and I’m alone…I’m pressured by an image others have of me. I’m agitated about getting friggin’ older. I would like to be a woman with a husband, and I’d like to change the way people think about women, being a woman.
On dealing with her critics: I have my own voice on social media, where I can say: “If you’re interested in what really happened, the whole story is more complex than being disease of the week,” than someone saying, “I have this battle.”
On the cognitive behavior therapy she’s using to combat her insomnia:It’s like putting on a pair of sneakers and going into your past to get a new perspective. And I was gentle with myself. So last Christmas wasn’t about friends and relations; it was a monastic experience of trying to delve.
[From US Weekly and USA TODAY]
I can totally relate to this. Insomnia sucks. I do feel for Kim here. Sleep is so important, if you don’t get enough, it can be a real problem. Hopefully the therapy she’s using is helping and she’s able to finally get some rest.
Photo credit: Getty Images, WENN.com, Fame Flynet
Having spent four hours trying to get to sleep last night, I feel her pain.
Insomnia does suck…But every time I read about Kim Cattrall, I can’t help but think about that youtube video , it’s so ridiculous (youtube “Kim Cattrall talks about hubby Mark”)
Head’s up Corey, Kim is currently on HBO Canada’s “Sensitive Skin” which she co-produces. It is a great series!
I nearly f***ing lost it after 6 months of no sleep. Then I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism. Turns out I’d had it for years but my tests weren’t bad enough for my previous doctor to consider I might be hypo. I’m soo thankful to that new doc for insisting I have my thyroid checked once again. I was at the end of my rope.
Also, magnesium really helps if taken regularly.
Same here. Years of untreated hypothyroidism, which eventually lead to low cortisol. When there’s not enough cortisol, your body pumps adrenaline to compensate, hence that awful “tired but wired” feeling.
Wow I’m wondering if that’s what I have. I just can’t get diagnosed! I’ve suffered from chronic insomnia for decades. I have almost all the hypothyroid symptoms and my sister and father just got diagnosed with it. I was just diagnosed with an auto immune disease (Sjögren’s). I’m finally going to go see an endocrinologist. I feel like I’m going crazy.
You might not get diagnosed from a traditional endo. They might just look at TSH, which is horses*t. First, go to stopthethyroidmadness and learn all about the proper ranges for your thyroid.
I have to go to a naturopathic doctor in order to get treated correctly. And yes, the insomnia from hypo nearly drove me to suicide.
There’s a good product called Sleep Tonight. It manages your cortisol levels. It helped me a lot. (Oddly there’s also a supplement called Cortisol Manager, made by the same company, with the same exact ingredients, only it’s a bit more expensive).
I recommend the Stop The Thyroid Madness website as well. It’s NOT enough to be “within range” when it comes to TSH and thyroid hormones (ft3 and ft4). Some people will have all the hypo symptoms for years before their TSH raises to the point where their doctor will consider hypothyroidism unless they know what they’re doing which is rare when it comes to this subject.
One more thing worth checking out is common deficiencies in hypothyroidism. It affects your digestion and absorption so people who have been hypo for a long time will usually have lots of deficiencies (like b12 which comes with lots of fun symptoms by itself). I think it’s covered on the Thyroid Madness site.
@qwert: me too!!! I could not sleep well at all for months.
I spend 3 months a year with insomnia due to the change of season. I fall asleep during the day at work and I am wide awake at night until stupid o’clock in the morning.
I once tried some herbs to help me sleep only to realise that i was allergic to them
now, what really works for me, is lavender oil. A few drops on the pillow and I sleep like a baby.
Some people use lightbox for that.
For me, insomnia is a symptom of anxiety. When the anxiety is controlled, the insomnia goes away. It’s great that she is doing CBT, hopefully that will help her finally address whatever might be keeping her up.
Same here. I take meds for my anxiety but they don’t always do the trick when I’m worried about things that are out of my control. I wake up hours before I have to go to work, I look like shit and am moody as hell but I can manage it for the most part. It’s frustrating and I feel her pain.
Bengal…we could be twins in this area…anxiety meds only work sometimes and going to work after not sleeping….URG…everything makes me want to cry…
Yup, I can’t risk taking a xanax at 4 a.m. Like Kitten, I’ve found that pot helps immensely with slowing my brain down enough to rest. I’m in awe of all of you, especially you guys with children. I don’t know how you do it.
Yup this is me. I’ve always slept like crap (runs in my family) but it gets a billion times worse when my anxiety kicks in.
I have this whole pre-sleep ritual: everything has to be “just so” in order for me to get the minimum amount of sleep I need to function the next day (6 hours). One of my rules is no chatting on the phone after 8PM and it drives my BF crazy but if I get all wound up from talking it makes it even harder for me to fall asleep. Weed is also part of my night time ritual–I always smoke a bowl between 7:30 and 8 PM to help me relax. Other things that help: light-blocking curtains, ear plugs, and having the cats in my bed. It’s weird but I tend to sleep better if they’re both in bed with me.
But weed has been a lifesaver for me. I never sleep a whole night through-NEVER-so if I wake up, I take a hit or two of weed and I usually fall back asleep within 20 minutes.
I commented down thread about my son’s sleep, but I think it’s worth putting here, I don’t like to hear about you all suffering! My son slept a few hours a night for 4 years, which is now completely resolved thanks to taking Methyl-folate. I really really recommend getting genetic testing done for MTHFR if you have sleep issues and anxiety. It changed our lives when my son started to sleep. Him not sleeping was very simply to do with not being able to absorb enough folate from his diet. It was amazingly simple when we got to the bottom of it, which was after countless useless visits to paediatricians and doing sleep diaries and nearly falling apart from the stress of it all.
OMG, and here I was all this time thinking I was alone with my sleep rituals, LOL! I much prefer weed over the many sleeping pills I tried over the years!
I have to sleep with a sleep mask, and that makes me a little paranoid that someone can sneak up on me. I have tinnitus so ear plugs only magnify the problem. I think they would make me feel even more vulnerable, even if I could use them.
I experienced severe insomnia for about two years right before menopause, and it was terrible. I tried Ambien and a couple of other things like Xanax and Benadryl, which would make me fall asleep, but I’d be wide awake two hours later for the rest of the night. It completely sucked. I put my phone in the refrigerator and kept turning off the oven while the food was cooking. I can’t imagine trying to be in a play. I hope hers goes away or she finds an effective treatment. I still wake up from about 3-4 in the morning, but I can live with that. Good luck to her.
My son didn’t sleep more than a few hours for 4 years. It was hell. We did genetic testing and found out he has a mutative MTHFR gene. So we keep him away from foods with folic acid in them, give him a daily supplements of methyl folate and methyl B12 and he sleeps like a baby.
Wow. You are a super mom. I’m so glad you found out what was wrong.
My son didn’t sleep more than 90 minutes for the first 11 months of his life. I was breastfeeding so I didn’t have much of an option to let someone else help.
It almost broke me. I wanted to die. I hated my beloved husband, I had no control over what I ate, I couldn’t even drive my car some days because I felt so impaired by lack of sleep. Nothing was wrong with him, he just took way longer that usual to learn how to link his sleep cycles and stay asleep for a few hours at a time.
He sleeps through the night most nights now, he’s almost 2 years old. I will never take sleep for granted again. I feel for Kim and I hope she gets what she needs to overcome this.
You are so brave. That must have been terrible!
I’m so happy for you that he is now sleeping! Sleep deprivation is just awful when you have to look after children during the day. My son is a twin and those 4 years were hideous.
You are incredible, too, Prim. Moms don’t get enough credit sometimes.
Thank you, I don’t think I’m incredible but not sleeping properly for 4 years made me VERY determined to find out why my son wasn’t sleeping.
Methyl folate is also effective for depression. It unfortunately costs a fortune and isn’t covered by my insurance so I stopped using it when my doctor’s samples ran out.
Yes it’s not cheap, but the change in my son’s sleep was phenomenal, so it’s worth it to us.
I hear you. When you find something that works, it’s priceless. I knew I could get similar results from my much cheaper antidepressant, which is the main reason I stopped it.
Linda is also an absolute beast of a part, it’s a huge number of lines. I saw Noma Dumezweni and she was great, but she wasn’t completely off book since she only took over the role a few days before it opened.
Bless her – it’s terrible. I feel I am missing years of my life.
Insomnia is terrible. They thought I was developing psychosis; no, I just slept terribly.
There was an intriguing book that came out recently that said humans evolved to be awake in the middle of the night from around 2-4, and that this has been used as a time of productivity, socializing (assuming you had people around) and creativity for many, but for the way we think of sleep, it’s a huge paradigm shift. And that nifty tidbit doesn’t change the fact that if your body needs sleep and isn’t getting it, it doesn’t matter how much potential there is in that awake time, you want to sleep!
I love how Kim looks.
yes but that stuff happened before electricity and people just slept when it got dark
LOL
It sounds like she might have depression. Sleepiness and worry are symptoms.
It can also be a symptom of menopause, but it’s sort of hard to untangle because so are depression and anxiety. But I have had depression for my whole adult life but oddly never insomnia until menopause.
That was my first thought as well. Depression and insomnia can often go hand in hand. Feel for her – insomnia is a real b*}%h! Hope she gets the help she needs
Kim was great recently in a Canadian series about a long-married empty-nester couple.
Oh can I see it online?
I can’t believe how frank and vulnerable she was in this interview. I was kind of taken aback because rarely do we hear a celebrity being so honest about their fears.
Everything she said resonated with me on a really deep level.
The show is called Sensitive Skin and it’s really good! A drama comedy with a slow pace.
Yep -it’s on Netflix.
@Kitten. It is on Netflix and is really good.
I was moved by this interview as well.
@Kitten, her answer on what keeps her up at night broke my heart. It was so vulnerable and honest that I was taken aback. And those kinds of thoughts late at night when you can’t sleep become magnified.
Look on YT for Who Do You Think You Are? episode featuring her. She’s incredibly open and thoughtful throughout. Really impressive person I thought.
Oh man. Poor thing. I don’t sleep.
In 36 years old and have been on ambien and Trazedone since I was 24. I would sleep an hour or two of very fractured sleep before that. I would have these neurological tremors all during the day. I would forget things. I started having sleep deprived induced seizures. I would have night terrors all night long on the nights I did sleep. It was awful. Finally my then husband told me I needed help and he needed me to get help, because he wasn’t sleeping either.
I hate I have to take the meds but I am so thankful for them because they gave me my life back.
Same here. I basically stopped sleeping in my late teens (and had sleep issues in childhood) and I endured decades of near-delirium especially when trying to maintain a work schedule. I quit jobs every year or two, or was fired for being brain-dead. I was afraid to ask for sleep meds plus I didn’t have insurance because of such spotty employment and poverty. Finally at 50 I filed for disability and during that process was given a few sleep lab studies. I was finally prescribed Klonopin and Ambien. Klonopin helps provide a “sleep window” and Ambien is only taken on occasion. I still get crappy sleep but (not having to work) it helps enough to keep me from feeling suicidal.
I like that she’s bringing attention to an under-appreciated subject, but feel a bit disappointed that “all” it took for her was CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy). Don’t mean to dismiss it as helpful to many, but I think that so many “professionals” (and friends) think that’s all you need too. I believe there are very real biological and genetic reasons why some people have chronic insomnia.
Wow, she is being really open and vulnerable here! Those are some intimate feelings she’s sharing. I love that about her. She’s such a prize, if she wanted a husband you’d think she could just walk out the door and whistle and they’d stack up to be with her. It’s nice to hear things like that from celebs sometimes, that even they struggle and are lonely and it’s not just us “plebeians”. Hoping she finds some relief.
I developed insomnia after taking a blood pressure medication. I tried different remedies like melatonin, benadryl and Ambien too. But with the Ambien, I would occasionally sleepwalk. My mom once told me that I woke up, went to the kitchen and fixed a sandwich and carried on a conversation. I didn’t remember that at all the next day. Someone told me to try drinking ginger tea with lemon at night which made a big difference.
When I look back over recent years and see how MANY people are struggling with sleep issues (myself included), it concerns me. Look at Michael Jackson. He died because he would stop at nothing to try and get sleep. Think of how many people have overdosed on sleeping pills. I think it reflects on modern day society’s habits, with too much stress, electronics, etc., but it seems like there is something else going on too.
My ramble doesn’t really have a point, other than this has given me a lot to think about. 😉 It is very interesting to see how many cb’ers have struggled with sleep as well, and to hear how they handle it.
I’m in the same boat. I can fall asleep but not stay asleep. I wake three, four, times a night and feel like crap the next day.
I went through a horrible bout of insomnia several years ago. I was sleeping about an hour a night. I was so exhausted I couldn’t think – could barely function. Finally found a doctor who prescribed Zoloft (depression med) and Ambien. Sleep at last! Weaned myself off the Ambien but still take Zoloft.
I think I might be in a minority here because I sleep A LOOT. I mean sometimes I came back from work at 17 and I can sleep 1730-2000. Then wake up, eat, watch tv or stay on internet till 2400 then sleep again. I wake up at 0600 every week day and I still want to sleep. In weekends I sleep till 0900 or more. In the last three years I started going almost regularly at the gym so I just relax one hour after work and I really miss my afternoon sleep. (sometimes i cheat just so i can sleep). I was raised with a schedule by my grandparents and my parents. They “trained” me to sleep in the afternoons or the siesta as the spanish call it.
I have had episodes of sleepless nights total 20 in my whole life and yes it’s bad for someone not to get proper sleep. And the reason for that was some kind of worry being it an exam, being angry at someone or just worried about some family member.
Anyone reading this who has insomnia, I hope to help.
Reasons you might have it:
hormones (progesterone/estrogen/testosterone balance)
low vitamin D (most people are — women should have 60+ on labs)
lack of sunlight exposure — get some and/or invest in a light simulator on Amazon to use in the morning for 20 to 30 minutes
low ferritin iron (a lot of people are — women should have 70+ on labs)
depression (try tryptophan at night – 500 mg – as well as exercise and stress management — seek medical care if no improvement)
poor gut health (yeast infections kept me in insomnialand for years — I did a “leaky gut” protocol [Google it] and cleared out the yeast, stopped eating foods I was allergic to [get tested for these], and I started to sleep better; optimal gut health boosts your immunity as well as helps depression and anxiety)
hypothyroid (go to stopthethyroidmadness to learn more about this and be careful if you’ve been told your thyroid is “normal” — demand to see your labs and learn about the PROPER ranges; horrifyingly, most GPs AND endos DO NOT properly treat this HUGE disorder!)
STRESS – for this, EXERCISE, meditation (I like the Insight timer app — it’s free, and mediation takes TIME to learn and get used to, but when you do, it can work WONDERS!), and even possibly a special therapy called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which is talk therapy that helps modulate your stressful thoughts — this works wonders for depression and sadness
Low carb dieting — this messes with your neurotransmitters for a lot of people, and you need proper transmitting for melatonin synthesis
Routine — to bed the same time and wake up the same time every time, no matter what. No naps! Keep room cool. No phone or TV or stressful conversations with people.
Melatonin — does help some. didn’t help me
I hope this helps anyone. Insomnia is basically the very worst affliction a person can have. There were times I’d rather have cancer and die than spend another night in bed, starved for rest!
I agree with everything. Especially this part
‘be careful if you’ve been told your thyroid is “normal” — demand to see your labs and learn about the PROPER ranges; horrifyingly, most GPs AND endos DO NOT properly treat this HUGE disorder!)’
Labs in general should be always viewed by the patient so they know their numbers and can read up on it by themselves. It drives me crazy how many doctors think that just being within range is enough for things like ferritin, vit.d, b12 and many more. If the lab range is 20-100 and you’re at 22, it is not enough for optimal health, it’s just enough so you don’t drop dead fom deficiency. You absolutely can have deficiency symptoms and be within range if it’s at the lower half of it.
My spouse found that Stevia, which is a natural sweetener (it’s just a plant, not a chemical), gave him terrible insomnia. Until he figured out what the problem was, every little noise was waking him up.
Apparently the sweet taste primes your body to digest sugar, but then when your stomach doesn’t actually receive any sugar, it effectively puts you into a state akin to an adrenaline rush. Not everyone reacts that way to Stevia, but he sure did.