I’m a lifelong insomniac: the kind who just doesn’t know what it’s like to have a normal night of rest. The longest I’ve ever slept for, uninterrupted, is five hours – and that was under medication.

This is known as chronic primary insomnia: long-term sleeplessness without an apparent medical, psychiatric, or environmental cause. In everyday language, it just means that if and when I fall asleep, I can’t stay that way for long…

When I was a toddler, my mother would spend hours walking me up and down the hallway, trying to wear me out before slipping me a sedative. This was so taxing on my parents that they saw going to work as a welcome break by comparison.

Today my sleep pattern is the same as it’s always been. My eyes flick open, my body needs to shift position, and I just have to hope that I can drift back into slumber. If I’m lucky, those snatches of sleep will add up to something restorative over the course of a night.

To understand this pattern better, I undertook an overnight sleep study at a hospital in London. The results clocked me waking up 108 times: an average of once every three minutes and 51 seconds. To me, it was a pretty normal experience – this is all I’ve ever known.

The doctors concluded that this is just how my neurochemistry evolved: the brain triggering a stream of adrenaline night and day. They suggested that a combination of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and medication would be my best shot at sleeping like a normal person.

I decided against relying on prescription medication (or accepting the side-effects) long-term. Meanwhile, the CBT (a mix of sleep hygiene and a strict routine) left me near incapacitated. I came back from the supermarket one day only to realize that I couldn’t remember where I lived.

Having exhausted countless solutions without success, I concluded that coming to peace with sleeplessness seemed like the best way forward. After all, you can’t truly miss a good night’s sleep if you’ve never had one. (And trust me, whatever idea you’re thinking of – I’ve tried it.)

For a while, that acceptance felt like a breakthrough. The level of sleep deprivation I went through during the CBT showed me just how worse things could be. So I stopped searching for a fix, stopped pressuring myself to do something I couldn’t, and just tried to make the most of it.

About a year later, I decided to give one avenue another shot. I’d tried different forms of meditation over the years, but never in-person under the guidance of an experienced practitioner. Here’s what I learned… and how it changed my world.