Sleep problems are health problems, and whenever someone is faced with labeling himself with some ailment, the preferred option is to run the opposite way.  This fear of illness commonly occurs with sleep disorders, because they sound like a mental health thing. 

Sleep disorders carry added baggage, having been tagged with so many disparaging labels: slothfulness, laziness, malingering, no discipline, no ambition, being a slacker, being fragile, being weak, being unfit and so on.  Ironically, severe sleep disorders cause all these problems in a lot of people, so these links are important, but the direction is reversed from what we usually imagine. 

We see underachievers all the time in our sleep clinics—individuals who lost their way 20 years back because their exhaustion prevented them from effectively pursuing their life’s ambitions.  In work, relationships, recreation, social activities, and even spiritual realms, these individuals could not compete or participate due to sleep disorders nibbling or gnawing away at their motivation. 

Remarkably, we also see many overachievers in our sleep clinics, including people who spent years or decades in hyperkinetic lifestyles in which rest and sleep were trivialized or ignored.  By keeping busy or using caffeine (usually both) or by ingesting illicit drugs, these problematic sleepers compensated to override embarrassing or uncomfortable feelings about sleep issues, low energy, and mental impairments associated with poor sleep quality. 

Strange isn’t it, that the same problem could provoke different people to respond in opposite ways, yet in both instances, each person has tremendous difficulty in honestly or accurately evaluating the severity of his or her sleep problem.

Your low energy, lack of motivation or frustrated ambitions may be caused by many things, but never underestimate the power for poor sleep quality to play a huge role in these problems that  ultimately affect the entire course of your life.