Milestones

One year later, and the Severance chip has continued to hold.

In January 2025, I was coming to the end of my CBT-I treatment. I was consistently getting a sleep quality score of 85 or higher. Nightmares had dropped to one a month, at most. The doctor said I was “in recovery.”

But I was nervous about the end of January. And I was watching Severance, so of course I glommed on to a pop culture metaphor. How strongly did that first episode appeal to me, what a marvelous idea: cut off my brain so that I wasn’t sad for part of the day. Look, in my darker moments, I’ve thought about lobotomies.

My whole adult life, both waking and asleep, defined by grief.

Anyway, I used all of my new strategies to prepare for the night of January 26th and the day of January 27th: My mother died on January 27th, 2009. And my beloved cat, my best friend of 18 years, died on January 27th, 2014. This was my first really emotional milestone since starting CBT-I therapy. Would it work?

It did.

No nightmares, no bad dreams, no dreams about my mother (or cat). I didn’t even record anything in my dream journal.

(I did have a scary bad dream on April 6th; my father’s death day is April 7. But it wasn’t about my father, so that’s still a win.)

Now it is January 27th, 2026. Nearly a year since finishing treatment. I’ve had an increase in nightmares this month. I was worried.

I dreamed, and I dreamed of family. But not negative. And not of my mother. The treatment continues to work.