Maryam has told her doctor she has insomnia. She has told her sister she has insomnia. She has read about eleven articles on insomnia.

When she actually writes down a week, it looks like this. She gets into bed around half past eleven. She is asleep within about fifteen minutes most nights. She is then awake at ten past two, every night, for somewhere between forty minutes and two hours, and that is when the arithmetic starts.

She does not have trouble falling asleep. She has never had trouble falling asleep. What she has is broken sleep and a very active two in the morning, and almost none of the advice she has been reading was written for that.

Naming it correctly did not fix anything on its own. It did stop her spending another month on advice aimed at a problem she does not have.