I Always Sleep With A Fan On At Night, But Today I Read About Its Effect On Your Health

For the longest time, my trusty old silver desk fan was an absolute must-have for a good night’s sleep. Its soft, steady hum and the cool breeze it blew across my face were what I believed I needed to drift off. My friends would often tease me about it, and my coworker, Maxton, even made a funny joke, saying, “I’d marry a fan before a person.” I just laughed along, never really questioning my need for it.

But then, everything changed. Last week, I stumbled upon an article online that truly caught my attention. It talked about how sleeping with a fan on could potentially dry out your throat, lead to allergies, and even make asthma worse. This information really “rattled me.” Suddenly, I wondered if this was the reason I frequently woke up with a dry, “scratchy voice.” The thought was unsettling.

The First Attempt at Silence

That very night, I decided to try sleeping without my fan. I unplugged it, got into bed, and just lay there in complete quiet. At first, I thought I might get used to it. However, the silence felt strange and unsettling. Every little creak from the house seemed much louder. My mind, usually lulled by the fan’s noise, started wandering to all the things I usually pushed away during the day: unpaid bills, my writing projects that hadn’t moved forward, and even that somewhat “awkward dinner with my sister’s fiancé who kept checking his phone.”

I kept rolling around in bed, unable to find a comfortable position. By 2 AM, I couldn’t take it anymore. I gave in and turned the fan back on. The familiar whirring sound instantly made me feel calm again. But even with the comfort, “I couldn’t shake the unease from what I’d read.” A big question formed in my mind: Was I actually harming myself just for the sake of feeling cozy?

Sharing and Doubts

The next morning, I was having coffee with my neighbor, Callista, and I told her about the article and my restless night. She just laughed, saying “she’d never heard such nonsense.” But then, her teenage son, Ewan, who happened to overhear us, spoke up. He mentioned that “his friend’s dad got bronchitis and blamed his nightly fan.” This small comment planted a “seed of doubt that kept growing in my head.”

That night, I tried a new strategy. I decided to sleep with the fan aimed away from me. My thought was that I could still hear the comforting sound without the direct air blowing on me. However, I woke up around 4 AM absolutely “drenched in sweat.” The July heat was intense, and my bedsheets were sticking to me “like damp towels.” I gave up on my experiment, “snapped and pointed the fan straight at my face again,” completely giving in to the comfort I desperately wanted.

A Deeper Realization

A few days later, I met my old college friend, Saira, for lunch. She told me she had been seeing a sleep therapist because she was having trouble sleeping. I took a deep breath and confessed my worries about the fan, expecting her to simply dismiss my concerns. But what she said next “shocked me.” Her therapist had told her that some people form “sleep associations so strong they can’t rest without a specific sound or object”—just like my fan. But, she added, the real problem was relying on it so much that it might be “masking deeper issues, like anxiety or unresolved stress.”

I tried to act like it didn’t bother me, but “her words echoed in my head.” Was I truly “hiding behind the fan’s hum instead of dealing with what was keeping me up?” This was a new and unsettling idea.

Facing the Unseen

That night, I decided to record myself sleeping on my phone. I wanted to check if the fan was making me snore or cough. When I watched the video the next day, I didn’t hear any coughing. But what I did hear was myself talking in my sleep! I kept “mumbling phrases like ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘please don’t go.'” It was incredibly unsettling. Who was I apologizing to? And why did I sound so desperate?

I spent the whole day feeling distracted. At work, I missed a deadline, and my manager, Leontyne, sent me a direct email about it. During our video call, she asked if something was wrong. I almost didn’t tell her, but I decided to be honest and said I hadn’t been sleeping well. To my surprise, she shared that “she’d struggled with insomnia for years after her divorce.” This made me feel a lot better; I realized “I wasn’t alone.”

That evening, I sat on my bed and tried to remember the last time I felt truly rested. It had been years—specifically, “before my dad died.” Back then, I didn’t need a fan. I would just lie awake, listening to him “hum old blues songs in the kitchen, feeling safe just knowing he was there.” After he passed away, the house felt “too quiet, too empty.” That’s when I bought my very first fan.

The truth hit me so powerfully that “I felt like I couldn’t breathe.” The fan wasn’t just something for comfort; “it was a replacement for the security I lost.” I had never made this important connection until that moment.

Embracing the Silence and Healing

Determined to finally face the quiet, I unplugged the fan that night and sat in bed. I thought about my dad, and all the conversations we never had a chance to finish. I allowed myself to cry for the first time in many months. The silence felt very loud, but it was also honest. For the first time, “I finally felt like I wasn’t running anymore.”

The next few nights were definitely difficult. I barely slept. But instead of turning the fan back on, I started writing in a journal before bed. I wrote letters to my dad, to myself, and to the people I felt I had hurt or let down. Each night, I felt a little lighter. The darkness didn’t seem so scary anymore.

One evening, I called my sister, Lyndra. We hadn’t really talked in weeks because we had a disagreement about our mom’s care plan. I told her about my sleep struggles and the memories of Dad. “She started crying on the other end,” saying “she’d been having the same restless nights.” It was like “we’d both been stuck,” and finally talking helped us “move forward together.”

A few days later, my neighbor Callista came to my door with some homemade banana bread. She had noticed my fan wasn’t humming anymore and wanted to check if I was okay. I told her everything, and to my surprise, “she opened up about how she still sleeps with her late husband’s robe on her pillow.” We ended up talking until midnight about dealing with loss, love, and the “silly things we do to feel close to people we’ve lost.”

A week later, I decided to visit Saira’s sleep therapist, Dr. Hakim. He didn’t criticize me about the fan at all. Instead, he helped me understand why I felt I needed it and taught me some simple breathing exercises and mindfulness techniques. He explained that “sleep isn’t just about silence or sound—it’s about feeling safe enough to let go.”

As the days went by, I slowly started falling asleep in the quiet. I no longer missed the fan. I felt a sense of pride, but also surprise, at how long it took me to face something that seemed so simple but was actually “so deeply rooted in my past.”

Unexpected Gifts and New Beginnings

Then came a surprising turn of events I never saw coming. My boss, Leontyne, called me into her office one morning. I thought I was going to be in trouble again, but instead, “she offered me a chance to lead a new project.” She told me “she’d seen a change in me—a new focus and calmness.” I suddenly realized that all those nights of quiet honesty had changed me in ways “I hadn’t noticed.”

But the biggest surprise came from an old friend of my dad’s, Marcel, who called me completely out of the blue. He said “he found a box of letters my dad had written but never sent.” He wanted me to have them. I met him at a coffee shop, and when I opened the box, “I found letters Dad wrote to me during his cancer treatments.” He wrote about “how proud he was, how much he wished he could’ve stayed longer, how he hoped I’d find peace even when he was gone.”

Reading those words felt like “a final conversation I’d needed all these years.” It helped to heal a deep hurt “I didn’t know I’d been carrying.”

I took the letters home, sat in my room, and read them one by one. For the first time since he died, “I felt like he was right there with me.” That night, “I slept without a fan, without fear, and without regret.”

The next morning, I woke up feeling truly refreshed. I went for a run, made myself a good breakfast, and called Lyndra just to tell her I loved her. I felt lighter, freer, and more connected to myself and the people I cared about.

Understanding and Moving Forward

Now, whenever someone tells me they can’t sleep without something—whether it’s “a fan, a TV, a blanket from childhood”—I don’t judge them at all. I understand “how powerful those comforts can be.” But I also know that sometimes, “we need to face the silence and listen to what it’s trying to tell us.”

If you’re having trouble sleeping, or if you find yourself relying on something to quiet your thoughts, “I hope my story helps you realize you’re not alone.” It’s perfectly “okay to feel afraid of the quiet.” But there’s a peaceful feeling “waiting on the other side if you’re willing to sit with your memories and forgive yourself.”

Life often brings us back to where we started in unexpected ways. What began as a simple worry about a fan ended with me finding parts of myself “I thought were lost forever.” The noise we hold onto can sometimes prevent us from healing, but the quiet can truly teach us who we really are.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story. If it resonated with you or reminded you of your own journey, please feel free to share it with someone who might need to hear it. And if you enjoyed this post, please give it a like so more people can find it and perhaps feel a little less alone in their own experiences.