Sleeping Problems Solutions
How many times have you closed your eyes at bedtime and found your mind racing? You may be thinking about whether you paid your electricity bill, something weird you may have unintentionally said to your friend earlier, your sister recovering from surgery, and all the stuff you must do the next day. You can shut your eyes, but cannot shut off your mind.
What are the consequences of poor sleep?
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Mood – you may find yourself more irritable and crankier. This can lead to being snappier with others and then you feel guilty about it.
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Cognition – your processing speed and your ability to pay attention is compromised. Without your ability to pay attention, you will have difficulty retaining information which can be perceived as “memory problems”.
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Physical – long term sleep deprivation is linked to many health conditions including heart disease, high blood pressure, and weakened immunity.
What do you do in bed other than sleep? Perhaps you’re perusing in your laptop while in bed or finishing up checking on some emails you missed during the day. You may be on your phone scrolling through Facebook or watching the news coverage on television.
Although all these things seem harmless, they all contribute to sleep problems.
One of the main reasons is you have learned to associate your bed with everything other than sleep. These other things stimulate you and increase your arousal, keeping you awake. The news coverage may make you worried about the state of the world. That email you just checked reminded you of all the deadlines from work, and social media in general can be more stressful than not – of course unless you’re only watching videos of puppies in bed.
All these things are stressful - all this stress and worry continues even when you are trying to sleep. You have conditioned yourself to make the bed a place where you think and worry rather than sleep. One of the main things you can do is retrain your brain to see your bed as a place of relaxation and sleep.
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Eliminate all electronic devices from the bed. Charge your phone away from the bed or in another room. Also, refrain from watching television and using a tablet while in bed. The blue light from these electronic devices affects your circadian rhythm, stimulating your mind to wake up and blocking melatonin production, which is an important hormone that helps you sleep. This blue light confuses your brain into thinking it is daytime.
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When you are ruminating in bed, and you feel like you can’t stop (after about 20 minutes), get out of bed. Go to a different room or different area in the room (distinctly away from the bed).
Write a “worry list.” Write down everything you are ruminating about.” Often times, when we are ruminating the same worries over and over again (almost as if you don’t want you brain to forget it) so writing it out may be helpful. It is out of your mind and on the piece of paper. Remember to do this in a different location other than your bed as we are trying to retrain your brain to associate your bed as a place of relaxation.
Do an activity that is non-stimulating. In other words, find an activity that help calm and relax you. Some examples include looking through catalogs, knitting, sorting out junk mail (don’t pay bills as this may increase your blood pressure), making a grocery list for shopping, or reading a magazine or light material. When you start to feel sleepy, go back to bed.
If you need guidance of how to improve not only the quantity but quality of sleep, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for insomnia (CBT-i) is a gold standard for sleep treatment. They have similar effectiveness as medications, but the long-term effects are even greater. Memory Gains PLLC can provide you with the tools to help you get the sleep you want.
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