Insomnia
Why we suffer from it and 6 ways to alleviate it.
Today is World Sleep Day, and the World Sleep Day theme this year is Sleep is Essential for Health. So, we thought it fitting to talk a bit about not sleeping. We regularly see clients in clinic suffering from Insomnia, or the inability to enjoy a decent night’s sleep. They may struggle to fall asleep or to stay asleep, or both. Lack of sleep is incredibly disruptive to all of life, sleep is the foundation of our mental and physical wellbeing, even if we have never suffered with insomnia, most of us know how it feels if we don’t sleep well. The brain fog, lethargy, sugar cravings, irritability, reduced concentration are just some what we encounter when sleep deprived. In clinic we treat insomnia as a symptom rather than a stand-alone disorder. The underlying issue needs resolving, and that inevitably is what we call ‘a full stress bucket’.
Every negative thought we have in the day goes into our bucket. Be it a frustrating work colleague, traffic making us late, children losing their sports kit or a poorly relative, we all have negative thoughts in the day, and they go into our stress bucket. Because we are human, we can negatively forecast; worrying about what might happen, and negatively introspect; worry about what has happened.
We have a super mechanism for emptying this bucket of worries and this happens during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep at night. During REM our anterior cingulate (or as I refer to it, our secretary) wakes up and files all the emotional bucket stuff into the memory centres. We may have been told ‘sleep on it, you’ll feel better in the morning’, this is scientifically accurate. However, if our thought process are particularly negative and we having a significant number of worrying thoughts in a day our bucket gets very full. When our buckets get very full our primitive ‘security guard’ (amygdala/limbic system) become altered to a potential treat. This primitive part of the brain isn’t logical or analytical. It can’t understand all the ‘worries in our bucket’ it simply senses the bucket is very full and interprets it as danger. Stress neurotransmitters are increase in the bloodstream ready for our flight, fight or freeze response to kick in. We might start to feel tearful, low, jittery or snappy, all signs our bucket is getting high. It may even start to ‘overflow’, possibly resulting in a panic attack.
Now we know a good sleep will help, REM empties the bucket. But this is where we can get into a bit of a muddle. If our bucket is too full, our primitive brain (our security guard, that doesn’t understand all the worries in the bucket) interprets the full bucket as danger, sleeping isn’t a good idea, not if there is danger lurking. Sleep is a sure-fire way to end up in the jaws of a predator. Sleep becomes dangerous. The brain will prioritise the recovery sleep required to function, a few hours of necessary sleep is ‘allowed’ and then will wake us up, often with a shot of adrenalin, so we are ready and alert for the ‘predator’. We struggle to get back to sleep, our brains don’t really want us to go back to sleep, it isn’t safe. And here begins the chicken and egg because we don’t empty our stress bucket efficiently, we start the day with our buckets already somewhat filled with yesterday’s worries that didn’t get filed away because there wasn’t time in the few hours of sleep you did get. Buckets gets too full again, brain senses danger again, won’t allow a long sleep, and we go again. We can probably all remember stressful time in our lives where this has happened.
For some people who has experienced periods of insomnia, sleep itself becomes the ‘predator’. We may have resolved the original thought process that kick started the full bucket but as we get towards bedtime, we start to worry that we won’t sleep again. We negatively forecast another dreadful night (remember our brains go where we tell them to, like a sat nav and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy), we worry about getting to sleep and staying asleep and how awful we will feel tomorrow if we don’t sleep and how we have a big meeting so if we don’t sleep we will perform badly and be overlooked for the promotion and what if we lose our jobs because we are so tired and……..the bucket fills. Danger is registered. Bedtime has become a battle. So even if you have a healthy bucket all day, if you are thinking about sleep negatively, you will fill it and there will be no time to engage in healthy activities that help regulate it (exercise, socialising, being productive). The same goes for ‘overthinking’ about anything negative when you go to bed, it results in disturbed sleep.
So, what can we do to alleviate it. Here are 6 things:
1. Think better during the day. Challenge negative thoughts, turn them around, reframe them. Protect your bucket! Any thought you can prevent from going in there will help.
2.Do things to empty your bucket – exercise, socialise, be productive, have a routine, eat well, engage in self-care, show kindness – to yourself and others, notice the small joys in the day and, in case you missed it, EXERCISE.
3.Reframe your sleep. Take the fear and frustration away from not sleeping – remind yourself you’ll cope, you always do. Remember all the times you have slept well in your life, you’re very capable of it. Retrain your brain that your bed is safe. Don’t look at the clock unless you can look at it positively (change ‘oh no, only 3 hrs until my alarm to ‘great, 3 whole hours until my alarm!’.
4. Listen to one of our therapeutic audios (or any mediative, relaxing audio) as you drift off. The science tells us this helps. Put it back on if you wake in the night.
5. Be careful about taking sleeping pills. They have a time and a place but there is a difference between sleep and sedation. They restrict REM sleep so we can get into a muddle with them.
6. Avoid caffeine altogether or consume in the morning, Caffeine has a long shelf life, anything from 5-12 hours depending on lots of factors (e.g. smokers get rid of it more quickly, in pregnant women it takes much longer). Either way it hangs around in the body and we all know it is a stimulant and inhibits sleepiness. Again, problems arise when we don’t sleep well so we consume caffeine at higher rates to get through the day and thus disrupting our sleep.
The importance of a good night’s sleep cannot be overemphasised. Poor sleep is linked to ‘all cause mortality’ which means getting too little (or too much sleep) are ‘significant predictors of death,’ according to a 2010 meta-analysis study. If you are suffering with Insomnia and need help, do not hesitate to get in contact for a free initial consultation with Old Town Hypnotherapy.