It’s quite unfortunate that our natural and automatic reaction to a difficult night
is often the worst way to react to a difficult night — and it’s that reaction that typically
perpetuates sleep disruption and makes sleep more difficult.
So, with this in mind, in this video I’m going to talk about how making the conscious
effort to do the exact opposite of what you might be inclined to do after a difficult
night can help improve your sleep for the long term, while also improving the overall
quality of your life.
Hi, I'm Martin Reed.
If you have insomnia, I offer sleep coaching programs that will give you all the skills
and support you need to enjoy better sleep for the rest of your life.
You can learn more at insomniacoach.com
So, let’s start at the beginning.
How do you typically react to a difficult night of sleep?
In my experience, common reactions including worrying about sleep, blaming everything bad
that happens during the day on that difficult night of sleep (whether that’s true or not),
canceling plans, trying to conserve energy, spending time researching sleep, maybe trying
to nap during the day, and putting off activities that might have otherwise given you a sense
of joy, fulfillment, and pleasure.
All these automatic reactions are completely normal and understandable, but they all fit
a common theme — they all lead to more arousal (this could be in the form of stress, worry,
anxiety, or self-monitoring) and they virtually guarantee that a difficult night of sleep
leads to an unpleasant, difficult, unenjoyable day — and both these outcomes can end up
making sleep more difficult.
So, instead of allowing an automatic reaction to a difficult night to rule your day, to
rule your thoughts, and to rule your behaviors, you might want to try taking a more deliberate
alternative (and often more constructive) approach.
Instead of allowing sleep and insomnia to rule your life, you might want to start taking
back control.
So, for example, you might refuse to allow a difficult night to lead to you canceling
plans with friends or calling in sick to work.
You might refuse to allow a difficult night to lead to a day full of sleep-related research
and worry.
Now of course, it’s easy to say, “don’t spend the whole day thinking and worrying
about sleep” but how do we actually do that?
The brain wants to focus on sleep if it thinks of sleep as a problem.
It wants to solve problems.
Trying not to think about sleep takes a lot of mental energy and makes it almost impossible
not to think about sleep!
So, what can you do instead?
Well, distraction can be really helpful — you might, for example, try adding (rather than
removing) enjoyable activities to your day.
These don’t all need to be intensely physical activities — just things you enjoy.
Things that give you a sense of pleasure from.
Things that make you feel good, that you are interested in, that leave you feeling enriched,
that increase the quality of your day and the quality of your life.
Not only does the pursuit of enjoyable activities improve the quality of our lives, it gives
the mind something to focus on other than sleep!
When we add enjoyable activities to our day, no matter how small these activities might
be, we give ourselves the opportunity to recognize that we have more control over the quality
of our days and how we feel during the day than the previous night of sleep.
We give ourselves the opportunity to recognize that we can have a good day (or at least some
good or OK moments) after a difficult night of sleep.
The end result is less time available for thinking and worrying about sleep, more daily
enjoyment, and — perhaps — putting less pressure on ourselves to sleep.
Something you might want to try to really turn the tables on your relationship with
sleep is to reward yourself for every difficult night of sleep.
So, after particularly hard nights you might do something especially enjoyable or treat
yourself to something really special.
If you can change the perceived outcome of a difficult night from one of negativity to
one of positivity, insomnia cannot have a negative long-term impact on your life.
When we are able to recognize just how much control we have over the quality of our days,
when we are able to recognize that perhaps sleep isn’t quite as important as we thought,
when we can remove sleep from the pedestal we can so easily place it on, we typically
think and worry about sleep less, we put less effort into sleep, we put less pressure on
ourselves to sleep, and this — in turn — often leads to better sleep and a better life.
So I hope you found this short video helpful.
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I do try to share some new sleep snippet videos every week.
If you have any questions, comments, feedback, or suggestions for a future video, please
leave a comment below or you can email me directly.
My email address is hello@insomniacoach.com.
Thanks for watching, and — as always — I'd like to leave you with this important reminder.
You can sleep!