- Hey everybody, today I've got four tips to help you
kick insomnia's butt.
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But let's jump into the first tip and the first tip
for kicking insomnia's butt is to clear your space.
I know I've talked about this before but we don't want
to mix our spaces.
We don't want to read in bed.
I know, surprise, right?
We don't want to watch TV in bed.
If we're struggling to sleep, we want to remove anything
that could be a distraction and that could keep us
from falling asleep.
We should get rid of a TV, any kind of tablet, laptop,
phone, anything like that.
If you have animals that sleep in your bed with you,
I'm sorry, but they're going to have to stay out
for bit while we figure this out.
Clear your space.
Your bedroom should only be for sex and sleep
and nothing else.
Also, I don't want to take any credit for this research.
I read about this.
I'll link in the description some articles and research
so that you can dig in deep if you really want,
but big thank you to Wilfred Pigeon for all
of the wonderful research he's done to help those struggling
with insomnia.
And my second tip is to consider how you think
about falling asleep.
I know this sounds bizarre but something that
is super helpful is called behavioral sleep medicine.
It is kind of a CBT approach to sleep, meaning that if
we lay in bed and we can't sleep for hours and we get more
and more frustrated, we've all been there right?
We're like, oh my God, I have to get up like six hours
and we count down how many hours we're actually going
to get to sleep before we have to get up again,
getting more and more agitated and frustrated
all the while.
That only makes things worse because then we start
to associate sleep and our bed with frustration, irritation,
and restlessness.
What do we do?
If we find ourselves laying in bed thinking,
oh my God, I'm never going to sleep.
I only have four more hours before I have to get up, uh,
and getting more and more agitated.
Get up, get out of bed, do something non-stimulating,
meaning don't go to a back lit item, no laptop, phone, TV.
Maybe we go read or color or just listen to music
for about 15 to 20 minutes and once we start feeling sleepy
again, return to bed and try again.
But don't allow yourself to just lay there because we want
to change how we feel and think overall about our bed
and sleep.
My third tip, it kind of rolls off of the second,
is sleep restriction.
The reason we call it sleep restriction is because
if we're going to bed at like 11:00 P.M., but we're laying
in bed getting more and more frustrated for hours
before we finally fall asleep, at let's say 2:00 or 3:00
in the morning, sleep restriction says that instead
of laying in bed and allowing ourselves to lay there,
your bed time now isn't until 1:00 A.M. or 2:00 A.M.
We want to set our bedtime so late where we normally
would finally fall asleep, thank God.
Instead now we only go to bed at that time so that when
we lay down, boom, we're tired, we're exhausted,
we've been up all night essentially, waiting for our bedtime
so that we could finally go to sleep.
This works because it changes our belief about bed
and sleep, changes it from being frustrating
and taking hours to being nice and quick and enjoyable.
No, we're not going to keep your bedtime at 1:00 or 2:00
in the morning, but what we're trying to do is push
your amount of sleep into a cohesive chunk so instead
of sleeping for like 40 minutes or an hour then waking up,
another two hours, waking up, we're pushing it until we're
so tired that we finally get a full chunk of let's say
four or five hours of sleep.
As we are able to sleep in those chunks, like those
four or five hour chunks successfully, each week
we should move our bedtime back towards our normal
sleep time by 15 minutes.
So let's say our bedtime was one in the morning,
now it's 12:45 and then it's 12:30 and 12:15,
and you can see will slowly get us out into a healthy chunk
of sleep but we just need to change our perception
about sleep and going to bed.
And the fourth tip isn't so much a tip as something
that I just found so fascinating that I had to share
it with you.
Back in the day when they started treating insomnia
and learning about it and trying different treatments
for it, they always said that insomnia was a result
of something else.
That is still true.
Insomnia is usually as a result of chronic illness
or pain, depression, anxiety or substance abuse, could be
any number of things, but that doesn't mean insomnia
shouldn't be treated on its own.
We don't have to resolve the issue, the depression, anxiety,
substance abuse, anything before the insomnia
will get better.
They now know that we can treat insomnia on its own
as its own issue even though it's comorbid
with other things.
I wanted to share ts because it gives us hope.
It means that we don't have to work on something
else that's going on in order for our insomnia
to get better because each night we go
without sleeping makes us that much more frustrated,
irritable, tired, just completely exhausted.
Am I right?
And so it's great to know that we can actually just treat
the insomnia by itself and it can get better by itself.
We can work on the other stuff with our therapist
and our other treatment team members on its own.
I thought that was so great to know that no matter
what causes your insomnia, you can treat it just the same.
And the last little tidbit that I wanna leave you with
is that medication for sleep can be extremely helpful.
A lot of the books and the research that I read
stated that it helps in acute situations, meaning
when your insomnia has only lasted, not only,
I know every day is a struggle, but it's only lasted
for a few weeks to a month.
Medication does not help when we have had insomnia
for months and months and months.
Make sure that you're getting the treatment that you deserve
and that you need now.
I will link in the description like I said, the research
that I found, some books, there's a lot of CBT approaches
to insomnia that are super beneficial.
All the research they're doing today proves that over
and over.
I hope that some of the tips and tricks and just
the conversation we're having today gives you a little
bit of hope and let you know that even if you're struggling
with insomnia and it's been months or maybe even years
since you got a good night's sleep, that it can get better.
If I've forgotten anything and there are tips that have
helped you or different behavioral techniques you use
to sleep better, let us know in those comments.
Give this the thumbs up if you like these kinds of topics
and you'd like me to talk about it more.
I hope you found this helpful and I will see you next time.
Bye.