By Emily Pearce, Content Team contributor
We all know we need to sleep eight hours a night to stay mentally and physically healthy, but this isn’t always possible. If you’ve ever been overly stressed about an upcoming event or a personal matter, you’ve probably found yourself tossing and turning without relief from time to time. For those of us with generalised anxiety, the pain of sleeplessness can be a much more frequent issue. We need sleep for our brain to recuperate and rationally deal with day to day problems and so if we go a night without it, any underlying feelings of anxiety can be exacerbated. This in turn creates further anxiety about not sleeping the following night and so anxiety-induced insomnia can develop into a vicious cycle of restlessness and fatigue. I struggled with this problem for several months during my first year of university but managed to find some ways to tackle it; sleep is no longer so much of an issue for me and I’ve found my anxiety has subsided as a result. For all of you suffering with sleep anxiety, here are some of my top tips to make your way to recovery.
- Be realistic
Eight hours of sleep sounds ideal but it is not realistically attainable every single night. Some nights we will naturally sleep less; others you will sleep much longer. If you’re worrying about not sleeping enough, try and be more realistic about your sleep goals. You’ve survived years without sleeping a full eight hours consistently and you can survive now. Always remember that sleep is a biological process that will naturally occur– you will eventually be able to get some rest even if it is for a short period of time!
- Reframe your mindset
Sleep anxiety can be make bedtime feel distressing but it’s important that you reframe your perceptions of it and transform it into a relaxing time of day. Try and look forward to bedtime as a period for your body and mind to rest, regardless of how fast you fall asleep. Bedtime can also been reframed as a time for mindfully processing the day you have just had. The Sleep Book: How to Sleep Well Every Night by Dr Guy Meadows provided me with bedtime mindfulness techniques that helped me change sleep into a time for me to let go of my worries and frustrations, which subsequently helped me sleep more soundly every night. I’d highly recommend this book if you feel a lot of pressure when trying to sleep and you want to make bedtime less stressful.
- Create a relaxing bedtime routine
We all need to wind down before bed in order for the sleep hormone melatonin to be produced. You could calm your nervous system by doing several of the following:
-Having a hot bath/shower
-Avoiding coffee and alcohol near bedtime
-Watching a calming show that you love (a sitcom for example)
-Listening to relaxing music, audiobooks or ‘Sleepcasts’ on the app Headspace
-Avoiding scrolling on your phone
-Speaking to loved ones
-Read a book!
- Have a plan B
Have a plan B for when you find yourself unable to sleep. Rather than simply lying there feeling frustrated, you should think of various calming activities to do as an alternative. If I’m struggling to sleep, I’ll read a book or a magazine until I find myself feeling tired. Other things that have worked for me include jigsaws and word searches; these have distracted me from any anxious thoughts and have helped me calm down before attempting to sleep again. It’s important to get out of bed and do something else if you can’t sleep because otherwise you may begin to associate your bedroom with negative feelings of anger, upset and distress.
- Make sleep less of a pressing issue
As hard as it sounds, try not to centre your life around sleep. I remember spending hours agonising over my lack of sleep and boring my friends and family with my anxiety over it. To tackle my insomnia, I got into more of a routine at uni, joined societies, exercised more, and saw my friends as frequently as possible. Soon my life had become so busy that my sleep anxiety was at the back of my mind! Find ways of distracting yourself about these worries and you’ll soon realise that sleep is not the be all and end all of your life; in fact, it’s rather unimportant in the scheme of things.
