12 - Can’t fall asleep?
Last night was a rare occasion when I didn’t fall asleep while settling my daughter in her bed. I actually had an evening! Being such a rare thing in this season of my life, I made the most of it with joining my husband in a glass of wine and a movie that wasn’t 4-year-old friendly. I then got a second wind and it was after midnight when I fell asleep.
Pretty usual stuff – and the tiredness that follows is pretty standard too.
Lots of us aren’t getting enough sleep. And we readily pin it on the idea of “insomnia”.
But there are two issues at play which get muddled. Taking a long time to get to sleep can be either due to sleep onset insomnia, where we can’t get to sleep despite giving ourselves the opportunity to do so. And then there’s sleep deprivation, where we don’t give ourselves the chance to get sufficient sleep. If we go to bed 6 hours before our alarm there’s no chance for 8 hours sleep!
I have had seasons in my life of sleep onset insomnia too – like when I was in the process of multiple traumatic miscarriages, and my thoughts wouldn’t let me rest. I’d read to distract myself until I was so exhausted I fell asleep, and this coping strategy extended beyond the grieving period as a habit.
Obviously these are very different situations, so to get to sleep better, begin by knowing what you’re dealing with.
Sleep deprivation
Sleep deprivation is a habit based on a mindset or set of beliefs. I can totally relate to depriving myself on sleep. I always labelled myself as a “night owl” and the hours after 10pm were MY time. This was my chance to read and watch movies and just BE. Women in particular are conditioned to go through their days giving their time and energy and focus to those around them. The late night hours are the time we give ourselves permission to just think of ourselves.
If you can relate to this, these steps can help
· Consider what your late night time is used for. Are you catching up with work or study? Having “me time”?
· If the late nights are work and study spilling over to the night, your strategy might be on reducing work load, working more efficiently and having boundaries around your work
· If you don’t have enough “me time”, then setting boundaries on the expectations of others, and aiming for quality time rather than quantity (half an hour doing an art project over 2 hours of social media scrolling). Consider giving yourself permission to say no to others and create opportunities throughout your day – even for 5 minutes at a time.
Sleep onset insomnia
Struggling to get to sleep can be part of other conditions such as pain, depression, metabolic syndrome. It’s worth discussing these conditions with your health practitioner and making sure the rest of your health issues are being addressed also.
Besides managing your other health issues, there are 3 keys to addressing sleep onset insomnia, detailed below.
Reduce hyper-arousal
I’m not talking about THAT kind of arousal! The kind that interferes with sleep in a bad way is hyper-arousal of the central nervous system. That boils down to stimulus that can be either mental or emotional in nature.
Hyper-arousal impacts us by increasing cortisol, changing heart rate variability amongst other changes which suppress our ability to sleep.
If you feel that your mind won’t turn off when you lie down to sleep, it’s likely that hyper-arousal is an issue for you. Implement an evening routine that reduces your arousal – avoid action movies or thrillers, don’t work late at night and observe the things that come up in your day that lead to the mental chatter later. A “brain dump” is a great tool – simply write everything in your brain onto a piece of paper – all the tasks, questions and other things in your mind. This way you won’t be attached to keeping the thoughts active to prevent forgetting them. The paper will be there if you need it!
Often hyper-arousal is due to unresolved emotional distress. We can tend to distract ourselves by being busy through the day but when we lie down to rest, the ignored emotions are still there waiting to be processed.
Add some emotional tools to your tool belt. You may like journaling, cognitive behavioural therapy, self massage, yoga, tapping, breathing exercises, meditation, tai chi or fascia stretching. Yes – emotional tools can involve physical release, others work directly with the thoughts behind the emotions themselves. I would recommend trying the ones that resonate for you, and try thought, emotion and body focused tools.
Eat a diet as clean and fresh as you can, choosing foods close to how they are found in nature. Never seen a ready meal growing on a tree? Avoid eating it unless every ingredient is one you understand and is directly from nature. This is because processed foods create an inflammatory response in our bodies, which places our adrenals in an aroused state. In other words, our body stresses out when we eat fake food.
Avoid negative associations
Everything we do on repeat forms a neural pathway in our brain. That’s why habits seem to happen as if on their own and without any mental effort on our part. Unfortunately, that includes insomnia. If we have a mental association of our bed with lying awake unable to sleep, working in bed, scrolling then we wont associate bed with sleep. This means when we lie down our conditioning will tell our brain to wake up and do all those things associated with bed!
The best way to deal with this is to disrupt the association, which takes a little discipline. If you tend to lie in bed after waking and read in bed (guilty!), then give yourself a reward for getting up and breaking the association of bed and wakefulness. Likewise, if you lie in bed at night tossing and turning, get up and read or listen to soothing music in a comfy chair under dim red or yellow lighting until the next sleep wave comes.
Get your circadian rhythm on track
In a recent article on setting good sleep foundations, we explored the importance of balancing the opposing hormones of cortisol and melatonin for good energy in the day and good sleep at night.
I understand that hormones feel like abstract chemical reactions that we don’t have direct impact on – but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Everything we do in the day is impacting our hormones. The habits that get our cortisol and melatonin ticking along more smoothly include
· Getting natural light every day as early as possible
· Getting up at a similar time each day
· Addressing our stress constructively rather than putting our head in the sand and being kept awake by it
· Keeping our environment dimly lit after sunset, with warm yellow or red lighting or candles
· Winding down from your day from at least 90 minutes before bed. This means avoiding work and study tasks and anything too physically, mentally or emotionally stimulating
· Meditate for its regulating effects on cortisol
· Avoid eating or drinking alcohol for a couple of hours before bedtime
If you get stuck…
If you get stuck, get some help! To explore how your chronic health issues are impacting your sleep, and how I can help you manage it, book in your free discovery call here.
References
Kageyama, K., Iwasaki, Y., & Daimon, M. (2021). Hypothalamic regulation of corticotropin-releasing factor under stress and stress resilience. Retrieved from International Journal of Molecular Science: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms222212242
Levenson, J. C., Kay, D. B., & Buysse, D. J. (2015). The pathophysiology of insomnia. Retrieved from Contemporary Reviews in Sleep Medicine: https://doi.org/10.1378/chest.14-1617
Roth, T., Roehrs, T., & Pies, R. (2007). Insomnia: pathophysiology and implications for treatment. Retrieved from Sleep Medicine Reviews: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2006.06.002