Ending the sleep struggle

In previous week’s blogs, I have focused on tips to help build good sleep/wake habits and things that you can do to support your body’s natural ability to sleep.

However, sometimes, despite doing all these things, we find that we still lie awake hour after hour at night, our minds churning through problems, worrying about all the tasks we need to do, and sometimes, most frustratingly of all, thinking how exhausted we’ll feel in the morning because we can’t fall asleep!  Consequently, you feel more anxious and frustrated, making it even harder to fall asleep.

In this week’s blog I’ll be looking at some strategies that you can employ to help quieten the mind, allow the body to relax, and enable you to ease into sleep.

As I outlined in ‘6 easy steps to better sleep’, supporting your natural ability to sleep isn’t just something that you do at night, it is something you can do throughout the day.  If worries and ruminations are keeping you awake at night, then a good place to start is to build some daily practices that will allow your mind to rest at night.

Give your mind a break

With non-stop days from the moment we get up to the moment we go to bed at night, whether with work, family, leisure activities, or the constant distractions of the digital world, our brain’s rarely get a moment to rest and process all that is going on, and any rare moments of boredom are quickly filled with a quick scroll through social media.

Often, the first chance that your brain gets to process the day’s inputs is when you go to bed at night, leaving you lying in a bed with a mind still busily working.  Three practices that can help with this are: -

• Take some down-time during the day.  Have a complete break from all digital devices and other distractions and allow yourself to be with your thoughts.  Taking a walk or some other exercise is very useful for this, or you may just want to practice sitting in silence for 10 minutes.  Any worries, ideas, loose-ends that you need to tie up that arise during this time can be captured at the end of the practice and a plan made to deal with them.

• Have an evening wind-down routine.  Take some time to review your day – what went well, what didn’t go so well.  Capture in bullet points, or maybe try journaling.  You may want to try out Stream of Consciousness journaling as this can be a great way to uncover thoughts that aren’t immediately apparent to you.  Plan out your next day too – take the time to capture everything you need to do and then those random tasks are less likely to keep you up in the night. 

• Practice a relaxation technique. Using a technique such as progressive muscle relaxation or a mindfulness meditation can help prepare your mind and body for sleep and release the stress you may be storing from your day.  It is also a much heathier approach than using a substance such as alcohol to ease your stress (especially as alcohol is a common cause of sleep disturbances).

Struggling with sleep

However, even after following the above techniques, you may still end up battling against an over-thinking mind at night, especially if you regularly struggle to sleep.  As the mind starts to whir through a never-ending flow of thoughts, we start to engage with the thoughts, either trying to rationally debate them or problem-solve them, suppress them, or fight them.  These tactics are often futile, however.  The part of the brain that governs logical thinking is thought to go into a kind of ‘off-line’ state during the night, leaving the more primitive part of the brain (the part that governs the ‘fight’ or ‘flight’ instinct) still active.  Ever noticed how a problem that seems overwhelming during a sleepless night seems so much more manageable after some sleep?

Trying to suppress thoughts is also not helpful as it requires a lot of effort and can add fuel to the fire of thoughts.

Put simply, you cannot will yourself to sleep.  Sleep is a natural physiological process, just like breathing, that does not require conscious effort.  Trying to control your thoughts can be like flailing in quicksand – the harder you try, the worse the situation becomes.

End the battle with your thoughts

So, what can you do?  Contrary as it sounds, the most effective approach is often to just allow the thoughts to come and go of their own accord. You need to drop the struggle with them. 

One mindfulness-based technique is to simply ‘notice’ what is happening when you can’t sleep.  Take the standpoint of a detached observer, and allow yourself to just notice your thoughts, notice any judgements you are making (e.g., ‘I’m a terrible sleeper’), notice any sensations that arise in your body and just allow them to be there.

What’s your story?

Try to remember that thoughts are not always facts - they are just words, stories.  Some people find it useful to name their recurrent stories.  For example, if you start thinking about how exhausted you will feel the next day, how you won’t be able to cope, you could give that story a name such as the ‘Can’t cope’ story.  Each time you notice those thoughts arising, acknowledge them by thinking “Ah, this is my ‘Can’t Cope’ story”.  This may sound trivial, but it can work very effectively as it creates something called ‘cognitive distance,’ meaning that you are less attached to your thoughts, and it can stop your mind running off with the unhelpful thought.

Take a walk

Another technique that can be helpful in shifting your attention from focusing on the unhelpful thoughts and accompanying physical sensations, is to imagine yourself going for a long walk. Choose a walk or location that you know well, and then picture it in detail in your mind.  Engage your senses – what might you see, hear, smell or touch along the way?  You may find you don’t get very far before you drift off to sleep. 

A lack of sleep can lead into a viscous cycle where you become increasingly tired and increasingly anxious about your sleep. Try not to worry about how much sleep you’re getting. Allow yourself to go with the flow, accept the feelings of tiredness and end the struggle for sleep. If you’d like more help with your sleep, click here to find out how I help people overcome insomnia and sleep better.

There are many factors that can impact on our sleep, including stress, age, medical conditions, travel, exercise, diet, and sleep disorders (such as sleep apnea).  If you are concerned about your sleep, and especially if you suspect that it may be related to a medical condition or sleep disorder, you should seek advice from your GP in the first instance.