15 Mar Sleep and You – Dealing with Sleep Deprivation – Part 2

Sleep & You: 3 Key aspects that will help you deal with sleep deprivation– Part 2

3. The Mind

And now we get to it: the mind. The stronghold of our psyche and sometimes our biggest saboteur, especially to sleep. Ask yourself a few questions about your headspace and gauge if that is one the factors disrupting your nights.

• Do you develop a pattern of spiralling, sleep-defeating thoughts?

It’s all too familiar especially for someone who has struggled with sleep on more than one occasion: the inability to sleep, the tossing and turning and the rising panic that can spiral out of control. It can go something like this “Not again”, followed by “I’ll be exhausted tomorrow and I’ve got so much on” to “I need to sleep, NOW”.

This thought pattern will pump your body full of stress chemicals as your nervous system perceives a threat (lack of sleep) and triggers your fight/flight/freeze response. This response can include muscle tension, rapid heart rate and rapid breathing. None of which are conducive to relaxation, let alone sleep.

Try grabbing this chain of thought and breaking it before it spirals. Do a quick scan of your body and soften any muscles that may have tightened, consciously slowing your breath (both muscles and breath are ways the mind and body communicate with each other and right now they need to be communicating calm).

Then tell yourself (in a soft, calm self-talk voice) the facts, which are:

1. Your body is prone and therefore already resting

2. That it’s ok to have a temporary struggle with falling asleep

3. That the struggle IS temporary

• Do you jump up to complete a task that pops into your head while you are trying to fall asleep?

It’s not uncommon to do that, because we tell ourselves that if that task is put out of the way, we will be able to relax. Actually, that is a short-term fix and a dangerous slippery-slope. By listening to that urge to complete that recollected task, we are inadvertently training the mind to respond to every random trigger, rather than teaching ourselves to prioritize. One way of looking at it would be to see your mind acting like a tantrum-ing like a child. Engage with it now and you’ll reinforce the belief that tantrums work and so the tantrums will repeat pretty much ad nauseum. Ignore and they’ll taper off.

Though a slightly difficult learning process in the short term, what yields better long-term dividends is to talk back. Tell that insistent voice that it’s ok if the task is dealt with in the morning and that it is not urgent and that immediate address is not required. And then go back to ensuring a soft body and slow breathing.

• Do you plan the day ahead while you’re in bed?

Just like the bedroom is not the place for work, it’s not the place for work thoughts either. Plan your day just before or after dinner, scheduling, diary-ing, emailing and prepping what you need then, so that once in bed you avoid kicking off a chain of work related thoughts (and possibly, stress).

• Do you still count-sheep?

Counting sheep is an old clunker, with the theory being that the monotony of the task will help you nod off. It may work for some, but if it doesn’t for you, try visuals instead. These need not be the within the cookie-cutter realm of sandy beaches or soft waves. Pull up images that you associated with being relaxed: those visual cues and associated feelings of calm can help your mind and body relax and bring on sleep.

Remember, practise makes perfect, in all things, so be patient with yourself in the process of learning new sleep habits. There is no quick fix that is beneficial in the long-run, so investing a little time in your sleep habits now will pay well later.

Reference: Ju, Yo-El S., Ooms S. J., Stuphen, C., Macauley, S., Zangrilli, M. A., Jerome, G., Fagan, M. A., Mignot, E., Zempel, J. M., Claassen, J. A.H.R., Holtzman, D.M. (2017). Slow Wave Sleep Disruption Increases Cerebrospinal Fluid Amyloid-β Levels. Brain: A Journal of Neurology, 140 (8), 2104-2111.