Your plan for BETTER SLEEP
Dr Meadows shares his tips to get your sleep back on track.
STEP ONE
Spot the simple blocks to sleep
There are lots of things that can interfere with sleep – anxiety and a busy mind are key but other things can get in the way, too. So attend to the simple stuff first. Make sure your bed is comfy and your room is dark, quiet and cool, around 18ºc is said to be the optimum temperature for sleep. Also avoid having screens in your bedroom. Blue light from phones and tablets can send our brains a wake-up rather than wind-down stimulus, so use the blue light filter in the evenings and switch off devices an hour before going to bed.
Chopping and changing sleep times or long daytime naps can throw off your sleep cycle, and caffeine and alcohol too close to bedtime can also cause problems. Alcohol can help you drop off but not stay asleep as it reduces the amount of rapid eye movement sleep, so leads to waking in the middle of the night.
STEP TWO
Stop trying so hard
You might have developed insomnia because you’re anxious and stressed, but it’s amazing how rapidly not sleeping can become the focus of your worries. ‘The more you worry, the more you try to control it, the worse your sleep gets and it becomes a vicious circle,’ says Dr Meadows. Letting go of control doesn’t mean giving up and abandoning yourself to months of insomnia, it just means accepting that, for now, you are not sleeping well. Once you can change the way you think and feel about not sleeping, you can begin to remove the obstacles in the way of your sleep.
STEP THREE Calm your mind…
Who hasn’t been plagued by those catastrophic 3am worries, which then seem ridiculous in the cold light of day? ‘If I don’t sleep tonight, I won’t cope tomorrow and if I’m too tired to perform at work, I might lose my job… we could lose the house, our lives will be ruined…’ While you may not be able to change or banish those thoughts, you can change the
Once you change how you think about not sleeping, you can remove the obstacles getting in the way of sleep
way you relate to them. ‘Research shows that when we try to block our thoughts they come back stronger and in greater numbers,’ says Dr Meadows. ‘ACT teaches you to do the opposite by defusing the thoughts. See your thoughts as a collection of words passing through your mind, not as facts, to help create mental space between them and you. Try giving your thoughts shorthand labels, such as “sleep thoughts”; acknowledge them when they arrive and then let go of them rather than trying to change or control them.’
…and your emotions
Do the same for strong feelings such as anxiety, frustration or loneliness. Rather than trying to get rid of these emotions, just notice them. A simple way to do this is to look at your emotions as they arise in your body and give them physical attributes. For example, you might say: ‘My anxiety feels like a cold black knot tightening in my stomach.’ Describing your emotions like this helps to distance them and defuse the power they have over you.
STEP FOUR Practise mindfulness
As you lie in bed, anchor your attention in the present moment by noticing the movement of your breath. Then when your mind wanders, which it will, notice your thoughts and return your attention to your breathing. This is not about getting to sleep but just keeping yourself in the present and calming your busy mind. ‘Brain imaging research shows that repeatedly noticing the breath and letting go of thoughts strengthens a part of the brain responsible for calming down mental chatter,’ says Dr Meadows. Aim to practise for a few minutes every day, as well as when you get into bed and turn off the lights.
STEP FIVE Rest in bed if you wake
Sleep is made up of three stages – light, deep and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Each stage has a different job, including growth and repair, mood regulation and memory processing. Humans evolved to move between all three sleep stages every one and a half to two hours and then briefly wake up so that we could check for danger. ‘How you respond to this determines whether you shift into a state of active wakefulness, or remain in quiet wakefulness, the bridge state to sleep,’ says Dr Meadows. Unlike the CBT approach to insomnia, which suggests getting up and doing something low key until you feel sleepy, he recommends staying in bed. ‘Resting in bed in a state of quiet wakefulness offers many benefits similar to sleep, including energy conservation, repair and memory consolidation.’