What is sleep?! it’s the thing we all do each night….or at least most of us!

Sleep is sometimes a significant challenge for people, and when we are not sleeping, a lot of other areas of our lives can be impacted. When you’re considering your own mental wellbeing, it is important to remember that sleep is part of a cycle. When we’re not sleeping, our mental wellness is impacted, and when our mental wellness is impacted, it can further exacerbate our issues with sleep! Here is some information on sleep, and how we at GNPLC can help if you are experiencing complaints about your sleeping habits.

There are 3 main contributing factors to what we call, ‘Chronic Insomnia’: homeostatic disruption, circadian disruption, and hyperarousal. Basically, what this means is, there is a disruption in your deep sleep, there is a disruption in your sleep schedule, and there is a factor (anxiety, trauma, etc.) that is causing a hyperarousal that’s helping contribute to your feelings of being awake!

Not sleeping, or constantly having poor sleep can be extremely frustrating, anxiety provoking and just plain annoying! Here are some tips to help get your sleep back on track:

  1. track your sleep! using an app (example: CBT-I coach, Sleep Watch, etc.) or by using what’s called a Sleep Diary. This can help you, as well as your clinician/physician, pinpoint specific areas that may be hurting your sleep. Then, you can start to remove or change some routines.
  2. sleep hygiene! education around different techniques to help you fall asleep and stay asleep can be super beneficial! (below please see a link to a great sleep hygiene resource).
  3. consider reducing the amount of time spent in bed and sleeping! yes, you read that right. At the beginning stages of fixing sleep issues, it is important to limit the amount of time that we allow our body to be trying to sleep and lying-in bed. By reducing your total time in bed to 7 hours, for example, you will begin to train your brain that when your head hits the pillow, its sleep time.

Any other questions, please do not hesitate to book with the clinic!