Sleep - And How My Habits Affect It

How good was it this weekend to get that extra hour in bed with the clocks going back?

We know how important it is getting a good night sleep, but sleep doesn’t always come easy!. We also know how it feels when you get up and feel like you have barely slept - dragging yourself into the kitchen for a coffee to waken you up for the day and wondering how you are going to get through the day. I wonder how often we stop and think about our sleep before we actually get into bed and give thought to what might be affecting it.

We just think of sleeping as something that happens when we crawl into bed and close our eyes. This is true, but our habits, routines and behaviours play a part in how well we sleep too. This is what we call sleep hygiene.

What Exactly Is Sleep Hygiene?

Sleep hygiene is a term that we hear thrown around - but basically just means the habits, behaviours, thoughts and routines that help us create the best conditions to have a good and restful sleep. Things like - how long are we watching TV or looking at our phones before bedtime. Are we having caffeine or alcohol too late at night? Did we lie in too long in the morning, did we take a nap in the afternoon? All of these things affect the quality of sleep we will have.

What Are The Benefits Of A Good Sleep

• Improves mood and emotional wellbeing

• Reduces stress and irritability

• Improves memory and concentration

• Strengthens the immune system

• Increases energy and motivation

• Helps us manage everyday challenges

How Does CBT Therapy Help Me With My Sleep?

CBT helps us look at the relationships between our thoughts, feelings and behaviours. When It comes to sleep we often fall into patterns that are unhelpful. Last night we had a poor night sleep and instinctively start feeling frustrated about it. We then start worrying if we will have a good sleep tonight. Bedtime is approaching and we tell ourselves “I must sleep tonight, I can’t face another day exhausted.” So we go to bed early and determined to get a full 8 hours of sleep - however the sleepy feeling just isn’t coming. We look at the time on our phone and then again. We get more frustrated, irritable and anxious and before we know it hours have passed. The problem now is no longer simply that we are not sleeping. We are now anxious about not sleeping, and that anxiety can make it even harder to settle.

In CBT, we look at how our thoughts and behaviours can contribute to cycles like this. The aim isn't to convince ourselves that sleep doesn't matter. Of course it matters. It's about recognising when our response to a problem might actually be making it worse.

Making Small Changes to Our Sleep Routine

One of the useful things about looking at sleep hygiene is that it gives us an opportunity to consider what we can realistically change. There's no use in creating an amazing bedtime routine which looks good on paper - but we are just unable to do as it doesn’t tie in with how we actually live. For most of us, it’s more helpful if we can start with a few small and manageable changes. Such as -

• Keeping a consistent waking up time can help our bodies get into a more regular pattern. That doesn't mean we have to live by the clock every minute of the day, but getting up at roughly the same time each day can be useful.

• Paying attention to what we are eating or drinking before bed is another good place to start. If we're struggling with sleep, it might be worth considering whether that after dinner coffee or glass of wine is doing us any favours.

• Giving ourselves time to wind down can also make a difference. We can't always go straight from texts, watching an exciting programme or dealing with family responsibilities to feeling completely relaxed.

• Making the bedroom comfortable is important too. A room that's reasonably dark, quiet and cool can help create an environment that's more suited to sleep.

I'm not saying that we need to have a perfect routine. But small, consistent changes can sometimes make more of a difference than we expect.

What Are We Telling Ourselves About Sleep?

Sleep hygiene focuses on our habits, but CBT encourages us to look at our thinking as well.

In CBT, we might look at the evidence for that thought. Have we managed a difficult day after a poor night's sleep before? Could tomorrow be tiring without being completely unmanageable? It's not about pretending that being exhausted is pleasant. It's about being realistic rather than automatically assuming the worst. And sometimes, reducing the pressure we put on ourselves can help us approach bedtime with a little less anxiety.

It's Not About Getting Everything Right

We can sometimes make the mistake of turning healthy habits into another list of things we feel we have to do perfectly and if we don’t do it perfectly we can be hard on ourselves. When we fail to do what we set out to do - we get frustrated and this all contributes to the cycle of negative thoughts we can often have.

The aim of sleep hygiene isn't to create a set of rigid rules that we feel guilty about breaking. It's to become more aware of the habits that might be helping or hindering us, and to make changes where they seem useful. CBT can support that process by helping us recognise unhelpful thoughts, understand our behaviours and develop more balanced ways of responding when things don't go quite as planned.

Why is it so hard to ask for help?

When Did Needing Help Become a Bad Thing?

We often look at people around us and admire them for how independent they are. We think of them as strong and reliable - able to manage alone. All good qualities, but sometimes I wonder if we at times can just be too independent? Over the years we might develop a belief that being capable and independent means we don’t have to rely on other people, or them letting us down. We might think “they have enough going on, without having to deal with me too”. We can also have the view that asking for help makes us seem week or incompetent.

It could be that when we were growing up we were told things like “get on with it” or “you’ve got to learn to stand on your own two feet. These sorts of messages can become rules that we live by without really questioning them.

But….when did being independent start meaning we had to do it all alone?

Being Able to Cope Doesn't Mean We Have To

Picture this - you’ve just been to Tesco for shopping and carrying a few heavy bags. Someone offers to carry a couple for you - but you refuse. Not because you don’t need the help to carry them, but just because you feel you should be able to manage yourself.

You get back to the car - exhausted and with a sore back, but was that struggle really necessary?

We can be exactly the same with emotional difficulties. We might feel stressed at work, have money problems, relationship issues and lots on our minds. We can tell ourselves that we just need to get on with it, that we should be able to cope. We often don’t seek out the help that might really benefit us because we believe we should be capable enough to do it alone.

At times, we can make things so much harder for ourselves in the long run by not asking for help or accepting help.

What Does Asking for Help Mean to Us?

We might feel that asking for help is an inconvenience. We might think it is like admitting defeat. It might look like incompetence. It might make people think of me in a different light. Maybe we have always been the one everyone else turns to for help, and asking for help just feels wrong.

My wife and I have talked a lot about the concept of just taking people at their word. It can be hard to learn to do this, but very rewarding to not have to ask the questions about whether they mean what they are saying, if they are happy or not.

But it's worth asking ourselves whether these are facts or simply conclusions we've drawn. If a friend came to us and said they were struggling, would we automatically think they were weak or incapable? Would we lose respect for them because they needed some support? We wouldn’t, so why do we apply different rules to ourselves?

Why Is Accepting Help Sometimes Even Harder?

There's another interesting side to this. Sometimes we don't even need to ask. Someone offers to help, and we still turn them down. We might say, “I don’t want to put you to any bother,” even when the person has offered. We might insist that we don’t need the help and that everything is fine. We might feel that by accepting help offered to us we are then indebted, or have even lost a bit of control.

For some of us, giving other people help feels much easier than receiving it. We're happy to support other people in whatever way we can, but uncomfortable allowing them to do the same for us. Maybe we have just become so used to being the person who manages everything that we don’t actually know how to let others take some of the weight off our shoulders.

Maybe, by repeatedly refusing help - we don't give the people who care about us the opportunity to support us in the way we'd happily support them.

What Would Happen If We Said Yes?

Maybe the next time someone offers to help us, we could take a breath and pause before automatically refusing help. Instead of saying “no I’m fine” - why not ask ourselves why we are so reluctant to accept the help. What feelings do we have about saying yes.

We can start with something small. Maybe ask a colleague to help you with a piece of work or ask a family member to assist with something in the house.

It might feel unfamiliar at first and maybe even uncomfortable - especially if we’ve spent years believing doing everything ourselves is best. But feeling uncomfortable doesn’t mean we are doing anything wrong, it just means we are trying something new that we aren’t used to, and that is ok!

Strength Doesn't Have to Mean Doing Everything Alone

Being independent is great! But so is recognising when we might need help. We never question other people who ask us for support - and usually we are happy they have trusted us enough to ask.

Maybe strength isn't always about how much we can carry without anyone noticing.

Maybe sometimes it's about recognising when we don't need to carry it all ourselves.

So how about the next time someone asks you if you need a hand give real thought to whether “no I’m fine” really is the best response. Think about accepting the help offered - and see how it makes you feel.