The Importance of Sleep

When we're feeling anxious or depressed your sleep can be one of the first things to be effected. You go to bed feeling tired but might not be able to get to sleep, might wake up during the night and not be able to re-settle or might wake up too early. You might feel like you just want to try and sleep forever but are never able to get enough to feel refreshed in the morning. You are not alone.

Remember that anxiety list I talked about in my last blog? (See Managing Uncertainty 24/03/2020) All those things on your list are getting in the way of your sleep. When you're asleep your brain is doing it's utmost to work through that list, processing memories and working through problems. The more you can limit what goes on that list, the better chance your brain has of working through what's on there.

We've all had mornings where we've had a Eureka! moment when the solution to something we've been trying to puzzle out the previous day pops into our heads. The age-old advice to "sleep on it" holds true for a reason.

So why are you not sleeping well or continually waking up during the night? Well, your brain can't use the whole time you are asleep to process those anxieties on your list. It can only do that during Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep and this only accounts for about 20% of the time you are asleep. REM sleep takes a lot of energy so your brain calls a halt to it when you try to overdo it by tackling an overly long list of anxieties and the only way it can do that is to wake you up.

To get you back to sleeping well there are a few things you can do:

Some of my positives for the day so far: