How to Sleep Better - Part Two - With 6 Ways to Contain Worries
When Worry Comes Knocking in the Night
Hi friends
Welcome to part two of this ‘how to sleep better’ post duo. I delved into my resources to see how I can support myself through a bout of poor sleep, which has improved already. If you have trouble sleeping or if you have worries on your mind, these tips may help you. To recap, these are the areas that can cause sleepless nights:
Poor sleep ‘hygiene’ where habits and choices influence sleep quality.
Worries and unfinished business (our main focus today)
Self sabotage, where we contribute to both of the first two
Biological factors
Worries tumble through my mind these last few weeks, so I have found it hard to fall asleep, and wake up early. My circumstances are out of my control, and going about life tired, sluggish and drained only makes problem solving harder. The hormone rollercoaster of peri-menopause isn’t helping. But how I respond to the circumstances and worry is within my control, and yours too.
Perhaps you’ve been here too, hoping that tomorrow will be a better day, but not sure how. I realised that I had supported many clients to better sleep in the past, and that I could make a few changes to bring back my own healthy sleep patterns. This includes addressing how I deal with my worries better - and it’s working!
What do you do that contributes to poor sleep, effecting your mood, energy and self esteem?
Are you dealing with worries effectively, or do you let them tumble around your mind whenever they fancy?
Do you sabotage your sleep, perpetuating old life scripts and patterns?
Here are a few more practical tips, including how to deal with worries that can keep us awake at night.
Instead of hoping tomorrow will be a better day, let’s move from passive to active with these powerful ways to improve your sleep, and contain our worries.
Tips to Help You Sleep Better - Two
Read the first part of How to Sleep Better in the archive.
Room Temperature
If the room is too hot, our body takes energy to cool down, which can keep us awake. Make sure the room is cool to help you sleep. Having warm feet, though, is shown to help us fall asleep, so a cool room with warm feet might be a good combination. Now I know why I always wear socks in bed!
Take a Hot Bath
A study found that taking a hot bath around 90 minutes before bed can help you fall asleep more quickly. The hot water helps change your body’s core temperature (see above), so you go to bed with a lower temperature, enabling sweet dreams to start sooner.
Keep Naps Short
Research shows that there’s a lot of benefit to taking a quick nap in the daytime, a mini siesta. But if you sleep too much in the day, it’s even harder to fall asleep at night, since you may start a new sleep cycle if it’s longer than 45 minutes (see the first post for more on this). If you’re having trouble sleeping, consider dropping or reducing the nap (to a rest perhaps) until your sleep routine is better. You can experiment. If you can’t last, make sure your nap is short, under 45 minutes. I like a 20 minute power nap in the afternoon when I can.
Keep Your Bed a Bed
They say use your bed only for sleeping and making love. Make it a relaxing place to be, by removing distractions, discomfort, and anything that causes stress or worry (whirring laptops, phones, piles of laundry, etc). I sometimes work on my bed, particularly when I was unwell with long Covid, and I don’t have so much space - but I always do it on the other side to where I sleep.
Night Waking
Research shows it is common to wake in the night for an hour or two, especially as we get older. This has even been documented as a normal part of daily life in historical writing. I think it’s called the Nightwatch. If you wake like this, being stressed about it doesn’t help. You can enjoy the quiet time, practice slow breathing, read, knit, or enjoy a recorded meditation, visualisation or podcast, or get up and do something quiet. Sometimes there is no point fighting it, which can cause you more worry. If your circadian rhythm has thrown you out of sleep, perhaps we just have to go with it (more on that in the first post).
Handling Worries that Keep You Awake
To read on, consider upgrading to a paid subscription, where you will get all 25 tips, as well as relaxing Guided Meditations (more on the way), the Heal Your Past Series, the full archive of personal growth tools with therapeutic journaling in the Members Therapy Tools Page.