How to make an end to your insomnia

Insomnia is a huge problem for many people. Not sleeping well can really ruin your day. Unfortunately when people have insomnia they usually take the wrong measures. In this blog post therefore I will give you advice on what to do to stop your insomnia and how to improve your sleep quality.

Insomnia is what keeps us awake at night

Alyssa L. Miller via Compfight

Why do I have insomnia?
Insomnia can have many different causes. Pain, worries, stress and apnea are among the most common ones. Usually what happens is that poor sleep starts a vicious cycle in which: poor sleep leads to worries about sleep, which in turn leads to ineffective measures, which finally leads to poor sleep.

1. Poor sleep. We all have a bad night of sleep every once in a while. What changes poor sleep into insomnia are the thoughts we have about not being able to sleep.
2. Worries about sleeping. When you sleep wrong once, it is easy to start worrying that next time you won’t sleep well either. Also, you might worry about how you will feel the next day or about things that might go wrong because of your lack of sleep.These thoughts actually make it more difficult to sleep and raise your anxiety level. This leads many people into taking measures.
3. Taking ineffective measures.Unfortunately these are usually not the most effective ones. For example, many people start checking the clock to see how much time they have been awake, which makes them even more worried. Others might start taking naps during the day “to make up for the bad night of sleep”, which actually causes them to have more trouble sleeping at night, because they’re not tired anymore. These ineffective measures complete the vicious circle of insomnia since they cause poor sleeping.

The vicious cycle of insomnia

It is important to know that whatever the cause of your insomnia is, you can do something about it:

What can I do when I don’t manage to fall asleep?
If you cannot fall asleep there are several things you can do:

• Create your own sleeping ritual. It is important to prepare your body for the night and give it a sign that you’re going to bed. So try to create your own ritual before going to bed. You could include brushing your teeth, stretching your body, reading a book. Do this ritual every day before going to bed and you will see your yawns becoming more and more frequent around bed time.

• Use your bed only for sleeping. This is an advice that many people find logical but hardly anyone complies with. How easy is it to have breakfast in bed, to watch a movie, to read a book… However, all these activities create a wrong association in the brain: they tell our brain that our bed is for staying awake. That’s why it’s extremely important not to use your bed for other activities than sleeping.

• Use the 15 minutes-technique. The 15 minutes-technique is one of the most effective techniques to stop insomnia. It is based on breaking the connection of bed-awake and changing it into the healthy connection of bed-sleeping. It consists of the following steps:
  1. Try to fall asleep.
  2. If you don’t fall asleep within 15 minutes you get out of bed and you go to another room.
  3. Once you’re in the other room, you engage in a boring activity like reading the dictionary or the encyclopedia until you feel sleepy.
  4. When you feel sleepy you go back to bed. You try to fall asleep.
  5. If you don’t fall asleep within 15 minutes, get out of bed and start another (or the same) boring activity. When you feel sleepy you go back to bed.
  6. Repeat the steps until you fall asleep. Most people fall asleep within 1 or two cycles of the 15-minute technique. It’s used in all effective Cognitive Behaviour Therapy programs for insomnia. Try it!

• Do not check your clock. Most people who suffer from insomnia check the clock all the time to see for how long they’ve been awake and how much time they can still sleep. Don’t do this! Watching the clock activates our brain, (especially the digital clocks) and causes you to stay awake instead of falling asleep.

Do not check your clock when you can’t sleep: it will only make you become more awake!

• Change your thoughts. When you can’t sleep it’s easy to start thinking about how annoying it is that you’re unable to fall asleep, how crappy you’ll feel tomorrow, and how bad this important meeting will go because of this. At night the frontal part of our brain is less active, which causes our worries to run freely, without control. When this happens try to tell yourself that even though it might feel this way now, tomorrow the world will look different. Also, be a judge of your thoughts and try to think about days that you have been sleepy. Were you really unable to do anything? Was it that horrible?

• Improve your surroundings. Try to make sure your sleeping conditions are optimal. So make sure your bed is comfortable, your mattress is soft (or tough as you prefer), and your pillow gives you the right support. Make sure the temperature in the room is about 16-18 degrees, warmer or colder makes it difficult to fall asleep. Also, prevent daylight from coming into your room, it causes our body to wake up, even though we don’t want to. And last but not least, make sure you don’t hear noise in your room, wear ear plugs if necessary.

So as you can see, there are many things you can do if you suffer from insomnia.

Please let me know what you think about the tips and which ones work best for you! Also, if you have any tips please share!