Is depression or anxiety keeping you awake at night?
Does stress from work or school follow you to bed and keep your mind racing with thoughts and worries?
Whatever the reason why – you’re NOT SLEEPING!
Today I want to share with you a couple of the mistakes people can make when this happens and what to do instead.
Mistake #1 – Play Catch Up
This is the biggest and can end up hurting you the most.
It’s when you sleep during the daytime, trying to “catch up” on the sleep you didn’t get last night!
The hardest work to do – stay awake until you go to bed that next night.
Otherwise, what happens is you start to RESET your body clock and get your sleep patterns completely reversed.
I’ve had a lot of patients over the years who’ve gotten to the point where they are now ‘up all night’ and then ‘sleep all day’.
Mistake #2 – Go Chasing Sleep
This is when you maybe slept on and off during the night. Or you just didn’t have a restful nights sleep.
Your alarm goes off & you decide “1 more hour” instead of getting up when the alarm goes off!
I am certainly guilty of this one at times – and each time I do it – I regret it!
The problem here is you most likely will wake up feeling MORE TIRED.
The work to do – get up out of bed when your alarm goes off & DO NOT hit the snooze button to continue laying there.
Mistake # 3 – Do the Ceiling Stare
You get to bed but once there you can’t fall asleep. You lay there – staring at the ceiling. To make things worse – maybe you keep looking at the time.
Our program psychiatrist taught me this sleep LifeTOOL. If you have not fallen asleep within 20 minutes:
- GET OUT of bed & go sit some place quiet.
- Read, color, do word puzzles, watch a little non-drama TV until you start to feel a little tired or sleepy.
- Go back and lay down.
- If needed, repeat.
DO NOT go do anything that is activating like clean the house, smoke, have a cup of coffee, do laundry, watch the news, etc…..!
Let me know in the comment box below if you’ve experienced any of these!
~ To Living Well TODAY! ~
via Esperanza – Hope To Cope
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