Covid-19 and Sleep
During this time, it is more important than ever to not only make sure we get enough sleep but also seek to resolve sleep issues we may have already had before the restrictions Covid-19 has placed on our lives since the kind of lifestyles we have been forced to have can exacerbate any pre-existent sleep difficulties.
There is no doubt we are being called upon to adjust our lives for an undisclosed period of time and indeed our lives may never return to the way they were. Studies have been done on the effects of confinement on wellbeing. One in particular I have been reading from the “Journal of Sleep Research” focuses on its effects on sleep. Uncertainty about what the future holds, being confined to the home for longer periods of time, working from home, home schooling, needing to entertain children more than usual and dealing with their fears and reduced face-to-face social interaction can all increase stress levels and lead to anxiety and depression or exacerbate these where they already exist, leading to sleep disruption. It can then become a vicious cycle where lack of sleep creates more stress, anxiety and perhaps depression.
Anyone who has suffered from inadequate periods of sleep will tell you that they feel less able to cope and less energetic the following day. They may then worry they will not sleep the following night. The Circadian Rhythm which keeps us awake during the day and makes us sleepy at night is governed by daylight. Light exposure on a daily basis, particularly in the morning, encourages the production of melatonin, the hormone that induces sleep. Being in the home for longer periods of time may mean we have been exposed to natural daylight for shorter periods of time on a daily basis or indeed not at all. This may mean therefore that we have to ensure we get out into the open air even through the winter to benefit from the daylight and its melatonin-inducing benefits.
We may also need to attend to what is called “sleep hygiene”, perhaps paying particular attention to use of phones and laptops late into the evening. These are known to impact on the ability to fall asleep in a timely way if used shortly before bedtime. Since we are now conducting much of our lives online, this can be a very strong factor in sleep disruption. The article, which you can read here, gives a very comprehensive account of sleep hygiene, which is worth reading.
So where does hypnotherapy fit into this? Paying attention to sleep hygiene is a practical step to take. Hypnotherapy helps with re-establishing healthy sleep patterns and the emotional aspects of poor sleeping where they exist. Let’s look at stress which is particularly prevalent at the moment. This is usually accompanied by a lot of worry and a sense of powerlessness. Many people go to bed and their minds immediately go into overdrive which leads to much tossing and turning and an inability to relax enough to allow sleep to take over.
Worry is essentially a focus on the future and an excessive use of the imagination to envisage negative outcomes. Worry causes us to access the fight/flight response to a greater or lesser degree which inhibits clear thinking. As well as reminding your inner mind that sleep allows for the processing of the day’s events so that you can deal with things from a more balanced position, hypnotherapy can bring forward resources you have in other areas of your life to handle things in your daily life so much better.
The same is true of working with anxiety and depression. In fact, using hypnotherapy to be able to relax and sleep better can go a long way to really reducing depression. This blog post has more information about how I work with sleep difficulties. If sleeplessness is plaguing you at the moment, you may want to consider hypnotherapy for it.