Summary of 3 Ways to Stop Sleep Anxiety
Key Strategies to Overcome Sleep Anxiety
- Stop Ruminating on Bad Sleep:
- Avoid excessive worrying about sleep and its consequences.
- Recognize that ruminating on past sleep troubles can exacerbate anxiety.
- Limit discussions about sleep problems with others to reduce focus on negative aspects.
- Audit your daily habits to identify situations where you dwell on sleep issues and reduce them.
- Consider eliminating sleep trackers, which can contribute to anxiety.
- No Worrying in Bed:
- Distinguish between a "worry" (an automatic thought) and "worrying" (elaborating on that thought).
- Understand that while you cannot control worries that pop into your mind, you can control how you respond to them.
- Establish a "midnight plan" for when you find yourself unable to sleep, which could include reading, listening to audiobooks, or other relaxing activities instead of worrying.
- Schedule Time to Worry on Purpose:
- Create a designated time to worry, which can help train your brain to worry less at inappropriate times.
- Set aside 10-15 minutes in the evening to write down worries on paper without trying to solve them.
- After the time is up, discard the list to reinforce that worrying is contained to that scheduled time.
- This technique acts as a form of exposure therapy, helping to reduce the fear of worries and enabling you to let them go more easily.
Presenters/Sources:
- Nick Bunal, Clinical Psychologist and Founder of The Friendly Mind.
Notable Quotes
— 00:08 — « Sleep anxiety is not a sleep problem, it's an anxiety problem. »
— 00:42 — « Counterintuitively ignoring the sleep part and instead focusing on the anxiety part. »
— 03:07 — « Worrying is a choice; it's a behavior that can be habitual, but like any habit, you can break it. »
— 12:20 — « Worrying in bed is like the worst thing you can possibly do if you struggle with insomnia or sleep anxiety. »
— 28:11 — « Scheduled worry is essentially exposure therapy for chronic worry; by deliberately approaching your worries, you show your brain that they're uncomfortable but not dangerous. »
Category
Wellness and Self-Improvement