INSOMNIA
To lie awake in bed, desperate for sleep after a busy day but unable to drop off, is one of the most frustrating and upsetting things. We’re all familiar with the thoughts that run through our mind: ‘I really need to sleep. Tomorrow will be hard enough without a sleepless night!’ and ‘I am so tired, why can’t I drop off?’ Then we have the unrelated thoughts that keep us awake, the ones where we go over the day’s events or worry about the work we need to do tomorrow. We can’t seem to switch off, to drift off into some much-needed sleep.
Most people have occasional episodes of insomnia but they are able to make up for it the following night. If it’s a more regular occurrence the exhaustion starts to pervade every aspect of our lives and we start to make decisions based on the insomnia rather than our real selves. We start to turn down social invitations: ‘I’ll be too tired to enjoy it: I don’t feel in the mood to socialize.’ We fret about work projects thought the lens of sleeplessness: ‘I hope I don’t mess this presentation up, I’m too tired to give it my full attention’. We start to snap at the people closest to us or we start to feel sad and hopeless.
The first step back to the real you starts with an explanation of what is happening in the thought process centre of your mind. Once we have an image of that, it becomes easier to see the path back to restful sleep.
Here’s an image for you. Picture a young child, perhaps 7 or 8, who can’t sleep. Imagine sitting next to them and saying ‘You must sleep: you won’t enjoy school tomorrow if you don’t sleep!’ So the child closes their eyes and waits, mulling over your warning. You wait for a moment, watching them and then say ‘are you asleep yet?’ The child, eyes shut tight, says ‘not yet’. You wait some more and then say ‘What about now?’ There is no way the child can sleep with the warning thought in his head and the constant reference to the problem from you. It sounds obvious doesn’t it? Yet we do it to ourselves all the time and expect a different result. We lie in bed thinking about our inability to sleep. We dwell on the problems we may face tomorrow because of our tiredness. Insomnia is a problem that grows in size the longer we focus on it.
Our minds have two points of view in our thought processes. The first one is the fastest and it comes from the primitive mind. It is concerned with our survival. This part (the amygdala) plays a role in our freeze, fight and flight responses. If we worry about something this part focuses its attention onto the problem and adds the necessary fuel to help us deal with it, the stress hormone, cortisol. This would be great if you needed to stay awake because of a possible threat to your safety. If you see an angry dog coming towards you it’s this primitive bit that reacts to the threat, it plays its role in flooding you with adrenaline and you run, faster than you realised you could run. This part of our mind focuses on problems. It is fabulous at keeping you safe, but when it looks for the problems in life it can’t tell the difference between ‘worry’ and ‘danger’. These two look the same to it, so for
both of these it provides you with the stress hormone it thinks you need. This is excellent for the wild dog bit and not so handy when all you need is to go to sleep.
In the normal course of events, it is the other point of view that gets involved in your thoughts about sleeping. This is the intellectual you, the “real” you. This is the bit that can learn a language, plan a holiday, fly a plane, or whatever else you have set your focus and intellect on. This is your pre-frontal cortex, the bit where you think through a task before you do it. This is why we humans are so inventive: we are able to iron out problems in our imagination before we run into them in life. This bit is a positive, solution-focused point of view.
How Can Hypnotherapy Help with Insomnia?
There is a skill in learning to change your focus, to being aware of thought patterns and learning how to change them. Your hypnotherapist will listen to how insomnia affects you and together you will formulate a goal that you wish to aim for. There are certain mental exercises that will assist you in dealing with the accumulative stresses that result from repeated episodes of insomnia. We call this ‘emptying your stress bucket’, and we do this in two ways, by exercises and by trance. As we start emptying your stress bucket, it becomes easier for you to feel more in control, especially of the negative thought patterns that perpetuate insomnia.
The trance state is a perfectly natural state. You will be in full control: it feels like becoming fully absorbed in a story on the radio. When we allow our minds to be in this trance state, the two parts of our minds come together in a positive way so that we are able to make a forward-looking mental plan to reach our goal. This allows us to make an inner mental rehearsal of things going well. This planning allows us to change the way we go to sleep.
We provide a CD for you to listen to when you get into bed at night. The CD is a relaxation tool that helps you relax the body and the mind, because if your mind is ruminating on problems, your body will tense up. What we think affects what we feel physically and vice versa.
Email or phone us here at North Cardiff Hypnotherapy for more information, or come and see us for an initial consultation. We will help you shift your focus onto the solution and away from the problem. When we do that we can break the vicious circle of insomnia and the worry about lack of sleep leading to insomnia and get you back to you at your best.
What Can I Do Before My Appointment?
First check with your Doctor that there is no illness affecting your sleep quality. Then develop good bedtime habits. Don’t use your computer in bed. Switch your phone off. Don’t watch TV in bed. Your mind needs clear clues to your intentions. If you suffer from insomnia then your mind may be ‘primed’ to expect being in bed to be a trial, a time of frustration because of your sleep problems.
Here’s an exercise to ‘prime’ your body to relax and rest.
Lie in bed and imagine you are running a relaxing body scan, think about the muscles of your face, check you’re not frowning or clenching your teeth. Think about your neck and shoulder muscles, allow them to relax and settle comfortably on the pillow. Imagine this wave of relaxation travelling all the way down your body, think about your arms, then your legs relaxing, settling, and becoming more comfortable. Now focus on your breathing, don’t try to change it, just notice it, and focus on it for a few moments.
Now ‘prime’ your mind to relax.The old story of counting sheep has a core of truth in it. Counting is calming, count slowly, every time your mind wanders, bring it back to the counting. Another calming mind exercise is to picture your favourite outdoor place. Maybe it’s a beach. Picture walking on this beach, what can you see? Think about the colours. What can you hear, the sound of the waves or the wind and perhaps seagulls? What can you touch? What does the sand feel like on your bare feet? Soft warm and silky or perhaps it’s cool and firm? Make your beach image detailed in your mind.
Finally, be kind to yourself! Getting cross with ourselves for having a problem is a very human response, ‘Why can’t I sleep? Everyone else seems to manage it!’ However, if a friend said ‘I’m having real problems sleeping’, we would be kind and sympathetic. We understand the value of support for others, so let’s practice it on ourselves.
Hypnotherapy provides very real strategies to help aid restful night’s sleep and get you back to feeling like you at your best rather than a tired shadow of the real you.
