New year, more sleep?

I never usually make New Year resolutions, mainly because my birthday is at the beginning of January and it's no fun starting a diet on the 1st of Jan when you know that you're going out celebrating in a few days time!
Yep, I was the person who gave up smoking on the 10th January 2000, I still get weird looks from people when asked about that.

However having this slightly more realistic time frame works and makes me far less likely to give up on my new plans after a few days.

The other thing that I have found works well is to have positive resolutions rather than negative one or at least to phrase them in a positive way. Wordplay helps a lot in making it more likely to be a successful resolution.

Telling yourself that you are going on a diet immediately fills your head with images of boring food, no treats, a strict regime etc. Telling yourself that you are going to make healthy food choices gives you a wide range of foods to choose from and more options to think about.

Likewise telling yourself that you are going to get fit, or have a slim body feels so much better than telling yourself you are going to lose weight or go jogging every day.

You can also try positive resolutions such as making 2013 the year you complete a 10k run, or go skydiving, write a book or a blog. It needn't be a big (or even expensive choice) you can resolve to say 'Yes' more often and see where that takes you, or start writing a gratitude diary every evening and see how that puts you in a more positive frame of mind. You could try smiling at passers-by in the street - it makes both you and them feel good, or giving out more compliments.

One of the things that I'm adding to my list is to go to bed a little earlier than I do at the moment! On 'school nights' I tend to get around 7 hours sleep but this is not enough for me, so I need to go to bed a little earlier. I know it will help me both physically and mentally (more energy, stamina, reduced appetite etc), but tend to find myself just checking out 'one more thing' on the internet before going to bed. The worst thing is that I know that I'm doing it and still do nothing about it!
In order to make it easier I'm going to set my alarm to remind me to go to bed! It's something I read about and thought 'Hey that's a great idea' but have never done. So 2013 is going to be the year I do it. I'm also going to make it realistic and aim for 15 minutes extra sleep to start with, I know that if I set for an extra hour I'll still think I have plenty of time for sleep and so ignore it and stay up! I feel I will be more successful if I do gradual increments, well I've got a whole year to get there!

Why not make 2013 the year to improve your sleep? It will reduce your stress levels, improve your health, help you lose weight and give you more energy - all pretty good results from one resolution!

Sweet dreams.

Dreams

There was this amazing cloud formation in the sky that looked exactly like a fish, the white clouds forming the scales, the sky a perfect, pale blue behind it. I kept trying to get in the best position for the perfect photo but there always seemed to be something blocking it, getting in the way. It was frustrating and then I woke up!

We all dream, some remember more of them than others, some dream in black and white and others in colour.

However no ones knows why we dream! Just as scientists have no idea why we sleep, there is no definitive answer to why we dream - however there are a lot of theories.

It is commonly agreed that we remember most dreams that happen in the REM stage as this our lightest level of sleep and if we are woken while in the dream, we remember it more easily.
There are theories that it is the brain sorting out information gathered during the day, either processing what is useful to remember and what is not, or as others believe, that dreams help us form new neural pathways in the brain to be able to access information more easily.
Other theories say that frightening and scary dreams are our subconscious trying out the brains flight or fight response.  Some say that they reflect the emotional part of our lives that gets shut down during the day as we are too busy with other stuff.
Another theory is that they do not really serve any function but are just a by product of the brain working while we sleep.

Though at the moment we cannot be sure of why we dream, we do and we spend a lot of time doing it! If you are someone who does not remember dreams vividly and would like to, then try this tip - the moment you wake quickly think back into your dream and try and recall just one image, or feeling or even a word. Just hold your self there and gently focus on that image or feeling then ask 'What happened before?' and see what image or feeling you get then. At first you may get very little, but the more times you do this and focus on recalling your dreams the more you will remember and the easier it becomes.

I learnt to recall my dreams when I was  teenager - a side effect of insomnia is that you dream more frequently and more vividly and have been able to do so ever since Most days I will get up without choosing to focus on my dreams, but enjoy having a little extra time at the weekends to go back and recall them. Most of them are run of the mill and the same old, same old but occasionally a stand out dream will make a big impression on me and it these ones that I take the time to interpret. I look on a dream interpretation as a fun thing to do, well you'd want to know why you were snorkeling with George Clooney, wouldn't you?

My dreams have definitely changed over the years, during one period of my life I used to dream of being chased up and down stairs, another time that I was trying to pack but couldn't fit everything in my bag. Then there were the fear dreams of being naked etc. Mostly at the moment I get obstacle dreams which I can relate to setting up a new business venture - and that's what the fish dream was about!

So what do you dream about?
I hope they're great ones!

Troublesome Thoughts

Let's do a little hand raise here - How many of you have lain awake at night worrying about a situation? It either stops you going to sleep or getting back to sleep if you wake in the night? Though you know there is nothing you can do about it there and then, you still can't switch off your brain and go to sleep.

I still get occasional nights like this and I think that's natural, most people would admit to this, it is a rare and lucky few that can sleep untroubled every single night.

There may be a work presentation, an ill relative, financial worries - in fact a myriad of different things can play on your mind and stop that elusive sleep from happening! If you already have difficulties sleeping this can really add to the problem.

I remember back in my insomnia days when I had been appointed manager at a Children's Centre that I slept badly for months worrying about whether I was good enough for the job. This was crazy - I had gone through an interview process and had already worked for the service, so they knew who I was and what I could do, so they were obviously confident with my abilities. Even the fact that my line manager rarely came to my Centre didn't reassure me, I just thought of a whole heap of reasons why she was avoiding coming to the Centre - none of which included the thought that it was because I was doing a good job of managing it and that she didn't need to spend much time supervising me.

It was easier to slip into my pattern of troublesome thoughts and turn into a worry wort. At this stage in my life I would worry about the strangest of things. I was a worse case scenario type of person and would think about the worse thing that could possibly happen and focus on that instead of taking reassurance about how unlikely that would be.

Things changed when a new friend talked to me about how he was always worrying and if he realised that he was not worrying about something would then think of something to worry about! Though his behaviour seemed extreme I realised that I was guilty of a little bit of this behaviour and that this was not a good place to be living my life and began to change my thought patterns.

So what to do if you have troublesome thoughts that are keeping you awake at night?

Try having a notebook by your bed and before you go to sleep each night write down the things that are bothering you and what you will do about them tomorrow. There is something about writing things down that helps take it out of the mind and breaks the thought cycle. If you do start thinking about it again you can gently tell yourself that you have made a note of it and do not need to think further about it.

Colin Epsie (Director University of Glasgow Sleep Centre) suggests that you repeat a word to block the thought patterns in your head. He recommends the word 'the' as it is a very neutral word. So when you are in bed with a busy mind, just keep repeating the word 'the'.

You can also try some EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) I have put up a video on what to do on my Youtube channel here (sorry that the sound is slightly out f sync).

Good luck on breaking the thought cycle!

Sweet dreams

Clock Watching

A bit of a preamble till I get to the point of this post, but I will get there, I promise!

Last week there was a programme on sleep disorders on the BBC and it took five people with sleep difficulties and diagnosed them, then set about making a plan for them. I found it both fascinating and reassuring. Reassuring as lot of the techniques they use, I use with my clients and in my programmes. Fascinating as some of the volunteers thought they had one problem and actually it was something else!

For example one guy had a 'snoring' problem that was keeping his wife awake and he actually had sleep apnea, which is a very serious condition. The other guy with the snoring problem actually slept very well on his own, it was because his partner kept waking him (due to his snoring) that he was getting poor quality sleep!

There was one lady, called Gwen, who has chronic insomnia and had a very negative mindset about sleeping, which is not surprising when you've not been sleeping for over 30 years.
What I found interesting - and I'm now getting into the main part of this post - was that according to the sleep experts, Gwen had the perfect bedroom for sleep, except for one thing - she had an alarm clock where the time display glowed in the dark.

It may seem unusual to say that an alarm clock is out of place in a bedroom, but it's not the alarm it is the fact you can read the time during the night. Gwen had the perfect bedroom - calm colours, heavy curtains, no clutter, a good supportive bed etc. She also claimed not to clock watch but at the same time was able to tell you how much sleep she thought she got each night.
Now - here's another interesting bit, when she spent a night at the sleep clinic and was wired up to monitors she claimed not have slept at all (and, poor thing, looked like she hadn't slept) but what the monitors showed was that she had slept in short little bursts for a total of 4 hours. Over half her time in bed.

Yes, this was not a refreshing and restorative way to sleep, but she was actually sleeping. The experts then came up with a plan of sleep condensing to help her get a more solid block of sleep, which did eventually work for her.

What I found interesting was this belief that she had not slept at all. How often do we tell ourselves how little we have slept? I used to do this. Then I took the alarm clock out of my room. This stopped my clock watching. I was no longer able to estimate how little or even how much I'd slept. If I woke in the night I had no way of knowing if it was midnight or 3am. Initially I found this strange but in only a few nights I actually found this really liberating and actually began to sleep a little better.
If I woke up instead of going into a panic mode of thinking I only had 4 more hours to get some sleep, 3 and half hours, 3 hours and so on.... I was able to tell myself I had plenty of time to get some sleep. I was no longer able to get into a panic about how little sleep I was getting which would start me off in a cycle of anxiety and further reduce any chance of getting back to sleep.

Now when I wake in the night, I feel relaxed. I know I have already had some sleep (a good thing!) and that I have plenty of time to get some more (another good thing). As I am relaxed and not anxious I am able to get back to sleep more easily.

So my suggestion is that you take all clocks out of your bedroom. If you need the alarm function, then cover up any luminous clock displays or turn them to the wall. If you use a phone as your alarm then experiment with switching the phone off. For most modern mobile phones the alarm will still function even if you turn the phone off.

Why not try this out for a week and see what it does for your sleep and please comment below to let me know!

Sweet dreams.