Night time activities

What do you do when you wake in the night?

Seems like a strange question and I am guessing that most people would say that they lie in bed, tossing and turning and trying to get back to sleep - all the while stressing about not sleeping.

I had a new client recently and she wanted to find the final piece of the puzzle to help her sleep through the night. She had had insomnia for years and done a lot of work in improving it, but would still wake in the night. During this time she would play on-line games and work with clients on the other side of the world. that combined with exercising late at night meant that she was doing 3 activities that were stimulating her brain and not helping herself to get into a relaxed state in which to fall asleep.

My initial reaction was to encourage her to stop these activities and go through new ideas to help her relax and start sleeping through the night. However the more I listened to her, the more I realised that actually she had worked out a lifestyle that suited her.

I have mentioned in a previous post that in the past we had segmented sleep and this idea is still a big talking point in the sleep community and are we going against nature to try and sleep through the night? While we know it is possible to sleep in 8 hours blocks, most people actually do wake in the night and then fall straight back to sleep again and have no recollection of waking, therefore believe they have slept through. For some people, waking in the night means waking in the night and staying awake a while (for some a long while!)

What this girl had done was to build a lifestyle round segmented sleep. She would sleep for a while, then wake - do some work, play games etc then go back to sleep again - her second sleep. Luckily for her, she is self employed and has international clients, so actually this lifestyle works well for her.

I have also found that a some barworkers and 'graveyard' shift workers have insomnia and difficulty going to sleep - now this could be a reflection on their lifestyle, but could it also be that they have found a lifestyle that suits their sleeping patterns. When I have talked with them, they often say that they had poor sleeping habits before they started their work and again, when you talk to them of ways to change it, they don't really want to as it doesn't really bother them that much; they know that if they go to sleep late that they can sleep in during the morning.

In the end I only had a couple of sessions with this client and she left feeling more confident that actually her seep pattern, though strange, did actually work. When totaling up her sleep hours she was getting enough sleep and was not feeling tired or exhausted (common complaints of insomnia). By allowing her to have this pattern also meant that she stopped worrying about sleep and therefore slept better, she also allowed herself to sleep later in the mornings and restructured her day slightly to allow herself enough time to sleep in these two blocks.

So what do you get up to in the night? Are you like my client and can use your insomnia constructively? Or do you prefer to be able to sleep through the night? Rest assured that whatever your sleep style preferences there are ways available to help you achieve them!

Sweet dreams.