Insomnia, insomnia at night, dead sleep, should I lie down hard or get up
What do you mostly do when you have insomnia at night and can’t sleep?
Don’t lie down hard.
Don’t lie down hard.
Don’t lie down hard.
Lying down hard can increase your anxiety and make it more difficult to sleep.
Also, if you’re always awake in bed, it sets up a conditioning that will drive you crazy later: bed = awake.
When the connection between bed and wakefulness becomes stronger, you may be awake as soon as you lie in bed, as if everything comes back to you, and the final tragedy is: chronic insomnia.
When you can’t sleep, get up decisively
It’s simple and important to do just that: get up decisively.
The purpose of this action is to:
Avoid anxiety.
Cut the connection between bed and wakefulness.
You may be thinking: You should always be more or less rested lying down, so will getting up cause not enough rest?
You’re overthinking it. It turns out that laying down hard doesn’t give you a good night’s rest, and if you become anxious about falling asleep, it increases your brain power and makes you more sleepy the next day.
When you get up, don’t look at the time
When you get up, two things are best not to do: swipe your phone and look at the time.
The blue light from your phone suppresses nighttime melatonin production, which can further disrupt your sleep. In addition, a phone hooked up to the Internet will have a flood of information coming at you, and too much information stimulation will also make you more excited, which will interfere with the rest of your sleep.
Why can’t you check the time?
The concept of time can increase your anxiety.
Imagine you set an alarm for 7:00 tomorrow, and you get up at night when you can’t sleep and look at the time, and holy cow, it’s 2:00 am! The brain automatically calculates 7-2=5, so you have 5 hours to sleep, you’re anxious and anxious, and you can’t sleep any more.
So one of the biggest tips for getting a good night’s sleep is: no matter what time you wake up at night, don’t look at the time.
And besides, you don’t need to know the time, because there are no appointments or meetings coming up anyway. And then again, you can pretend that clocks haven’t been invented yet.
When you get up, you can read a book
So what do you do when you get up?
There are many activities to choose from, such as:
Read a paper book
Meditate with positive thoughts
Listen to light music or white noise
Go to the balcony and look at the night sky
Myself, I mostly read books. It is recommended to read non-fiction books. It is not recommended to read novels that you have never read before because the plot is too exciting. We recommend reading books on money management, workplace growth, and psychology. If you are a pregnant mother, it is recommended to read scientific parenting books, which can be a knowledge base for your baby.
In my clinic, I would suggest that people make a list of books in advance and get up to read whenever they can’t sleep at night. The end result is better insomnia, better temperament, and a better sense of well-being.
Can you boil a show or play a game?
This depends on the person, use with caution.
However, it can be used for people who use “sleep restriction therapy” in CBTI.
CBTI is a cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. The main approach of this treatment is to correct your wrong sleep perceptions and suggest the correct scientific perceptions, while using scientific behaviors to gradually and progressively improve your sleep drive and eventually return you to ideal sleep.
There is a type of CBTI called “sleep restriction therapy” that artificially compresses your sleep time, reducing the amount of time you spend lying in bed and increasing sleep efficiency while improving your sleep drive for better sleep in the future.
Example:
Set your morning to get up at 7:00 am and start sleeping at 2:00 pm. Don’t sleep any more until then, carry on.
How? If you don’t have a reading habit, you are allowed to play games or watch movies for a while. Although the blue light from the screen interferes with melatonin production, this is an acceptable loss compared to what we ultimately need.
In short, whether you choose to read or watch a movie, the book or movie list should be thought out in advance, not improvised.
You may ask: If you do that, won’t you be more sleepy during the day?
Yes, the first few days or weeks, you may be very sleepy during the day. But the goal is to have better sleep later, so you have to balance the present moment with the future.
To reduce the impact of daytime sleepiness on your life and work, in my clinic I choose a weekend or a mini vacation to start sleep restriction therapy.
Finally, a summary rant:
The bed is best used only for sleeping.
Get up when you can’t sleep and go back to sleep when you’re sleepy.
Don’t check the time at night.
Get up at a regular time in the morning.