Sleepless in Suffolk

It’s a wrap – Ssshhhh – I now sleep like a baby.

Thanks to sleep counselling, Parris is now sleeping soundly and equipped with a whole host of tools and techniques if she ever struggles with her sleep in the future.

I have now finished my eight-week programme with Sleepstation. At the end of the programme, they give you a report so you can see how well your sleep has improved and if your overall sleep efficiency score has gone up, which mine had!

The top things that I am going to take away from this programme is the sleep restriction. I have come to realise that just because I get into bed earlier, doesn’t mean I am going to get to sleep earlier and that it usually has the opposite effect. I need to push through and try and stick to a routine of going to bed and getting up at roughly the same time.

Another tool, one of which I have probably used the most throughout this process, is cognitive control. Whether that is the repetitive word method or the visualisation one, they both really work for me and I find help me to drift off a lot faster than normal.

Although I don’t think it is something that I will be able to continuously keep up, I will return to writing a diary about my day. Especially when I feel as though I have a busy period in my life, it felt good to just dump all my thoughts onto a page so that they were there in black and white. It was also a great way to help me realise the stuff that I had accomplished throughout the day or even the week. It definitely removed some of the worries I had when I would think about things that I didn’t get done or thought I hadn’t.

I can’t say that I have had a perfect night sleep every night since starting this programme, what with Coronavirus still around and the ever-changing lockdown rules, it would be hard for anyone to have a normal sleeping pattern throughout all of that. However, if I have had a bad night’s sleep I try and reflect on why. I think about what I did or maybe didn’t do and then try and rectify it. I still don’t really stick to the same bedtime at the weekends but I make sure I don’t stay up as late as I used to as I know this will have a knock-on effect on my sleep for the rest of the week.

This whole process has been a real eye-opener for me and has helped me to address sleep issues that I didn’t realise that I had as well as give me the tools to help me get the best sleep possible.

If you need help with your sleep and would like to find out more about Sleepstation you can call 0800 6300 443 or get in touch with your local welfare officer.

It’s the final week of my Sleepstation programme and we’ve been talking about the benefit of exercise on your sleep. Most people know that some kind of physical exercise is proven to help improve your sleep but Sleepstation goes into more depth and talks about how the level of intensity has a profound effect. According to the World Health Organisation we should do at least 150 minutes of exercise a week, but the harder you work the better your sleep will be.

Increasing your heart rate and getting out of breath increases daytime alertness which helps to improve fatigue. I am generally quite an active person. I exercise five times a week in various ways including running and weights but like many others I have found it hard to get motivated to move around in the day. Working from home has definitely decreased my step count. At the offcie, the walk from the car park, popping upstairs to one of the other offices or nipping into town to grab lunch all usually help me hit my step count. But when your office and kitchen are the same place it proves very difficult to get those steps up.

I’ve tried to make the conscious effort to go out for a walk on my lunch break and even though it’s not vigorous exercise it really helps with my mental health which in turn improves my sleep. I’m going to try and stick to these lunch walks, a sort of New Year’s resolution and hope that along with all the other techniques I have learnt from Sleepstation, my sleep will improve.

Find out more about Sleepstation here

The cognitive control technique has really improved my sleep. I find that I can get to sleep faster than I did before I started this programme. However, I am still waking up in the night worrying about various things. The next technique that Sleepstation have introduced to me is mindfulness.

They talk about something called a body scan, where you lay down and focus on tensing and relaxing each part of your body from your toes to your head. I found this easiest when I had a bit of guidance, so I downloaded the Calm app which has some great meditation clips to go through the process with you.

I’ve also learnt that mindfulness isn’t just about meditating but also just slowing down and taking time to take everything in. Having a hot bath before bed has really helped me. It gives me that time to relax and go over my day in my head before I get into bed where it would usually end up keeping me awake.

The last few nights I’ve felt really relaxed going to bed. Usually I would feel anxious about going to bed as I would worry about whether or not I would be able to sleep and if I was going to feel tired the next day, but these techniques are really helping so slow down my thoughts and prepare me for a good night’s sleep.

I have also discovered that rain sounds also help me relax, these are also available on the Calm app. I only use the free version which still has loads of great resources but you can pay extra for even more including sleep audio books.

Find out more about Sleepstation here

After the past few weeks of the Sleepstation programme, it has become clear that most of my sleep issues stem from overthinking. It is not uncommon for me to wake up multiple times a night, worrying or thinking about different things. I’m sure this is a common problem for a lot of people, and I think the current pandemic has definitely worsened it.

This week Sleepstation introduced me to cognitive control in the way of thought blocking. I mentioned at the start of this programme that one of my sleep advisers talked to me about using the repetitive word technique, but these are a bit more in depth than that. Obviously, everyone is different and Sleepstation works with you to find what techniques you will benefit from the most.

I am quite a visual person so they suggested that when I cannot get to sleep I try and really visualise an object, something that isn’t emotionally connected to anything, such as a banana, and try and visualise the whole thing from tip to end. Once I have that visual you then change the colour and re-visualise it all over again. This method is meant to stop the mind from filling up with emotion.

Sleepstation also introduced me to two other techniques, a word one and a number one but I decided to stick with the visualisation. I’ve tried this for the past two nights and it seems to be working okay, I do find my mind wandering back to my worries, which the advisers said isn’t uncommon, but I just try and get back to the cognitive control.

It is quite a hard technique to master as you almost feel as though your brain shouldn’t be working this hard before bed but like I said as it’s not an emotive subject/object, you’re not likely to wake up worrying about what colour the banana should be like! What I do like about this technique is that it doesn’t feel like a sleep technique, unlike counting sheep, it’s not something you automatically relate to sleep which in turn gets rid of those ‘how many hours sleep am I going to get’ thoughts.

Find out more about Sleepstation here

I’ve always heard of people having notepads beside their beds to write down thoughts and ideas when they wake up at night, but it has never really worked for me. Sleepstation’s next piece of guidance for me was to do a diary that was to be completed at least an hour before I went to bed. There were four sections to this diary; the first was to write down what I had managed to achieve that day, no matter how big or small. Next up was a list of the things I needed to get done the following day, followed by the actions I had put in place to help me achieve them. Finally, I had to write down how I’d been feeling that day.

This technique really helped me with the spiralling thoughts that I tend to get when trying to get to sleep, worrying about what I had on the following day. I don’t think this is something that I can keep up all the time but especially on those days where I feel as though things are getting on top of me and life feels a bit hectic. I’ve felt that it has helped me sleep better as all those worries that I usually have are down on paper.  I don’t have to worry if I have forgotten to do something and I worry less about what I need to do as I know that I have my list and plans in place to achieve them the following day.

At the end of week four, my bedtime has become earlier; I can get into bed no earlier than 10.30pm which was not far off what time I would get into bed before I started the programme. I have found that this later bedtime is definitely decreasing the time I spend tossing and turning trying to get to sleep.

Find out more about Sleepstation here