Tips For a Better Night's Sleep

Sleep is such an important part of our health and wellbeing. Not getting enough sleep, or not having enough restful sleep can negatively impact not only our physical health, but our mental health as well. Symptoms of depression, stress and anxiety are all associated with difficulty sleeping, and sometimes it can even be a vicious cycle where a lack of good quality sleep can maintain our depression or anxiety. For example, when we feel depressed, we often experience "apathy" which means having little motivation or desire to do things that we usually enjoy. So if we are having difficulty sleeping (which is actually common when we are depressed), we are more likely to feel tired and even less motivated to go out and do things, which causes us to feel even more depressed. A lack of sleep can also cause us to feel more irritable and on edge, which can then affect our relationships with others, causing us to feel more isolated which can also bring down our mood.

Looking after our sleep is then an important part of looking after ourselves and our mental wellbeing, but at the same time, difficulty sleeping is also a very common experience for most people. So if you do notice that your sleep is being affected, it's important to take it seriously and do things to improve it, however it's also important not to panic, as worrying about not being able to sleep actually makes it harder to fall asleep.

If you are looking to improve the quality of your sleep, here are a few things you can try. It's important to be consistent with implementing these changes, as well as patient, if you don't see progress straight away don't give up, it's normal for it to take a few weeks before becoming effective.

Get into a sleep routine

Bedtime routines shouldn't be just for kids. It's actually a healthy sleeping habit to have a routine before going to sleep that's about the same every night. This helps your brain prepare itself for sleep. Usually a sleep routine that allows you to unwind and relax before bed is best, for example having a warm shower, doing a bit of meditation or listening to soothing music, are some ideas of things you can incorporate into a sleep routine.

Keep your bed just for sleeping

The human brain is great at forming associations, and one association we like it to make is linking sleeping with our beds. If we do a million other things in our beds, like reading, working on our laptops, speaking on the phone, watching TV or eating, then our brain will associate all those things, and ultimately being awake, with our beds rather than sleep. So to keep it simple, make sure you don't do anything else in bed other than sleep, and soon your brain will associate being tired and sleeping with being in bed.

Go to bed when you are tired

One of the most frustrating things can be lying in bed for hours and not being able to fall asleep. As well as being frustrating, staying in bed when you can't sleep actually makes it harder to associate our beds with sleeping. Instead, our bed becomes associated with feeling restless, anxious and frustrated, and so more difficult to fall asleep. For this reason, it's important to get into bed when you are feeling sleepy, and if you find that it's taking more than 20 minutes to fall asleep, get out of bed and do something else that's not too active. For example, read a book, listen to soothing music or even practise some relaxation exercises. Once you start feeling tired again then you can go back to bed.

Avoid caffeine at night

Avoiding caffeine before going to bed may be an obvious tip, but it also includes being aware of certain foods or drinks that you may not have realised actually contain caffeine. For example, black tea is almost as high in caffeine as is coffee, and green tea actually contains more caffeine than coffee. Chocolate can also be a stimulant so if you are having trouble sleeping, it's probably best to avoid before bed.

Avoid taking naps

It's not helpful to take naps during the day as this just makes you less tired at night and so less likely to be able to fall asleep. Napping during the day disrupts your sleep cycle so it's better to avoid sleeping in the day time so that you can be more tired at night.

Don't watch the clock

Most people would be able to relate to counting down the hours until having to wake up the next day when you can't sleep, or calculating how many hours of sleep you have left before you need to wake up for work. Doing this only adds to anxiety about not being able to sleep, and the more anxious we are the harder it will be to fall asleep. It can be very tempting to look at the clock during the night, but a healthier habit is to rather not have a clock in the bedroom and not be focussed on what time it is. If you do this you may find that you start feeling less anxious and less pressured to fall asleep.