How to trace negative thoughts

You must face the insidious negative thoughts – and identify the negative attitudes, beliefs and prejudices that surround your dream. Having identified a negative thought, you will begin to argue objectively, decide to challenge it – and in the end stop it. About this in the next chapter.

Listed below are preconceived key thoughts for insomnia.

Fortuneteller error
You anticipate the negative outcome of events and behave as if it is an established fact – “I won’t sleep tonight.”
In fact: not scary if you are not able to control your sleep. You can ease this process, but sleep is controlled by a homeostat and a circadian rhythm. Stop pushing yourself and let the dream do its job.

The search for the guilty
You see the cause of any problem and complexity in the fact that you are not sleeping well – “I stumbled on the step because I was tired (a)” or “I quarreled (es) with a friend because of overworking”.
In fact: sleep affects mood, concentration, memory and effective work, but it is not the only cause of problems. Do not consider insomnia to be an excuse for bad behavior, unwillingness to make an effort or failure.

Waiting for disaster
You associate extraordinary circumstances with the fact that you have lost sleep, overestimating the possibility of collapse and underestimating your own ability to cope with the situation, for example: “At work, everyone will think that I am not at ease because I always look tired”.
In fact: lack of sleep can be replenished in a few weeks and months – and only about a third of lost sleep time will have to be replenished. If you have not slept well for several nights in a row – do not panic, everything can be corrected! Do not think about insomnia. Knowing this, you will finally stop worrying about how it will affect your daily life – and you will stop obstructing your sleep by changing your behavior.

Black and white thinking
Everything is clear, black or white – “I slept well at night!” And, on the contrary, “I slept terribly at night”, or “I feel great because I slept well” and, conversely, “ I feel disgusting because I didn’t get enough sleep. ”
In fact: it is impossible to talk about the ideal duration of sleep. How good or bad you sleep at night is not directly related to a good or bad day: good days happen when you are tired, and bad days when you are not tired. That is life. Agree that with reference to sleep we should talk about shades of gray.

Excessive generalization
You inflate a single event, risking to transfer it to a continuous mode: “I will never sleep again” or “If I worry the next time, I will not be able to sleep.”
Actually: just because you didn’t sleep well at night doesn’t mean that you have to suffer from insomnia all week. Use the sleep magazine to compare how you worked during the day after a sleepless night – it is possible that you did an excellent job. In addition, when starting to apply our strategies in practice, you probably noticed some positive changes that refute the hypothesis that it is impossible to change the wrong sleep pattern.

Tunnel vision
Anxious about a dream, you judge biased. Focus on insomnia, ignoring other information. For example, they are convinced that you owe a pain in your shoulder to a sleepless night, and not to play golf the day before.
In fact: stop constantly thinking about how you sleep. If you concentrate on bodily symptoms, only exacerbate them; constantly looking for evidence that insomnia is destroying life, you will not help yourself. Find some business to take your mind off and focus on what really matters.