When you can’t sleep, your brain becomes clogged, sucking up all your thoughts. You attempt to control involuntary functions such as breathing. You start to assess your nights as successes or failures: “Last night I slept for three hours, this is the least in a week — failure!” You put more and more pressure on yourself to succeed, which leads to the opposite result. Thoughts that you are not sleeping turn into a self-fulfilling prediction by themselves: you think about a dream when you should sleep! Night time becomes severe torture, not time for unloading and rest.
Physical and emotional reactions
Experiencing stress and anxiety, you are physically tense. The “fight or flight” response — the legacy of cave life — is activated, and the body goes into “attack mode”. The hormones adrenaline and cortisol nourish the body, straining the muscles, heartbeat quickens, the body releases sweat, and blood rushes to those areas of the body and brain that most need it.
All this is fine if you fight a shaggy mammoth, but it’s terrible if you try to relax and fall asleep. You are frightened that you are not sleeping; the body recognizes the feeling of fear, and not the reason behind it, which may soon lead to a feeling of physical exhaustion.
Misbehavior
Loss of sleep can affect your behavior in two ways – both in “daytime” and “nightlife”. It can provoke uncharacteristic actions during the day, since you are dormant and unable to concentrate – for example, shout at people or drink a lot of coffee to cheer up. And when you try to sleep, you also behave differently – for example, tossing and turning from side to side for too long or taking a sleeping pill. Trying to control the process, you radically change the sleep homeostat and your diurnal rhythm, which makes it difficult to return to natural sleep.
Symptom checklist
Now, when you imagine how chaotic a sleep mode can be, it’s time to think about why this is happening.
Review the lists below and tick off what seems fair to you.
Emotions
♦ Stress: I feel pressure ♦ Anxiety: I fear the future ♦ Irritation
♦ Dissatisfaction
♦ Depressed mood / sadness / sadness ♦ Depression
♦ Quick mood change
D. Hibberd, D. Asmar. “This book will help you sleep well”
♦ Feel weak during the day
♦ Clumsiness
♦ Tightness in the body
♦ Periodically there is not enough concentration and attention ♦ Tension
♦ Headaches
♦ Upset stomach / digestive problems ♦ Slow reflexes
♦ Loss of orientation
Thoughts
♦ Constantly think about sleep
♦ In addition to sleep, I worry about other problems and stressful situations.
♦ Reflecting on the past and the coming day (not necessarily in a negative way) ♦ Wake up in alarm and can’t fall
asleep
♦ Not having slept, I slowly make decisions during the day
♦ Permanent lethargy and more pessimistic thoughts.
♦ Forgetfulness
Behavior
♦ Avoid communication
♦ Stay up late I go to bed, avoiding bed
♦ Carping to friends, colleagues, family members
♦ I provoke conflicts in relationships with people ♦ I consume more alcohol
♦ Take soft drugs
♦ Take medication (self-medicating)
♦ I sleep in the afternoon
♦ Take time off
♦ I am mistaken at work and at home
Realizing how much your thoughts, actions and feelings affect sleep and how they themselves are affected by sleep, you increase the chances of getting out of the abyss of insomnia. Changing for the better at least one aspect of life, you initiate a domino effect, affecting everything else, including the quality of sleep.
Thoughts are not facts
The most important message of KPT, we will insist on this! It is curious how often we simply agree with what is, in our opinion, fair – without questioning or not realizing what harm it can do.
For example, “no one likes talking to me when I’m tired (a).” Convince yourself that this is a fact, whereas in reality it is complete nonsense. You can’t be sure unless you ask someone if he likes to talk to you when you are tired.
Perhaps these thoughts seem illogical to you, but this is not far from the truth. As you will learn from this chapter, thoughts influence a person’s emotional and physical well-being, as well as his behavior.
D. Hibberd, D. Asmar. “This book will help you sleep well”
Small little thoughts can be disheartening, which provokes tension in the whole body. You suddenly start shouting at a colleague, multiplying the causes of anxiety – and this also will not let you sleep. What you think matters.
When you think about something, it’s just a thought: a hypothesis or an opinion. You need to admit it and agree, then the next time, when a traumatic thought, disguised as a fact, comes to mind, you can challenge it. It’s right? Not! Then let her go.