Oh please let me sleep tonight!

Oh please let me sleep tonight!

Not being able to sleep is misery and there is nothing worse than spending hours wide awake while others are blissfully slumbering away.

Frustrated, you decide you have to get up, creeping around in the dark, hurting yourself as you bump into things. Even your swearing has to be stifled to stop waking others.

It’s a horrible experience, especially if it happens often. It’s also bad for your mental health.

Not sleeping a full eight hours makes us irritable and it makes us anxious the next day due to lack of concentration and then we begin to worry about not sleeping the next night.

Three out of 10 people suffer regular insomnia in Australia, damaging mental and physical health. Are you one of them and what can you do to sleep like those other blissfully unaware partners?

Our bodies and brains operate on a sleep-wake cycle, called the circadian cycle, and it is important to encourage the development and maintenance of this cycle. This means going to bed at the same time and doing similar rituals beforehand — cleaning teeth, putting cat out, reading for a while, stroking your partner.

Some people claim to be night people and others day people but in reality you can become either by changing your circadian cycle over time. Shift work is a nightmare, pun intended.

Caffeine stays in your system for up to 24 hours so even though we feel we would die without that morning get-me-awake-now coffee, that late afternoon one is quite likely to not help you sleep many hours later if you have sleeping problems. Try reducing coffee intake and see what happens.

Also smoking doesn’t help sleep but exercise will as a tired physical body is a sleepy one.

Having the computer or a TV in the bedroom is a no-no. It is more than just visual stimulation. Televisions and computers emit a blue light, which highly stimulates the brain.

Go to http://steropsis.com/flux/ to reset the blue light output on your screen. You get a pleasant rose-coloured screen display instead.

Even if you don’t take the computer to bed you could consider doing this if working at night in your study or lounge room.

Consider these other things. Create a dark room and the right sleeping temperature, not too hot or cold, around 20 degrees is perfect.

If noise is a problem get some white noise like a fan. (Have you noticed that this repetitive sound in summer soothes the brain to slumber?) You can also buy a white noise machine — a perfect birthday present for the partner who has everything. Hee, hee! Can’t wait to see the look on their faces when they open it up.

Soft music, meditation, and a glass of milk are all helpful things to do. For those with hectic work lives, the following is a very good exercise to reduce ruminating — that means going over work problems when preparing the brain for sleep.

Get a work diary and write down the things you need to consider and do, then slam the book shut and mentally dismiss work matters. The act of writing it down externalises the things the brain worries about. This will work but, like all brain changes, it requires discipline and repetition.

Lastly, don’t fret over nights that you don’t sleep as the less you fight, resist, or fear sleeplessness, the more it will tend to go away.

So get that diary out and make a plan to reset your circadian cycle. This is so much better than taking sleeping pills.

Think how much you will love yourself more, others and the world if you change your circadian cycle and sleep like a baby again.

INFO: Gerry North is a gay counsellor.

Contact Gerry at gaycounselling.vpweb.com.au

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