To start this post with, I’m going to spare you the scientific details of why sleep is important for us – this is already old news. I think it’s more appropriate to begin by admitting that sleep is, in fact, one thing we all love to do, and want to do more of. Who hasn’t craved a good lie-in on a day off? Don’t let me get started on the mild feeling of victory we all feel when we wake up in the middle of the night, glance over at our alarm clocks and see we have a few more hours left to doze off.
Meeting our sleep quota is essential for our general wellness, physical health and mental health alike. I do think, though, that people are often more interested in getting the right amount of sleep to serve their physical rest and improve their cognition, rather than sleeping enough to feel well mentally. Sleep deprivation has been linked to higher levels of anxiety and depression, as it both amplifies anticipatory reactions and decreases mood-regulating neurotransmitters in the brain. Although our bodies don’t feel it, our minds suffer from lack of sleep.
Throughout my own struggles with mental health, I’ve had an erratic sleep schedule, often cut on the hours dedicated to sleep for whatever crap I thought I didn’t have enough time for during the day, and had difficulty getting the rest I much needed. My desire to regulate my sleep schedule came before improvements in my mental health, so I witnessed first-hand the benefits of getting good-quality sleep on how my mind worked and felt. And I wish to share these benefits with you today.
Not only that, I also want to show you how to implement these positive changes in your daily life.
Base One: Establishing a routine
I’m a huge fan of routines, as they give us the structure and balance that we need for a minimum waste of time and a maximum use of resources. Routines can be especially helpful with things that we feel we have little to no control over, such as cravings, will to exercise and sleeping. It would make sense to go to bed when and only when you start feeling sleepy, but good sleep hygiene happens before we even get tired. It is the build-up to finally going to bed that counts.
Set aside an hour before your desired bedtime, or when you would ideally go to bed to get the hours of sleep that you need. That hour will be entirely dedicated to your bedtime routine, or the series of activities that you want to perform before bed to feel good and ready to slumber.
A bedtime routine can be anything you want it to be. You can prepare your clothes, bag and lunch for the next day to spare yourself some extra work in the morning. You can do some easy exercise, you can have a cup of tea while watching your favourite show, you can read or draw or do whatever else you fancy. If you are a spiritual person, you can pray. You can do multiple of these things, not just one.
The purpose of the bedtime routine is to help you get into a mindset of calm, relaxation and fulfilment. You’ve had a long and demanding day, throughout which you worked hard and met challenges which you’ve faced bravely since you are now here. To me it sounds as though you fully deserve a break, and this is the break you give yourself as a reward for everything you’ve achieved and strived towards.
A bedtime routine shouldn’t just be an opportunity for you to allow your body to relax and get ready for bed, but also a big, deep breath for your mind and soul. It is time you reserve for you and only you, and you have full rights to make it sacred. So much is asked of us throughout one single day, could it be an actual request, like something we have to do at work, or unspoken expectations that family, friends or partners have of us. Make your bedtime routine a pause from all of this stress and pressures. As a result of that, you won’t go to bed with a lot of things on your mind and you will sleep more soundly.
Base Two: Eliminating bad sleeping habits
Whether we’re aware of it or not, we are guilty of several major bad sleeping habits. More often than not, we’re not even conscious of the negative effects these habits have on us, and as a result of that, we never consider changing them to begin with. A lot of these habits are more closely tied to our mental health than we realise.
Take using social media before bed, for example. Not only does the blue light emanated from the screens of our digital devices influence our circadian rhythms to adjust to night as though it is day instead, but we also get caught up into endlessly scrolling through our feeds and end up going to bed later than we planned. It is also on social media that we compare our lives to the lives of other people, and nurture feeling of envy, sadness and disappointment.
Snacking before bed is another good example. Binging on snacks late in the night will demand our digestive system to turn back on, and then as we go to bed, we force it to turn back off mid-digestion (yup, this is exactly what happens). Eating many unhealthy snacks right before bed will also make us feel particularly bad or miserable, and it will affect our self-esteem to some degree.
I used these two examples because they are probably the bad sleeping habits I am guilty of the most, but the list is endless: pushing work up until bedtime, falling asleep with the TV turned on, late night alcohol consumption, etc. All of these things will take a toll on our sleep, whether we’re ready to admit to it or not. They will also fill us up with negativity and partly undo the positive effects of the bedtime routines we’ve established previously.
To tackle your own bad sleeping habits, start by sitting down with yourself and scrutinising the last two-three hours before your usual bedtime, to identify which of these habits you tend to gravitate towards. Make the distinction between a bad habit and a harmless guilty pleasure: a short episode of your favourite TV show or ten minutes spent on Instagram should not throw your sleep off. Finally, be conscious and self-disciplined: bad habits are easy to take up, but difficult to let go. It is up to you to make that continuous effort to tackle them and eliminate them from your life.
Base Three: Creating the atmosphere
Physiologically speaking, our bodies like sleeping in environments with particular characteristics: lower temperature, normal humidity, dark or dimly lit, fresh air, a comfortable bed. The more control you have over such variables, the merrier. Opening a window ten minutes before bed or buying a more comfortable pillow can make the difference between a good night’s sleep and eight hours of you struggling to get the rest that you need.
The atmosphere in which you sleep is a little bit more than that, though: it also creates the feeling of a safe environment for you to relax mentally and let your guard down. Adding a bit of an atmosphere to your bedtime routine will only increase its benefits: you will feel more relaxed and calmer, and it will strengthen the sense of control you have over this time window that’s solely yours. Ways of improving the atmosphere for your going to bed can include: lighting up your favourite scented candle (and blowing it out before you fall sleep!), playing your preferred music or turning on a nice lamp or fairy lights for a bit more darkness in anticipation of sleep. This list is non-exhaustive: you create the atmosphere that appeals to you the most.
One thing that I explored a bit in my previous post on staying healthy at university, and which I want to go back to briefly now is on how we are all tempted to gravely neglect our sleep. It is the little things that we do every day and we take for granted that sometimes have the biggest impact: unless you have suffered from sleeping problems yourself, you might not be aware of how important slee
p actually is.
Take this post as a challenge: can you actually improve your sleep and what will the positive effects of that be? Try this yourself and let me know how it goes in the comments section below!
We are almost through with the Blogmas series, which I find mind-boggling. December has flown by and Christmas is almost here! Since I am currently planning posts for the upcoming month, I would love to hear what kinds of things you’d like to see me write about on the blog. Suggestions, ideas and recommendations are more than welcomed in the comments section!
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