Sleeping issues

“You are the biggest enemy of your own sleep” – Pawan Mishra
“How blessed are some people whose lives have no fears, no dreads, to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly and brings nothing but sweet dreams” – Bram Stoker

A good night’s sleep is universally accepted as being of enormous benefit to our health and wellbeing, so getting enough sleep, and it being of a good quality, is a very important part of our daily life.

In 2017 Aviva published a Wellbeing Report which showed that 31% of adults in the UK said they had insomnia. That equates to about 16m people – so don’t worry, you’re not alone!

Sleep disorders fall into three main categories:

  • Insomnia (sleeplessness)
  • Hypersomnia (excessive sleepiness)
  • Parasomnias (nightmares, sleep walking etc.)
sleeping issue

Unsurprisingly, the most common of these is insomnia. The study quoted above also showed that nearly a quarter of adults manage no more than five hours a night. Just over half take no action to help them sleep, and about one in ten people take sleeping tablets or drink alcohol to aid sleep.

The main complaints related to insomnia are:
  • Not getting to sleep quickly enough (Sleep Onset).
  • Waking up periodically in the middle of the night (Sleep Maintenance).
  • Waking up too early in the morning and not getting back to sleep.
  • Poor sleep quality.
Problems with sleeping are brought about by many different situations and sometimes the true cause of the problem may not be immediately obvious.

Treatment by hypnotherapy has proven to be very effective in treating sleep disorders, primarily because a lot of time is spent in assessing the factors that may be causing and maintaining the problem, challenging beliefs and examining the habits relating to your sleep regime (use of medication or relaxants, evening routine, bedroom environment etc.)

We will agree a treatment plan which will include a number of different elements but the basic approach will be:
  • Changing the way you currently view sleep and your issues with it.
  • Relaxation training.
  • Self-hypnosis training.
  • Changing the routines you have when approaching your night in bed (sleep hygiene).

As you can see, the essential element in the treatment plan is change. It’s so easy to fall into the habit of just accepting that you’re not going to be able to sleep unless you use some form of sleeping aid such as a book or phone, medication, alcohol, TV etc. But, by using these things you are accepting, even before your head has touched the pillow, that you’re not going to sleep properly. In a way, you’re preparing yourself to fail.

At the moment it may be difficult to imagine facing the prospect of trying to drift off to sleep (and staying asleep}, without the aids you’ve become accustomed to, but Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy will help you look at the issues you have with sleep in a different way and give you the confidence to go to bed, without any sleeping aids, knowing that the night ahead holds no fears.

If you stay with this new way of approaching sleep, you will soon be enjoying longer and more restful nights and feeling ready to face the world in the morning.