New Overcoming Insomnia therapy recording released today.
Do you fall asleep the moment your head hits the pillow? Or do you have trouble falling and staying asleep? It may be an all-too familiar feeling that, try as you might, you seem never to be able to sleep soundly. If so, you are not alone: it is estimated that at least a third of us has or will experience a sustained period of sleep difficulty at some time in our lives, and that one in ten people experiences chronic problems (i.e. long-term and persistent).
The most common sleep disorder is insomnia. This refers to a difficulty in getting to sleep, or a difficulty staying asleep, or waking much earlier than usual.
At the moment insomnia is a fairly hot topic and keeps appearing in the headlines. Poor sleep is being cited as a major contributor to anxiety, depression, high blood pressure and circulation problems, and even a susceptibility factor for cancer.
Some of the claims about the effects of poor sleep may be a little overblown, but the effects of poor sleep over a long period (years, rather than months) can certainly be negative. It therefore makes sense to do what we can to ensure we sleep as well as possible – but the key here is to be aware of what is possible, and not to make unrealistic demands on ourselves to get 8 or 9 hours sleep when our bodies only need 6 or 7. Each person is different… Just as some people need to eat more because they burn more energy, some people need less sleep. There is no set number of hours that applies to everyone. So we should really be aiming to get as much sleep as our bodies need, rather than trying to get the same amount of sleep as other people or as much as we got when we were younger.
Bouts of insomnia are usually triggered by some event such as a stressful time at work, moving house, relationship difficulties, excitement about something like a holiday or a new job. Usually, once the stressor has passed our sleep returns to normal. Sometimes, unfortunately, we can get stuck in a pattern of disrupted sleep, usually through a combination of our bodies having got used to the different routine (e.g. the body expects to wake up at 3am and therefore it does), and worrying about the effects of poor sleep (the more we worry, the more we keep ourselves awake).
Insomnia can sometimes be the result of certain conditions or illnesses such as depression, anxiety, physical illnesses, the onset of menopause, and so on. In these circumstances, once the underlying condition is treated, your sleep should return to normal. Certain medications may also impact on our ability to sleep. So if you are having trouble sleeping it is worth talking this through with your doctor.
Other sleep disorders, apart from insomnia, include: parasomnias such as night terrors, sleepwalking, bruxism (teeth grinding); and dyssomnias such as narcolepsy (feeling uncontrollably sleepy during the day), sleep apnoea (interruptions to breathing whilst asleep) and hypersomnia (sleeping for too long). Some sleep disorders, notably sleep apnea can be dangerous and you should talk to your doctor if you think that your sleep problems might be more than a difficulty falling or staying asleep.
Insomnia is a condition that you can overcome, and the audio download available here is designed to help you do this. The written information that comes with the download will help you address the unhelpful sleep habits you may have got into, and the suggestions in the audio are designed to help you change the negative thinking that keeps you worried and wakeful.
N.B. The audio file will need to be downloaded to a computer first and then transferred to your MP4 player. The file cannot be downloaded straight to a smartphone or tablet. More info on this is on the downloads page.