An insomiac's guide to sleeping soundly

Sleep - love it or loathe it, it's way more important than we tend to think. For some of us, a restful night's snoozing comes naturally, but for others it can feel like a minefield. Recently, whilst reading a Women's Health article on 'clean sleep', I was inspired to start paying more attention to my own habits.

As someone who has dealt with insomnia in the past, I know all too well how important sleep really is. It's definitely one of those things that you only realise are important when they're gone. Back when my sleeping problems were at their worst, I did a great deal of research into how to deal with the issue, and eventually did manage to improve my sleep quality massively. It took time and effort, but through the methods that follow, I went from getting around 4 hours of sleep (on a good day) to peacefully sleeping for 7 or more hours most nights. I've listed my methods in reverse order of their usefulness (in my opinion), so if you want to try a few but not all of them, I'd start with the ones at the bottom.

5. Self-hypnosis

Ok, I'll admit this does seem a bit out-there, and a few years ago I would've laughed at this suggestion too. Having said that, a few years ago I didn't really understand hypnosis. Ultimately, despite its connotations, hypnosis is not much more than a very deep state of relaxation. Whilst having hypnotherapy for a phobia, I was taught how to carry out self-hypnosis, and to this day it remains my tool of choice when I'm either very stressed or struggling to sleep. I would really recommend going in with an open mind and researching this further if you're having issues with with relaxation.

4. Prepare for the morning

If there's one thing that's bound to make sleeping more difficult, it's worrying about the million things you need to do in the morning. I find it so useful to make sure I'm fully prepared in advance. I'm not a morning person at all, so as well as aiding my sleep, it makes for a much less stressful morning. Make a list of the things you tend to worry about most in the mornings; this could be what to wear, what to have for breakfast or things to remember for work. Try to prepare as much as possible before going to sleep - write reminders, prepare breakfast in advance etc.

3. Bath/shower at night

Whether it's best to shower in the morning or at night has always been up for debate. Of course, there's arguments for each side, however if you're a troublesome sleeper I would argue the night-time option is more beneficial. Personally, a relaxing bath before bed really settles me down and prepares me for sleep. I always prefer a bath, but I don't think the method is actually that important, just go for whichever suits you. It's definitely the act of washing off the day and feeling fresh before bed that helps me snooze more soundly.

2. Declutter

The space in which you sleep is way more important than you may realise. For me at least, messy room = messy mind, 100%. It's quite a hard thing to describe, but it's as though all that clutter in the room represents the jumble of thoughts in my mind. Linking in to point 4, clutter can also cause stress more practically; you're more likely to be kept awake worrying where something is if your space isn't organised.

1. Technology cleanse

If I had to choose which technique alone is best when it comes to getting more quality sleep, I would go for this one every time. As far as I'm concerned, technology (especially social media) before bed is almost always a terrible idea. There's loads of opinions out there on exactly how long before bed you should put the tech down, but I try to stick to an hour, or even half an hour; I think this is an effective yet doable time-scale.

In conjunction with these methods, try to keep your sleep schedule pretty regular. It's also really useful to figure out roughly how many hours of sleep you need per night; both too little and too much can have a detrimental effect. Hopefully some of these methods can be useful, but remember that if you're really struggling with you sleeping it's important to go to your GP. Problems with sleep aren't always, but can be a result of an underlying condition like depression or anxiety.

Sweet dreams!

5 ways to become a 'morning person'

Presumably if you're reading this then like me, you're not a what is typically described as a 'morning person'. Let's be honest though, do these people who naturally leap out of bed in the morning, bright-eyed and ready to face the day even exist? I don't know about you but I've certainly never met one! However, I do believe that it is absolutely possible to train your mind and body to make mornings much more pleasant and productive. Up until revamping my approach around 6 months ago, I was the polar opposite of a 'morning person'. My 'routine' would usually go something like this:

7.30am - Alarm goes off. Hit snooze and think about how cold my room is and how much I hate leaving my bed.

7.38am - Alarm goes off again. Hit snooze again.

7.46am - Alarm goes off again. Turn alarm off completely.

8.00am - Scroll through social media.

8.30am - Shit, I fell back asleep with my phone in my hand. Scramble out of bed in a panic, quickly brush teeth and get dressed - no time for luxuries such as breakfast, applying makeup or even brushing hair.

8.40am - Run around the house aimlessly (and frustratingly, usually up and down the stairs around 5 times) looking for something/multiple things I need but can't find.

8.50am - Set off for college late, usually feeling stressed, unprepared and ugly.

Clearly, this isn't an ideal way to start the day. However, it is possible to completely turn around those stressful mornings. Here are 5 totally do-able changes that have helped me, and can hopefully be useful for you, too:

1) Prepare the night before

If, like me, you tend to be a bit grouchy in the morning, then you want to be avoiding the potential frustration of not being able to find anything you need. Decide what you're going to wear and either lay it out ready or just make sure you know where it is. If you're going to school or college, pack your bag and put out any folders you need the night before. Preparing breakfast the night before is also really helpful. I have the same oat-based breakfast every morning and it's so amazing! I'll make sure to share the recipe for this in a post sometime, as it's so cheap to make and literally takes 2 minutes every night. Having breakfast done and ready to eat straight away definitely gives me something to look forward to!

2) Set your alarm earlier

I mean, this is an obvious one, but it's useless if you don't learn to respond to your alarm correctly. You need to try different strategies and figure out a method that works best for you. A lot of people suggest putting your phone or alarm at the other side of the room; the idea being that you have to get out of bed to switch it off. Personally, I prefer a gentler approach. If I have to leave the house at 8.45am, as I often do, I set my alarm for 6.45am. In fact, whatever time I have to leave by, I just set my alarm for 2 hours beforehand. This may seem excessive, but I would much rather get up in good time and have a slow-paced, leisurely start to the day. So say my alarm goes off at 6.45am, I don't actually get up then, and I like that because it makes me dread my alarm less. After this, I give myself half an hour to wake up properly and just relax in bed. I often scroll through social media at this time which is probably a bad habit, but it definitely wakes up my brain. At 7.15am I get up, and despite having spent half an hour lounging around, I still half an hour and a half to get ready. I always have an alarm set for 7.15am, just in case I were to fall asleep again in that half an hour.

3) Start the day with water

This is absolutely life-changing. I have no idea why it makes you feel so good, but starting the day by chugging a load of water makes you feel so refreshed and energized. When I was rushing around, I didn't drink anything and was left feeling groggy, hungry and headachy by mid-morning. Nowadays, the first thing I do when I get up is drink half a litre (or a normal sized water bottle) of water. In fact, I love water so much that I dedicated a whole blog post to it back in January.

4) Get to bed at a good time

Another obvious but very effective one. For a few years I was an insomniac and would be forced to function on about 3 hours of sleep per night. This led me to believe I didn't need much sleep, because being constantly tired became the norm. I think this may be the case for a lot of people. However, it's only since regaining a healthy relationship with sleep that I've realised I actually need much more than I used to believe. Personally, I find the right amount of sleep time is 9-10 hours per day; any less I wake up tired and any more I wake up groggy and lethargic. Everybody has an ideal number of hours they should be sleeping for, although it varies from person to person. If you haven't already, it's definitely something worth figuring out; too little or too much sleep can really make your days (particularly the mornings) tougher.

5) Write a to-do list

It's easy to feel a bit overwhelmed in the morning, especially if you know you have loads to do during the day. One thing that I find really sets me up for a good day is writing a to-do list in my planner. It doesn't have to be detailed, but there's nothing like getting everything out of your head and into a list to stop it feeling like such a huge task. I don't know why this works - it just does. I think it sort of 'un-muddles' your head a bit, making everything seem clearer and more doable.

After learning to incorporate these 5 things into my life, I've noticed a remarkable change in my views towards the morning. Nowadays, I barely ever have terribly long lie-ins as I simply don't feel the need to anymore. However impossible I thought it would be, mornings are no longer the enemy! All it takes is a few small changes - it doesn't have to be anything drastic - and you too could build a structured and relaxed routine which works for you. I guarantee it will have a knock-on effect and start to improve many areas in your life. As an example, here's what my morning routine looks like now;

6.45am - Alarm goes off. Scroll through social media and slowly wake up.

7.15am - Second alarm goes off. Get up, drink half a litre of water.

7.30am - Eat breakfast with a cup of tea.

8.55am - Write to-do list for the day in planner.

8.10am - Get dressed and sort out hair and makeup.

8.35am - Get everything together that I need e.g. folders, planner etc.

8.45am - Leave the house, calm and ready for the day ahead.

The importance of having a relaxed and productive plan for the morning is underrated; I think we often don't realise how much the quality of our entire day rests on the way we utilise those first few hours. I guess the phrase 'got out of the wrong side of the bed' has a bit of a deeper meaning. If a morning has been stressful or rushed, it easily has the power to frustrate us for the rest of the day! This is why I believe it's so important to take control of those mornings, so they can no longer control us.

The darker side of dreaming

Anyone who follows my private Twitter is probably aware of my fascination with the unconscious mind, and the people who know me in person will definitely be used to hearing about my dream adventures, which are imaginative to say the least. My interest in this area of psychology was deepened when I was prescribed a medication which seems to cause me to have very vivid dreams. I always have at least 1 memorable dream each night, but sometimes even 2 or 3. Since being very young, my mind has been quite strange in regards to sleep; my family have told me stories of how I used to have night terrors as a child, often sitting up and staring into the corner of the room in my sleep (sounds like something from Paranormal Activity, I know). I've also been known to partake in a bit of sleepwalking/talking every now and then. For as long as I can remember, I've regularly experienced false awakenings, and on a few occasions, sleep paralysis. Unfortunately these are part of the darker side of the dream world. I thought it might be interesting to share my experiences of these, and see if anyone has had anything similar happen to them.

False awakenings

False awakenings are pretty much self-explanatory. They occur when you feel as though you've woken up, but are actually still asleep and dreaming. There are 2 types of false awakening. Type 1 is the most common of the 2 and occurs when you 'wake up' and feel as though everything is normal. You may get out of bed, brush your teeth, have breakfast and get dressed, but in reality you're still in your bed asleep. Although certain things may not be completely 'normal', you won't really notice and will genuinely believe that you're awake and in your usual surroundings. A type 2 false awakening is less common and more distressing, as you will 'wake up' and sense that something is wrong, without being able to pinpoint exactly what. The dream will have an atmosphere of suspense, which is particularly frightening because you genuinely believe you're awake. Sometimes a person will 'wake up' seemingly normally, and a feeling of tension, and an awareness of something not being right will gradually creep up, eventually causing them to awaken in a stressed state[1]. This is the sort of false awakening I usually experience. When I was younger, I used to get the same false awakening very regularly. I would 'wake up' in my bed, and everything seemed normal. I would then get up and walk over to the light, but when I went to switch it on an overwhelming sense of dread would consume me. This was heightened as I pressed the switch and the light did not turn on. At this point I suddenly became aware that I was in the same distressing false awakening I'd experience before, which would cause me to panic further. At this point I would collapse and feel like I was being 'swallowed up' by the floor, before waking up in a very distressed state with my heart racing. More recently I've started having a false awakening which varies slightly each time, but has the same basis. I will 'wake up' in my bed and immediately feel a very sinister atmosphere, and will attempt to get to my parent's room. I will sort of be aware by this point that I'm dreaming, but will be unable to wake myself up. My muddled brain somehow thinks that if I get to my parents room I can ask them to wake me up. However, of course even if I could get there, they wouldn't be able to wake me up because in reality I'd still be asleep in my bed. In the dream/false-awakening, I try to get out of bed but end up falling to the floor, and then start trying to crawl out of the room, but I only seem to be flailing around on the spot. Usually at this point some sort of scary thing starts happening in my room and I can't get out. I then sometimes seem to get back in bed and go back to sleep, only for the same thing to happen again. Then when I wake up from this other dream, I'm actually only back in the first dream. This experience is especially scary because there can be loads of 'layers' of dreams (dreams within dreams within dreams), and it's difficult to tell when I have actually woken up in real life.

The most useful mechanism I've found as far as avoiding false awakenings is to do 'reality checks' regularly - both when dreaming and in real life, so it naturally becomes easier to distinguish between the two. Eventually it will become second nature and you will find yourself automatically doing them during the false awakenings, making it easier for you to realise that you aren't actually awake. Useful reality checks include:

1. Reading - I find this one the most useful. You will find that during dreams it's really hard to read; letters tend to looked blurred or jumbled. Alternatively if you read something, look away and then go to read it again, the writing will likely have changed.


2. Breathing - If you can hold your nose and mouth shut and still breathe, you are (obviously) dreaming.


3. Hands and reflection - Do your hands and reflection look different or distorted when you look at them up close?

Once you've used reality checks and established that you are dreaming, you can either attempt to wake yourself up, or if you're feeling adventurous wander into the world of lucid dreaming. Personally I've only managed to do this once, as the shock of realising you're dreaming is usually enough to wake you up.

Sleep paralysis

Sleep paralysis essentially happens when your mind wakes up, but your body doesn't. When our body enters deep REM sleep, the body becomes paralysed and usually when we wake up, this obviously stops. However, during sleep paralysis, we seemingly wake up as normal, but the body is still in this paralysed state. I'm no expert but from what I've gathered, this is essentially what causes it (in simple terms).  To add to the stress of being unable to move, many people suffer hallucinations whilst in sleep paralysis, sensing or seeing an evil presence in the room. Sleep paralysis is something I've experienced a few times, but the most recent time was the worst as it lasted significantly longer.

My first few experiences of sleep paralysis are quite distant in my memory. When I was a kid I used to sleep with my bedroom door open with a view onto the landing and the top of the stairs. I remember once waking up and seeing a witch running down the landing and to the top of the stairs, before turning round, looking at me and then running round the corner and down the stairs. I can't remember whether I could move or not because it was very brief, but as an 'old hag' or a 'witch' is a common hallucination associated with sleep paralysis, I think it may have been sleep paralysis. There have been various other occasions where I have woken up laid on my side, completely unable to move and heard a loud whispering from right behind me, in my ear. I can't remember exactly what the whispering said, but nonetheless it was pretty scary. The last time I had sleep paralysis was much more recently, and after a night out, so it was probably induced by alcohol. I believe it was actually a mixture between a false awakening and sleep paralysis. I'd been having a really intense nightmare which I kept waking up from and then going back into, and then on one of these occasions I thought I would check my phone when I 'woke up' to distract me from the nightmare and hopefully stop me from falling back into it. So I woke up, reached down for my phone, but when I looked at it there was just a jumble of letters on the screen. It felt very real but because I was unable to read (as mentioned above) it was probably a false awakening. I then laid back on my bed and not long after I woke up for real, but I couldn't move at all (except for my eyes). I then saw my Mam come into my room and I sensed that she knew something was wrong. She then lent over me and started shaking my shoulders, trying to get me out of whatever state I was in. Then to my horror, her face morphed into the face of a demon which continued to shake me. This carried on for a good while, the face morphing between the face of my Mam, and that of the demon, until my body eventually woke up. It was hands down one the most terrifying moments of my life, and afterwards I was so confused and scared to go to sleep for weeks. I eventually realised that my Mam had never even been into my room that morning, so the whole thing was a hallucination which accompanied the sleep paralysis, despite it feeling so real.

Luckily, since that last time, I've learnt a few little tricks to get myself out of sleep paralysis. I think the strategies on this site http://dreamstudies.org/2010/04/29/9-ways-to-wake-up-from-sleep-paralysis/ are the most useful and seem to get the best results, however I myself have only used them to get out of nightmares so far, rather than sleep paralysis. If you ever find yourself in sleep paralysis, I think the most important thing to remember is not to panic. Remember that however scary it is, it's essentially harmless, and it will always end however much it may not feel that way.

Wow, this has been quite a long post! One last quick thing I'd like to add is that if you're as interested in the world of sleep as me I would highly recommend the app 'Dream Moods'. You can basically use it to type in different things you see or do in your dreams and it interprets them for you. I really believe in dream interpretation, and consulting with my unconscious has actually helped me figure out some pretty tough situations before. It's amazing how much is actually on the app - even the most obscure things! I would say it's definitely worth a try; I use it every day without fail as soon as I wake up!

__________________________________________________________________________________
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_awakening#Types