How Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can help with sleep
-Calm by Victoria
Have you ever found yourself unable to fall asleep, even if you are exhausted? Or do you often wake up during the night and just can’t switch off that loop of what happened that day, or what might happen tomorrow?
Often, even just one bad night of sleep leaves us feeling irritable, anxious, physically and mentally tired, and small issues or challenges can seem stressful.
Why sleep is so important.
Sleep is vital for the rest and recuperation of our body and mind.
During the night we go through multiple sleep cycles, one part of the sleep cycle is called REM sleep (rapid eye movement). During REM sleep we process the day's events, consolidate memories, regulate our emotions, and empty our stress bucket (see ‘How Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can help with stress and overwhelm’).
Poor sleep can result in increased anxiety, low mood, difficulty concentrating and making decisions, a weakened immune system, and a lower tolerance for everyday stress. It becomes a loop, stress makes falling, and staying, asleep harder, and poor sleep makes you less able to cope with stress.
Breaking this loop is often less about ‘trying harder’ to sleep, and more about understanding the driving force behind it.
What is happening in your brain when you can't sleep.
The inability to fall asleep, or stay asleep, is often a message sent by your brain that something requires attention, it is your brain's stress response doing exactly what it's designed to do, just at the wrong time!
A part of your brain called the amygdala acts as an early warning system, scanning for threat and potential danger. When the amygdala detects something it perceives as a ‘problem’, (a deadline at work, a difficult conversation replaying in your head, anxiety about the future, etc), it can trigger the release of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. These are useful if you're facing a genuine emergency, these hormones raise your heart rate, allow you to focus and prepare you to act (fight/flight/freeze). They are not useful at midnight or 3am, when your body and mind need to be calm and relaxed in order to get a restful nights’ sleep.
This is often described as your primitive brain and your intellectual mind pulling in different directions, logically, you know you need to sleep, but your primitive brain is on high alert. The result is a wired, tired feeling, exhausted, but unable to drift off, often with racing thoughts and multiple things to feel anxious about.
How Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can help with poor sleep.
Solution Focused Hypnotherapy combines two elements: practical solution-focused talking therapy and relaxing trance. In the first part of a session, we discuss what’s been good in your week, this re-directs your attention towards what's going well (rather than dwelling on things out of your control or negatively forecasting what might happen in the future). We create a picture of what a better night might look like for you, helping calm that primitive threat response and creating achievable, positive steps forward that help you regain control. We finish with gentle, relaxing trance that mimics REM sleep, embedding positive messages of calm and control, emptying your stress bucket and activating the parasympathetic nervous system (your rest and digest mode), that lowers cortisol, slows your heart rate, and signals safety to your brain.
From your first session, you also receive a relaxation recording that you are able to listen to each night before bed. Listening to this regularly helps reinforce feelings of calmness and relaxation, so your brain and body start to associate bedtime with relaxation, rather than alertness. Many clients find that building this into their nightly routine becomes one of the most effective tools to help promote better sleep.
Together, these elements work on both the mental loop, the overthinking and anxiety about sleep, and the physical state, the stress response keeping your body alert. Over a course of sessions, many people find they fall asleep more easily, wake less often in the night, and feel less anxious about sleep itself, which often breaks the cycle of poor sleep.
Get in touch.
If this resonates and you want to regain control and start sleeping better reach out for a FREE initial consultation, this is an informal, no obligation chat where I explain how sessions work and it is your opportunity to ask any questions you might have.