Comments on: Don’t think, sleep!

By: mattw

mattw — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:52:43 +0000

I used to have loads of trouble sleeping, and it was after I noticed the feedback between the stress caused by not sleeping (gritted teeth at 2am: “must… sleep… important… day… tomorrow”) and not getting to sleep because of stress. I decided to enjoy it: It’s the middle of the night, there’s nothing I can actually usefully achieve, all I can do is lie in the warm and think. Those chances are so rare, I thought, I should just luxuriate in them. And of course, they didn’t happen so much after that. A pyrrhic victory.

By: Kevan

Kevan — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 19:47:02 +0000

Hmm, I hadn’t really made the connection before now, but I’ve noticed a lot less staring-awake insomnia since I stopped using a glowing-red “look, *look*, it’s two o’clock in the morning and you’re *still awake*!” LED alarm clock.
That dark is just dark.

By: tom

tom — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 17:33:31 +0000

Just a thought…but maybe knowing that it is possible to get to sleep merely by not worrying about it can have a liberating effect?

By: JussiR

JussiR — Wed, 08 Dec 2004 16:34:56 +0000

Oh, it seems Christian already covered somewhat same point than i did…

By: JussiR

JussiR — Wed, 08 Dec 2004 16:30:30 +0000

“All this says, to me, that the best thing to do about not being able to sleep – or about not having had enough sleep – is to not worry about it”
I think most insomniacs are somewhat aware of this, but its not very easy to *not* think or worry about something that is very important to you. A bit like trying *not* to think about an elephant but multiplied by ten, because its much more important for us to be able to sleep, than to prove ourselfs that we can be without thinking about an elephant.

By: christian

christian — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 10:57:00 +0000

Hi
interesting stuff. the trouble is how do you stop the cycle of worry once it’s started
? maybe the only cure would be to stop caring how much sleep you got, but then if that were really true you wouldn’t mind having insomnia anyway…Here’s an earlier study by Harvey I wrote about in the BPS Research Digest (http://www.bps.org.uk/publications/rd.cfm) -
cheers, christian
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
7. SWEET DREAMS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Is insomnia related to the way people think when they’re trying to sleep?
Julian Nelson and Allison Harvey (Oxford University) asked 34
undergraduates with primary insomnia and 38 sound sleepers to take an
afternoon nap. Overall, the students with insomnia rated their pre-sleep
mental images and verbal thoughts as more distressing than the sound
sleepers did. They felt they had less control over their mental images, and
subjective and objective measures showed they were more aroused by their
thoughts. Finally, although objective measures showed that all the
participants fell asleep at some point, fewer of the insomniac students
than sound sleepers reported that they had managed to get to sleep.
Nelson, J., & Harvey, A.G. (2003). An exploration of pre-sleep cognitive
activity in insomnia: imagery and verbal thought. British Journal of
Clinical Psychology, 42, 271-288.