When life gets busy, do you find that the first thing that gets sacrificed is your sleep? Do you find yourself saying “I’ll just finish this paper first” or “Just one more episode”, and the next thing you know it’s 2am? And you have to wake up at 7am?
With how busy life is for many people, we often find ourselves with not enough hours in the day to complete all the tasks we have. Or if we do complete everything, we’re left with no time to relax and do the things we enjoy. This is where many of us reallocate hours meant for sleep to other tasks and activities. Part of the problem is that the effects of sleep deficiency, especially psychological effects, aren’t always immediately obvious, so we are inclined to believe that our 5 hours of sleep is enough.
Sleep Needs of Adults
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine conducted a 12-month research project investigating the optimal sleep duration for adults. They found that sleeping six or fewer hours per night is not sufficient and that all adults need seven or more hours of sleep per night for healthy functioning.
They also highlight the importance of sleep quality…
Getting 8 hours of sleep is great, but if your sleep is poor quality, it is inadequate for healthy functioning.
Effects of Lack of Sleep
A lack of sleep carries a host of adverse impacts on our physical and psychological health. Since this post focuses on mental health, here are some of the emotional impacts that a lack of sleep carries:
- Difficulty regulating emotions and behaviour
- Difficulty coping with stressors
- Increased unpleasant emotional responses to stress
- Decrease in pleasant emotions
- Trouble perceiving the world accurately
- Mental health concerns, including anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation
All of these impacts can also have a ripple effect and negatively impact your relationships. Difficulty regulating emotions may cause you to react to your loved ones in a way that hurts your relationship with them. Trouble perceiving the world accurately may cause you to believe someone had bad intentions when they had just made a mistake.
More on Sleep and Mental Health
Studies show that a lack of sleep can contribute to the development of mental health concerns in individuals who do not have these concerns.
For some individuals, a lack of sleep can be a symptom of some mental health concerns. This creates a feedback loop in which a mental health concern leads the individual to experience sleep deficiency and the lack of sleep further exacerbates the mental health concern.
Sleep Tips
You may be thinking, I know how important sleep is and all the negative impacts of sleep deficiency, but how am I supposed to actually get enough sleep?
Here are some recommendations:
If you’re trying to shift your sleep time to an earlier time:
- Slow and steady wins the race: Shifting your sleep time earlier in one go is likely to only bring frustration and defeat. Trying shifting your sleep time by 15-minute increments until you reach your target sleep time. For example, if you’re currently going to sleep at 1am and your goal is 12am, aim to sleep by 12:45 on night one, 12:30 on night two, and so on. You might also stick with each increment for several nights until it feels more natural.
- Turn off the screens: Screens emit blue light which suppresses your body’s production of melatonin, the hormone that makes you sleepy. Ideally, turning off all screens an hour before your target sleep time will help regulate your body’s melatonin production. However, with our level of reliance on our devices, turning them off so far in advance of sleep is unrealistic for some of us. In this case, try to turn off your screens as early as possible for you and utilize the night mode feature on your devices to minimize the amount of blue light emitted.
If you struggle to stick to your target sleep time:
- Befriend your phone’s alarm: You may give yourself a target time of when you’re aiming to go to bed, however it’s easy to lose track of time and you may lose motivation to stick to your goal. Setting an alarm on your phone for when you’re aiming to go to sleep may help you stick to your goal. You might even set two alarms – one being half an hour before your target sleep time to prompt you to begin wrapping up the activity you’re doing – and the second being your actual target sleep time.
- Make a plan: Before you begin a task in the evening, check in on how much time there is before your target sleep time. If there’s an hour left and you’re beginning an activity that you know will take you several hours, consider doing an activity that will take less time. Or if it’s a task that you know you will become engrossed in and have trouble putting down, consider doing an activity that you will be able to pause easily.
- Reward yourself: Positive reinforcement is one of the best ways to build a routine and motivate yourself. Tell yourself that if you go to sleep at your target time X number of nights in a row or X number of nights of the week, you will reward yourself. Make sure to choose a reward that you don’t normally have access to as this will cause it to lose its appeal. Choose something you can access relatively easily and have several different options as you may get bored of the same reward.
The most effective way to get enough sleep might be to combine these tips! You might set an alarm for your target sleep time, shift the alarm 15 minutes earlier every few nights, turn off your screens an hour before bed, and reward yourself at the end of the week. There is no one method that works for everyone so it might take some trial and error to find what works best for you.
Professional Support for Sleep Challenges
If you’re struggling with sleep and would like to access professional support, the team at Relationship Therapy Centre is here to support you. We can explore the sleep challenges you’re facing, what is contributing to them, and any associated difficulties. We can work together to identify ways to help you achieve your sleep goals, along with improving related mood challenges or relationship concerns. Improving your sleep may create more positive change than you might think!
