As an insomnia therapist I have discovered over the years that most people struggling with poor sleep tend to make the same mistakes - and often they are surprised to even know they are mistakes!

So, I thought I would share two of these on my blog - are you making them? The good news is, they’re easy to fix!

1. Looking at the clock when you wake in the night. This one is totally understandable, as when you wake in the night it can be really tempting to look at the clock to see how much time you have left to sleep before your morning alarm wakes you. However, the first problem with this is that it triggers anxious thoughts. You will start worrying about things like how you are going to feel tomorrow or what you will do if you don’t get any more sleep tonight. This then leads to the fight or flight being triggered, and the adrenaline response kicking in. This is the opposite of the hormone we want if we’re looking to get a good night’s sleep, as it’s designed to make us very alert. So, simply set an alarm for morning, then try and avoid looking at the clock until this goes off.

2. Catastrophising. When we are tired, we tend to go to extremes with our thoughts, for example, ‘I won’t cope tomorrow at work’ or ‘if I am tired it will ruin the weekend’. This type of thinking triggers our threat response leading to an increase in adrenaline - which makes us even more tired and then adds pressure to sleep leading to another poor night. So, if you are feeling anxious or worried about your sleep, write all these thoughts down on paper. Then, take a step back, read these through and work out which of them are actually realistic, and which are thoughts that are simply making you feel worse, but realistically probably aren’t going to happen. Can you re-frame them and make them feel less stressful? For example, ‘even when I don’t sleep well I still cope at work’. As time goes by, you will soon see that many of the things on your list don’t occur. This in itself can be therapeutic, as it will help you realise many of your thoughts are exactly that, just thoughts, and not things you need to worry or feel anxious about.