We all know how crappy it feels to miss a good night’s sleep. Maybe one of our kids is sick and needed tending to, maybe our dog kept asking to go out, or maybe we just woke up on our own, plagued by thoughts of work responsibilities or personal pressures.

Makes for a rough next morning, no matter what the interruptions are.

For some people, those interruptions or an overall irregular sleep pattern are all too common.  If left unattended, that sleep schedule can cause a lot of chaos in a person’s life.

From a Dialectical Behavior Therapy approach, lack of sleep is seen as a vulnerability. It makes us more vulnerable to experiencing negative emotions and at times making decisions based on our emotions, rather than rational thought.

So how do we promote a healthy sleep pattern to reduce our vulnerability to our “emotional mind?”

The key components are looking at our schedule and our exposure to light.

Our bodies are like computer systems that we can train, over time, to respond as we would like them to. We can condition ourselves to think, feel and act differently (and that’s often what we promote in psychotherapy).

We need to structure our sleep, paying attention mostly to a consistent wake up time. We often try to correct a late night out with sleeping in, taking a nap mid-day, or utilizing extra caffeine. Don’t do it. This is part of what messes with our circadian rhythm and can disrupt the following night. Continue with your regular wake-up time, and allow yourself a day to feel “under the weather” or tired, until your normal bed-time that night. Your body will re-calibrate better this way.

Reduce Your Time in Bed

Another key to our scheduling is decreasing our time in bed. We can gradually test out exactly how much time we need to obtain our optimal level of sleep. This is your own scientific trial: How much time in bed do I need to get the best sleep? This is the one component within our control.

So if you find that you are not sleeping the full night through (ie. waking up at 2 a.m. worrying about work), you would actually go to bed LATER the following night, but continue with your consistent wake-up time and exposure to light. If you need to get up in the middle of the night to feed the baby or go to the bathroom – keep the lights off or dim, and you may not disrupt your circadian rhythm at all!

Some things to consider:

– Don’t go to bed unless you are sleepy and don’t stay in bed in the morning unless you are asleep.

– What was your activity level during waking hours? If you didn’t do that much physical activity, your body expended less energy and was less alert/aroused, which often leads to difficulty falling asleep. This might mean going to bed later that night for a more efficient night.

– Get out of bed in the morning when you are awake. When you hit the snooze, or lay in bed for an additional hour, even when you are somewhat awake, you are damaging your potential for a good night’s sleep the next night. (*A caveat is that if you hit the snooze for the same amount each morning, and see the light turn on at the same time, you may still be OK)

Stay tuned for the next blog post, which will explore the effects of substances on our circadian rhythm and provide resources for self-help insomnia treatments online.