Sleep

"It doesn't make sense, I am doing all the right things but...I still can't sleep"

(Paraphrased from various clients)

If I could wish one thing for humanity it would be for us all to sleep well. I say this from my own past experience, from providing hypnotherapy and with awareness of the scientific knowledge now known about sleep.

I sincerely empathise with anyone suffering from sleep problems and know how ragged this can make you feel. It can be a hard, hard slog through the days but it can change and improve!

Sleep has a massive impact on our health, our wellbeing, even our life expectancy, our sense of optimism, our patience, our ability to think, our capacity to be there for others and the list goes on and on. For me, when I used to suffer from insomnia the sky used to be appear less blue!

Hope and help

On the positive side, I have seen clients make incredible changes to their sleeping patterns through hypnotherapy.

I would like to offer the following observations:

Sleep problems can affect anyone. Let's set the record straight. You are an intelligent, normal, capable, wonderful person! Having sleep problems is not a character flaw or something lacking about your skills, intelligence or your courage. It is a symptom of other things.

Lots of people with sleep problems become highly knowledgeable and expert at what they should do. They adopt great sleep hygiene, they reduce caffeine, they have baths at night, they reduce exposure to artificial light, they sleep in the dark, they buy new pillows, special blankets, ear plugs, eye masks, they adopt good habits, take various remedies and yet, and yet and yet... despite knowing and doing all this sleep seems to evade them, sometimes with increasing strength.

You and I could talk all day about sleep, sleep problems, sleep tactics and sleep strategies but this seems to exaggerate and not help matters - so what may be going on on here?

What I have learnt:

Sleep returns when it is ready (not when you will it to return)

Sleep returns, when other things are settled (not the other way around). So therapy must focus on the other things not on sleep directly. The stronger we 'will' ourselves to sleep, the stronger the reaction can be in the opposite direction.

Sleep and the fight, flight or freeze response

For some reason, at some level within us, sleep can become associated with anxiety, worry or feeling unsafe. These may not relate to conscious thoughts, particularly at the beginning but where this is true our survival instincts will step in to help and invoke our protective fight, flight or freeze responses. These are extremely powerful emotional mechanisms and can keep us awake (in preparation for danger) even though our bodies and conscious mind are desperate to sleep and rest. This may explain why consciously we are doing all the right things but emotionally we are being kept awake.

How hypnotherapy can help

Hypnotherapy can help you:

Understand what may be going at a subconscious level but focus attention on looking forward not back
Learn to fully accept your current sleeping problems, to be kind and patient with yourself
Take positive steps in other dimensions of your life. In doing so you trade one moment of sleep worry with one moment of joy, then two, then 3, then 10, then a whole day, and so on.
Relearn how to feel deeply calm during trance (hypnosis) and by listening to my free sleep audio
Notice the small improvements that are made at the start of therapy and the bigger improvements that follow later

The culmination of these 5 things seems to allow sleep to return.

If this sort of approach seems of interest, why not book a free initial consultation to find out more.