Why Am I Like This?!
We are a therapist and a psychiatric nurse practitioner and we want to share a simplified view of these complex concepts that are often misunderstood, avoided, and even feared.
This is a podcast about being human, adapting to life, and learning from our unique experience.
We try to provide the answers to question: Why am I like this?
Why Am I Like This?!
Why Can't I Get Good Sleep?!
Sleep affects nearly every aspect of our lives, yet many of us struggle to understand why we can't fall asleep, stay asleep, or feel rested in the morning. We explore how childhood patterns, lifestyle habits, and environmental factors impact our sleep quality and offer practical solutions for better rest.
• Various types of sleep issues including trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, and early morning awakening
• How caffeine creates a vicious cycle that worsens sleep problems, especially as we age
• The negative impact of screens before bed on melatonin production and sleep quality
• Why consistency in sleep schedules is crucial for regulating our body's internal clock
• Cognitive patterns that create anxiety around sleep and how to challenge negative thoughts
• Environmental factors like room temperature (ideally 67°F) that promote better sleep
• The value of taking breaks throughout the day to practice calming your nervous system
• Why long-term solutions like CBT for insomnia work better than quick fixes
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Hello and welcome to. Why Am I Like this? The podcast for those who didn't get enough hugs as a child? I'm Laura Wood and I'm a trauma therapist.
Michaela:And I'm Michaela Beaver. I'm a psychiatric nurse practitioner.
Laura :So, Michaela, why are we doing this podcast?
Michaela:I'm so glad you asked. We want to help you understand yourself a bit better, how the things you learned about yourself and the world and childhood are still affecting you today. We want to figure out why are we like this, those random things about ourselves that we might wonder about, like why am I so jumpy? Why am I so anxious? Why do I take everything personally? Why are my thoughts so negative? Why do I take everything personally? Why are my thoughts so negative? Why do I feel like I have to fix everything all the time?
Laura :Yes, and we are talking about sleep today. So we're going to try to answer the following questions why can't I fall asleep, why can't I stay asleep, and how do I fix my sleep issues? So, mishayla, what is going on with our sleep?
Michaela:Such a good question. I think that sleep is probably one of the number one things that people report to me as something that they want to fix, something that they think is a major struggle for them. I mean, and who doesn't? Who wants to lay in bed and toss and turn when everybody else is asleep, the house is quiet. How annoying is it that you just can't shut your brain off. You think to yourself I'm going to feel terrible tomorrow, it's going to be the worst. I don't know about you, but I've had nights where I can't sleep very well and it's really frustrating.
Laura :Well, yeah, and then you're like if I fall asleep right now, I can get six hours. If I fall asleep right now, I can get five hours. If I fall asleep right now, you know. And then I always think about like tomorrow's going to be so hard, like I already am like thinking about how bad I'm going to feel the next day when I can't sleep at night.
Laura :Like a lot of the time for me I'll be laying there and I'll fall asleep quick, but then I'll wake up like in a couple of hours, and then I'll like look around. I'll not know what's going on. I'll check the time, like is it morning? It's not morning. And then I'm like I okay, I have to go back to sleep. And then I'm like why am I awake right now? And then I kind of go back to sleep and then I wake up again. A lot of times I wake up in pain and I'm like why am I like my hips hurt, or my legs are asleep, like weird, or my arms are asleep, or something like that. And so I'm not comfortable, so I have to readjust, and then I can't get comfortable. It's just a nightmare.
Michaela:Yeah, it's so hard, I know for me, most nights I sleep great. I know guys are going to hate me for saying that, but most nights I sleep wonderful. The problem is is I have a thing that I'm worried about. I'm behind on something, I forgot to do something, and then all of a sudden that thing is waking me up in the middle of the night and I'm like I literally can't even take care of it right now. Why do you? Why do I care? And then you know you, you know you do the things that you do, that know that you know how to help you go back to sleep. And then you're up again thinking about the thing and you're like just stop thinking about it, I don't want to think about this anymore. Like I put it, like I wrote a note, I said something by my bed, I wrote it out. I'm like it's, it's right there, I don't need to think about this right now. I can't fix it. Your brain just doesn't want to stop trying to think about the thing and it can be really frustrating.
Laura :That is frustrating when you can't solve it right now. Like often for something like that, I'll use a container strategy, like a mental container strategy, where I'm like okay, let me put this in its box in my brain and I'll set it aside and I'll remember it later. I wrote it down like writing it down as a great strategy, Like, but you just can't fall asleep. I think that your brain is like if I solve this, then I can rest, yeah.
Laura :You know what I mean. Like it's like it needs you to solve it so that you can relax, but you can't relax until you solve it.
Michaela:Well, so backing up a little bit here, so there's multiple types of sleep issues, right. So we have trouble falling asleep, we have trouble staying asleep, and then we have early morning awakening issues that like you wake up and then like it's five and you have to wake up in an hour and then you just can't like your brain just won't let you go back to sleep, and some people can have a combination of these issues or it's really just more one thing that is causing that problem. So we talked about, like worrying about stuff that we have to do or that we forgot to do. What are some other reasons why we might have troubles, like with sleep?
Laura :Trouble falling asleep. Sometimes it's about like caffeine, like you're jittery or you're like pumped up. Maybe you just did got home from something exciting and you're like amped up a little bit. You have adrenaline from something going on at home. Sometimes like thinking about, obviously like ruminating and thinking about stuff can be about things that are happening like in your house right then. Like did I forget to turn off the stove? Did I forget to lock the door? Did I forget? You know that kind of stuff Like. So it's not always future worries that are getting you. Sometimes it's like just nighttime routine stuff. Like did I do all the things that I'm supposed to do? And then you have to get back up out of bed to go check. Sometimes your body just can't settle down, like people who are fidgety and move a lot and just don't. They need more time to slow down and relax their nervous system to start settling into sleep.
Michaela:Yeah, absolutely. I love that you mentioned caffeine, because that's definitely a huge issue because, like, we all of a sudden get into the cycle where we're like, oh, I didn't sleep well, so I'm going to use caffeine to help me stay awake, and then the caffeine now is the reason why we can't fall asleep, and so then we keep using more caffeine trying to fix it, and then our sleep just continues to get worse. So that can be a huge problem. I was also thinking, when you're talking like a fight with our spouse, like maybe we had an argument or a disagreement with a family member before bed and that's, you know, waking us up.
Michaela:Sometimes working out and doing a too aggressive of a workout like we think exercise is going to make us feel better, but sometimes doing that like workout too close to bedtime can also disrupt our sleep. Like workout too close to bedtime can also disrupt our sleep. Um, and then I like that you mentioned like fidgetiness, like you know, um, adhd, uh, clients with ADHD do have a lot of delayed sleep onset. Um, delayed onset sleep issues, um, like they just um, can't stop until they just kind of like crash, until they get to this and it's like their brain is just going, their body's going and they can't settle in into sleep, which is not all people with ADHD, you know, some people with ADHD can't, you know, especially if they don't have hyperactivity, they might not have problems shutting off their brain, because you know we have a lot of those, you know issues getting things that are going on in the brain to get through, and so we're not really thinking about a lot of things, right, and so those people can tend to have a lot easier time falling asleep.
Laura :Yeah, and then when they fall asleep, they have a hard time staying asleep at times, like waking up throughout the night, like I was mentioning with me. I wake up a thousand times and for a billion reasons, and sometimes I can fall asleep quickly after I wake up, but other times I can't, and so when I am waking up I might not even have a real reason, like maybe there's nothing going on in my head, maybe I'm just waking up because I heard a sound and now I can't fall back asleep, or something like that.
Michaela:Would you say that you're a light sleeper, or do you? Are you pretty deep?
Laura :I'm not a light sleeper. Like people can talk to me and I've actually been known to have full conversations in my sleep and I'm not awake for them, and so my kids. It used to be a rule that, like, if they're talking to me and they know that I'm asleep, like whatever I say doesn't count, because they would be like you said we could go do this, or you said we could have this, or you said this, I'm like no, that's not fair. You're taking advantage of the situation. Like they would always try to talk to me when I was sleeping, or if I'm like laying down. So I always used to say, like if I'm laying down, when I give you the answer, like the answer is no, you can't, you know. Like you can't count on that information because I will respond, but I'll stay asleep. That's so funny. That is like I think sometimes there's like I think my brain is always partially, is like only partially asleep, but I'm not getting that deep sleep. Like I think that's what's happening for me.
Michaela:That can be hard. Do you find that that's more like during that, like a nap in the afternoon, or is that like at nighttime?
Laura :Well, definitely during a nap, Like I don't think I fall asleep during naps, but I know that the time went by and I don't feel like it was a normal amount of time, so like it goes by fast, like sleep does, so it feels like it feels like I was sleeping, but I wasn't really sleeping, cause I know that I was fully aware of everything that was going on the entire time.
Michaela:Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't nap. I'd like if I, if I like, can actually sleep in the afternoon.
Michaela:It is like I have to be like so tired you know, yeah, um, this week we had our conference that we went to, and then we and then I just had a full packed day. I went, we got up at like you know early, went to you know the ski hill and took our kids skiing and I napped in the car. But like it was not, like I'm kind of awake, aware of what's going on around me, but like that's a rarity to be able to just like find myself asleep doing nothing else. But I, I walk in my sleep and my brother always tells me he always tells this really funny story of when we were, when I was in grad school and he was living with me in Iowa and I don't know, I was having a dream that I needed to plug my phone in. I vaguely remember that part and I left my bedroom, I grabbed my phone from my bedroom and then tried to plug it in out on in the living room and he's like what are you doing? And I literally walk out there and I'm like messing with my phone and then I like set it down and then I go back into the other room. Yeah, but I was plugging in my phone. That's so funny Waking up as a kid I remember waking up in weird places.
Michaela:Like I woke up with my bed, my, my blanket, in the bathroom. Yeah, okay, yeah, weird, right. Yeah, something that was supposed to be working in my brain was not working. Yeah, the deep sleep. So, um, and then I've been told that I'm not very nice in my sleep. So if you try to like get me to go, if I've like fall asleep on the couch, and you try to get me to go to the bedroom, go to bed or whatever, like, yeah, don't, don't do that, I'm not apparently very nice. I don't know what I said, but it's not great.
Laura :That's really funny. I am difficult to move. Like once I go to sleep, nobody's getting me to move. Like my kids will try to wake me up. Like last night I fell asleep on the couch and I know that they turned off the TV cause I was watching something on TV and when I woke up there was no TV. The TV was not on and normally it'll just keep playing and playing forever Like it was. It won't just like stop, and so I know they turned off the TV. My dogs were still like with me on the couch, Like I didn't put anybody to bed, Like I just completely fell asleep and they probably tell me hey, you know, get up and go upstairs. Like you're asleep now, Like it's time for bed and I'm just like okay, and then I don't like I'll say I will, I'll be like, yeah, okay, and then I just completely ignore them and go back to sleep.
Michaela:Yeah, that's too funny. Um, do you think that your sleep has changed Cause your kids are all older, you know a lot more self-sufficient, like? I feel like I was a very deep sleeper before. Now that I have kids and they're young, I like I hear every noise and it's so annoying that my husband never hears when the kids wake up in the middle of the night. Okay, no, not never, but like, most of the time I feel like I always wake up and I hear all the noises, but I wasn't always like that.
Laura :I think my sleep has changed from the perspective that I'm not as exhausted. So like I used to be so tired that I would fall asleep and stay asleep and wake up like late, like I couldn't even wake up in the morning. Like I was so exhausted all the time that I just couldn't function and could barely even wake up, like to get to work on time. So I'm not like that anymore. So now I can wake up in the morning and feed my dogs, and like I'm not really mad about it. Like I used to be so furious when my alarm would go off Cause I'm like, no, I'm not ready. Like I need more sleep. And and I'm not like that anymore Like it's a lot easier for me now to wake up in the morning without being cranky.
Michaela:Yeah, well, that's good.
Michaela:I bet that feels a lot better, it does feel better and it's hope for people out there that aren't morning people about, like maybe there's a chance that you can kind of become less of, you know, you can have more of that morning spirit and stuff. But I think you know we we were, you know, talking to a colleague this week and we were talking about like sleep and insomnia and like she introduced the idea of like the, the sleep doctor and things about that teach, telling us that like maybe that there's just a difference, like some of us just have different natural circadian rhythms for sleep and maybe we don't all have to be the same, even though most of us are morning people, like you said, like 55% of people are morning people and they can get up and they feel the best, you know, in that in those morning hours getting things done, you know between like 10 and two or something, and feeling pretty good. Some of us are just not morning people and naturally, you know we that probably doesn't change a whole lot in our lifetime.
Laura :Yeah, I used to like wish I was asleep. When I was awake Like all the time, I'm like I just would like focus. Sleep was like a huge focus for me all the time. Like I would be thinking about sleep. So if I would wake up in the morning and have to be awake and doing something, all I would be thinking is like I wish I could be sleeping right now and so like I'm not like preoccupied by my sleep anymore, even though my sleep is not as restful, I don't think like I don't think that I'm getting as deep of sleep as I used to when I was like super duper tired all the time, because now I'm like waking up at night where I never did that before, but it doesn't like it's not as intrusive like in my life, like just like wishing I could go to bed earlier or like needing more sleep before work or something like that.
Michaela:Well, that's the thing that I find is really common in, as you know, we get older I don't want to say that, but, like, as we, as our hormones change and our life changes, sometimes that is a very common thing, especially like 10 years before that menopausal time period. You know, a lot of times women are starting to see those progesterone levels go down and so sometimes it can be a hormone imbalance that could be creating some of those sleep problems. I hear a lot of like increased anxiety or like problems staying asleep at night being probably one of the most common things. So you know there's definitely hormone issues that can happen. The other thing that, like I always screen patients on, is, you know when they're saying that they have problems sleeping or they feel really tired during the day.
Michaela:You know there are sleep disorders that aren't talked about very often.
Michaela:So you know there is a percentage of people that can have narcolepsy without cataplexy.
Michaela:And when I talk about this, about this, to clients, they're like what I'm not just like falling asleep at my desk or in my food or whatever you know, but the fact is is that you don't have to have that like falling asleep thing. It's that like you're just extremely tired during the day and could sleep during the daytime. You know, if you're sitting back watching a show or like relaxing for a few minutes, then you could be out and you're oftentimes seeing that they're going into that REM sleep very quickly, so they fall asleep and dream really quickly. As you know, one of the things also looking at like restless leg and you know different disorders where we're we're often like feeling like our legs are really restless and kicking a lot could be another contributing factor to. You know people who think that they're sleeping through the night but also or it could wake them up, but there's, there may be sleeping through the night, but they're not getting that quality sleep because of of these like restless leg movements.
Laura :So like what are some of the other we kind of mentioned? Like most people are morning people, right? Like what are some of the other groups of sleepers? Like how does that look for other people?
Michaela:Um, well, I think some people are night people, right, they're. They're going to, you know, feel the most energy in the evening time. Um, you know, there's just a different like circadian rhythms for for different people. Some people might get a burst of energy, you know, they might have a little bit in the afternoon and then they're feeling really like energetic towards the evening time. So, you know, different people will have different, like you know, circadian rhythms for their body, just like, even with nutrition, right, like some people don't feel hungry in the morning. Well, that has to do with like the chrononutrition or like clock in our body telling us when we're hungry, when we're not hungry, and some of that we have to start trying to build on, like the more we don't do something right, like with eating, if we don't eat breakfast and we're never going to be a breakfast person but start eating breakfast, we could, we could become a breakfast person. And I think that the same is probably true to some degree with sleep. Obviously, like some sleep training works in some people. We're not going to automatically be morning people, you know, but we can try to get into a better rhythm and we can. We do that by doing good sleep hygiene practices. You know, maybe we really are a person that has good, normal circadian, could have normal circadian rhythm, but we wouldn't know unless we try. We get stuck into these patterns of, you know, sleeping in in the morning when we can and then, you know, going to bed late when we can, and we kind of have a schedule that's all over the place, and so we wouldn't know if it's really just a circadian rhythm, like that's just our jam, versus it being poor sleep habits. And so I think the first thing that we would want to do is make sure that we're following these good sleep habits so that we can, you know, see if we can be the most successful possible, right, and so you know, I know we talked about daytime activities, like avoiding a lot of caffeine late in the day.
Michaela:Some people it's 2pm, some people it's noon, some people it's earlier. The older we get, the less we can metabolize caffeine, and so more caffeine is going to hang around longer in our system. So people will be like I've been drinking eight cups of coffee my whole life. What do you mean? I have to stop drinking coffee, right, and it's like well, your body could metabolize it before and now it's having a hard time metabolizing it. So we can't be drinking coffee all day. And I think even for people that are like, oh, I fall asleep so easily with coffee, like coffee makes me fall asleep and it's like, okay, that's fine, it might make you fall asleep, but what else is the coffee and the caffeine doing to your nervous system? It's probably increasing cortisol, like it's doing other things, and it's probably going to lead to you having problems with sleeping through the night as well. So sometimes that's a problem.
Michaela:Like we talked about working out napping. Some people are nappers and they can nap and they can have a full night's sleep, and that's great. But when we start seeing that nap intruding on our nighttime sleep, then it's maybe time to reevaluate the nap, and that may not happen right away, but over time it could be happening. And so then you can say, well, I've been napping for you know, forever and now, well, maybe now it is impacting your sleep at night because we need less sleep as we age. Maybe Right, and so the rules of napping are going to be like no more than 90 minutes and no more than like five hours. You need to be up at least for five hours after the nap before. You're like wanting to go to bed, and so that's going to help protect that nighttime sleep. I mean, you think about babies, right? We always made sure that they had they're not napping too close to bedtime, or otherwise our bedtime routine is going to be thrown off, and so we're just like we're. They're just little humans, similar to us, so we need to follow the rules too. And then protecting your bedtime routine is huge.
Michaela:So I know that, like, this is the my least popular conversation that I have with people. People really don't want to listen. People think, like the TV makes me fall asleep. The TV helps me fall asleep, which I don't discount. I don't. I think that that's true. It's a distraction of your brain, right, and it's a very successful distraction.
Michaela:And so you know, turning on Friends for the 1800th time, you've seen all the episodes. You know that it's going to put you to sleep. But you're not also taking into consideration your brain. Brains want to finish things, brains want to know what's going on. And so, even if you're asleep, are you really in that deep sleep because your mind is hearing what's going on in the background? You know, if you're watching something that you've never seen before, it's exciting. You can get that adrenaline rush and you can literally, if you pay attention to your body enough, you can feel like your heart is a little bit faster than what it would normally be before bedtime and you can feel the difference when you go a long time without watching shows at nighttime, and then you do. You can feel the difference in your body and how it reacts to sleep at bedtime when you're trying to bring down for the day. It's really, it's really crazy.
Michaela:So you know, turning the TV off and I forgot to mention that, like the light from the TV is also catastrophic for for sleep. You know that light is going to be decreasing that natural production of melatonin, because you know that's what's. That's how our brains were designed to see. Oh, it's nighttime, right, it's time to start shutting down, it's time to go to sleep, and so having all the lights in the house on and on, bright, and watching TV and being on your phone scrolling, those are all going to make really big impacts on your sleep. And so if you want to have the best sleep possible, you do really want to make sure that an hour before bed, you're kind of shutting all those things down. You're turning the lights down. You're dimming them so that you can, kind of like, let your brain start recognizing it's time for sleep.
Laura :Yeah, those are all really good and they make perfect sense. You know what I mean. Like, when you're saying this stuff, it's like oh yeah, no, that makes sense. Like I feel really called out about the caffeine. I'm just saying, um, because I know we just spent two days together and you watched me drink like 700 diet Cokes a day. Um, and I will drink them right before bed, like, and I think it's fine because I can fall asleep. But, like, as you're talking, I'm thinking, oh, maybe that's why I can't stay asleep, maybe that's why I'm waking up all the time, like for no reason and because I don't feel necessarily anxious. I just feel like I'm not resting.
Laura :You know what I mean and I think you know sometimes there's other things that can contribute to not being able to sleep, like depression, anxiety and other like mood disorders and difficulties with your mental health, like a high level of stress, like all of those things can make it really hard for you to fall asleep or stay asleep, and it's really important to take care of your mental health, and part of that is like taking care of your nutrition, right?
Laura :Like I feel like often we try to isolate these things and we say like, oh well, it's just this one thing, Like it's this one area of my life, but it's not it's. You're a whole person and you have a lot of variables that are impacting how things are going for you, and so nutrition is a really important component of sleep too. Like there's foods that you can eat that cause, or that there's foods that you can eat that actually, like create more calming effects than other foods, and there's foods that you can eat that create like energizing effects as well. Right, like if you're eating a lot of sugary foods or carbohydrates, like close to bedtime, you know you might get that like coma, like the pasta kind of coma or whatever, but that's not sustained sleepiness. That's just like I'm digesting really hard food, really food that's hard to digest and that takes a lot of energy, but it's going to turn into energy once it's digested. Like so now I'm going to end up with more energy at the end.
Michaela:Yes, oh yeah, I love that you brought that up. I think that that's so on point and it made me think about alcohol. So often do people say like, oh yeah, I'm going to, I drink my glass of wine and then I don't have any problems falling asleep. But then they're waking up at three o'clock in the morning when that alcohol is being, you know, digested and it's not making you have the sleepy effects and you're having even actually like, maybe higher sugar or lower sugar, depending on the timing of things and how you're, you know what medicines you're taking and whatnot. But like you know, we, you know we wake up, you know, so thirsty in the middle of the night after having a drink to put us to sleep, and then now we're awake and we don't. Now we're not tired to go back to sleep again. So alcohol can be a really big component of like waking up in the middle of the night.
Laura :Yeah, and you know with that, with alcohol too, like you wake up just not feeling as clear headed. So like the morning is harder, when, if you're somebody who's not a morning person already and then you're waking up after a night of having a couple of drinks before going to bed, then, like you're going to wake up, your brain's going to be foggy, you're not going to be clear, you're not going to be feeling refreshed because you had, you know, like that crash and then the like, you know, the sugar rush and then all you know what I mean. Like all of these different disruptors that have happened throughout the night, you're not going to feel refreshed in the morning. You're not going to feel like spry. First thing. When your alarm goes off, ready to go, you're going to hit it, you're going to be hitting snooze, you know, at least 27 times before you wake up in the morning.
Michaela:Yeah, absolutely Well, and the you know we talked a lot about like nighttime things that you can do and so. But, like morning time, starting your day at the same time of day consistently is also another factor that can contribute to having better sleep at night, because your body is following a rhythm right and knows what to expect, and so if we're waking up at the same time of day, we're more likely to be tired at the same time of day. But if we're, like you know, you know, sleeping in like a teenager I mean, I liked my sleep a lot when I was a teenager I'm telling you not no judgment here, but like, oh yeah, you know we're, we're sleeping in where you know we're getting our day started later, we're having our caffeine later, we're doing all these things later in the day, and so then we're, we're having a harder time getting to bed that night and then we just, you know, kind of never get back on track. Um, there was also another study that said it's better to go to bed at the same time of night every night versus like variable times. Like you think you're doing yourself a good favor. You're like I went to bed at nine o'clock last night. I got a solid, not 10 hours of sleep, I'm great.
Michaela:Like you think that you're really doing your body, you know the service, you're catching up on things, but they they show that it's actually better for you to go to bed, even if it's just a little bit later, but to be more consistent with that sleep, again supporting that body's natural clock of finding a rhythm of sleep and then just being consistent with that. I think someone was saying that like seven hours is probably like the sweet spot for sleep, like you can get too much sleep and so, like some people feel like a little bit more tired if they get, you know, eight and a half hours of sleep, where they feel the best when they get eight hours of sleep. And so finding that like magic, you know time for your own body and then setting your clock around, that can be helpful.
Laura :Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, like having just the rhythm so that your body can get used to it. Similarly, to sleep like you're training your brain. You're training your brain to get used to something that happens at the same time every day, and it's like wires together, fires together, we say all the time we heard that a thousand times over the past couple of days but we're training our brain to know that like, oh, it's around this time I'm going to start getting tired, I'm going to start producing that melatonin, I'm going to start looking for, you know, winding down opportunities, and so we're ready to give our body a break at that time. And that's really important to your body's ability to calm down. It needs to have a routine, it needs to know what to expect, because otherwise, if it's expecting things to just be chaotic and anything goes anytime, it's not going to know what to do. It's not going to be able to get into that mode as easily.
Laura :Some things that I recommend to people who have a hard time relaxing is to take breaks throughout the day and calm yourself down, even if you don't think you're not calm like you might think you're fine, but you need to take a break just a random time throughout the day, like three or four times, and just intentionally calm yourself down, because what you're teaching yourself how to do is calm down in any moment and then, when you need it, you'll be able to use it, because you don't want that to be a game time decision. You don't want your body to have to practice when it's time to fall asleep. You want to set yourself up for success by having a routine where your body can predict what's going to happen next. And then, when you calm yourself down throughout the day, you're giving yourself that blueprint like oh, now I know how to do this, so I can do it when I need it.
Michaela:Yeah, it's like muscle memory it when I need it. Yeah, it's like muscle memory. Exactly, that makes a lot of sense. I think that that's a really good point. I was also thinking about, like you know, we kind of alluded to like having a lot of cognitive distortions or like mental mistakes surrounding the thoughts about bad sleep, and I know that this is one of the cornerstone things in cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. But it's like helping like cognitive restructuring around those thoughts and those beliefs around sleep. So like I might think tomorrow's going to be terrible, but is it really ever as bad as I think it's going to be? No, Right. And so we start to. You know, I always tell people it's like Pavlov's dogs, right? So we have all this tossing and turning that happens in our bed and it's kind of that classic conditioning, you know thing that's going on. It's like we are feeding the dogs and we ring the bell. Now the bell signifies food for the dog. Now, even thinking about bed means I'm going to not sleep good.
Michaela:I'm going to toss and turn. What happens tomorrow and I'm not saying that like people who have had severe insomnia days and days on end don't feel like the worst. It is terrible, and I'm not discounting that part of it. I'm talking more about like the everyday person that has these, like you know these, has had bad sleep and has, you know, kind of got stuck in this, in this pattern. So like what would you, what would you suggest someone do? Or like ways that they can help work them, walk themselves through how to improve some of those negative thoughts?
Laura :I mean, I think to challenge those thoughts is important, creating like a visualization maybe of like what you want to feel like the next day, or creating a relaxing visualization. Even listening to some sleep music can help those thoughts just fade away a little bit. I listen to sleep music sometimes on my phone before bed and it helps me calm my brain. It tells my brain, oh, it's time to be calm because the calm music is coming on. And so when I hear my calm music my brain is like, oh, fire, that is wired with this. I'm going to fire at the same time to start going to sleep. And it also focusing on the calm music that doesn't have any words or anything like that, just focusing on the melody helps my brain not focus on the thoughts. So there's like one just just, it's a distraction, it's a way to focus on something else, focus my attention on something helpful instead of something that's not as helpful, and those thoughts aren't helping me right now. So the other thing is to challenge the negative thoughts, like just kind of let them know that there's other possibilities, right, like tomorrow doesn't have to be terrible, like okay, maybe last night was really hard, but tonight doesn't have to be Just because it happened before doesn't mean it's going to happen again. So reminding myself that anything can happen now and that every night is a new opportunity to get better sleep and have a better time. And so I think that using some of those strategies could help retrain your brain to be less like dread, less right, like it's that feeling of dread.
Laura :What you were describing. It's like this, I'm dreading laying down, because I know it's just feeling of dread. What you were describing it's like this, I'm dreading laying down, because I know it's just going to be hard. But changing changing your environment is going to show yourself that there's something different about this. It doesn't have to be the same. So maybe get a fresh set of sheets, maybe, um, make a change to the layout of your room or hang some nice calming pictures, like things that you like, like, um, change the color scheme, make a change in your environment that can also like, give yourself an opportunity to reset. So like, cause what wires together, fires together. You're taking out all the things that remind you, like you're basically getting a new bell instead of the old bell. You're getting a new bell and you're retraining your brain to do something different.
Michaela:Yeah, I love that. I think that's a great plan. So we've talked about, like, different ways to set the intention for sleep. We've talked about things that we can get rid of, things that we can add in. Is there anything else that you can think of that might help with, like the, you know, the overall sleep health of somebody?
Laura :The thing that you mentioned before about exercise, like not exercising too close to bedtime, but exercising at some point throughout your day, like being active, is one thing that I always recommend too.
Laura :Like going for a 20 minute walk every day is so helpful for your brain and your body and it gives yourself, like, it gives your brain, time to focus on different things, like don't bring your phone, don't have like, don't be checking it, just if you are listening to music that's fine, but you know to try to go for a 20-minute walk where you're not, you know, engaging with your device, and so you're giving yourself time to recognize, like, what calm looks like.
Laura :A lot of the time, I think it's that we just don't know what calm looks like. We don't know how that feels in our bodies, we don't know. And those activities that you can do, like if you're exercising a little bit, like it releases a lot of important neurochemicals that allow your body to optimally perform, and some of those is like serotonin and some of that is, um, you know, the ability to uh, to rest afterward, right, like so when you've got this workout going, or when you're walking, you know you're exerting energy, but your body has to like constantly regulate in that moment. So it's practicing you're. You're building muscles, but you're also building like, your internal muscle, to come back down from, from getting worked up Like. I think it's just a really important exercise for your mind as well.
Michaela:Yeah, when you were saying that, I was thinking like, oh my gosh, when I run I process through all the things that I'd probably be like thinking about at nighttime. So like I'm giving myself an like just even giving yourself an opportunity during the day to like think about things or like have space for that might take it away at nighttime. The other thing I was thinking about is like um fight or flight. So you know, a lot of the things come back to the sympathetic nervous system arousal. What happens? I don't know if anybody has like an aura ring or like something that tracks their sleep at nighttime, whatever. When you don't get good sleep at nighttime, what happens? Your sympathetic nervous system arousal is generally higher.
Michaela:And so by just getting less sleep you're setting yourself up to almost have your amygdala smoke detector be more sensitive. I think I wonder you know yeah.
Laura :I think that's true. I think because it lessens your window of tolerance. Right Like it, it closes that window a little bit because your body's having to work on less resources, so you don't have the resources you need in order to maintain a level of calm and settled and safe throughout the day.
Michaela:Yeah, that makes so much sense. And you know, even calls into you know who hasn't had like a bad night's sleep or like just didn't have opportunity to, things were so busy, whatever. And then the next day they're pretty grumpy, like they're short with all. They just don't, we just don't feel like ourselves. And so I think that, like you're what you're talking about about, like taking breaks during the day and making sure that we're like having opportunity to calm our nervous systems, definitely going to be helpful at decreasing and improving our window of tolerance and lowering that threshold where we feel like we can be operating at like a better, closer to our baseline.
Laura :Absolutely yeah. So we have our sleep environment that we can change. We have our sleep schedule, like our routine, nighttime routine, that we can change. We can change the sights and sounds that we have before bed. We can change our mental mindset about bedtime and what that looks like. We can use strategies for our nutrition and for our health that are outside of sleep, stuff like what we don't already think about, like alcohol consumption, caffeine consumption. There's so many things that we can do to improve our sleep, so I think we start with those and then kind of see where it goes from there.
Michaela:I agree A couple of things that I was thinking that we could add to that list is the optimal sleep temperature is probably I think it's 67 degrees, um, so having it cooler and the house actually promotes better sleep at nighttime. Um, and then you know, what are you sleeping on? Who hasn't slept on a crappy mattress or a couch? Cause there, cause you were staying over somewhere and, of course, like you were, yeah, or just cause you fell asleep on the couch, right? You know that environment is probably going to be more conducive for waking up with hip pain or like headaches or neck aches and things like that, and that's gonna definitely not make us feel better.
Michaela:So, being mindful of like, is it time to upgrade your mattress? And like, making sure that we have a budget that's saving towards ensuring that we can have the best place to sleep, you know, I know beds, mattresses are super expensive, but they're definitely worth it if you can, you know. And then you know just making sure your temperature is down lower, which can be really hard in my house. I know that the kids that, like one of the kids bedrooms is more likely to be cooler or warmer or whatever, and so it's hard to adjust the temperature so everybody has the best you know sleep possible. So I know that it's not always easy to do, but you can do the best that you can to make sure that it's the best environment.
Laura :Yeah, and it's so worth it to take some of these steps, even if you only take a couple of them, like take some of these steps, even if you only take a couple of them, like take some of these small steps to improve the quality of your life overall.
Michaela:Yeah, I was going to say too there are some supplements that can help promote better sleep, and so, you know, that's something that we would talk about, like in a consultation to help you understand a little bit more about what options might be the best for you particularly. But like, magnesium is always one of the ones that I throw out there. I've found success, like with treating restless leg. You know, improving anything like that. Cramps, you know, can improve with magnesium. You don't have to, you know, always ingest it either. You can do like an Epsom salt bath type thing that magnesium salts can soak into the skin so that it doesn't have as much havoc on, like, your GI tract and things like that.
Michaela:So there's definitely like supplements, but like, the one thing that I want you to know about sleep is that it is not a quick fix when it has taken us years to create bad habits around sleep, and I know that it's like one of the most frustrating things that we want to just like fix right, like right now, and I know that it's like one of the most frustrating things that we want to just like fix right, like right now. And there's medicines that we can use and things that we can use to help you get better sleep immediately. But ultimately, if you, if the research shows the best long lasting results for sleep, is going to be using the cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, for, like good sleep hygiene, doing these things, it has the longest lasting effects. Yeah.
Laura :So it's not like it's not a fast, easy fix, but it's worth the time and energy and effort to take some steps that you can take right away, small steps, even, and um, and then go from there. Yeah Well, thank you so much. This was very enlightening and I think I'm going to take some steps of mine for to improve my sleep hygiene. I've learned a little bit. I'm going to maybe switch to decaf We'll see what happens, Um, but I really appreciate you and this conversation and thank you for listening to why am I Like this? If you like our show, please leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform, follow the show and share it with your friends. This episode was written and produced by me, Laura Wood and Michaela Beaver. Our theme song is Making Ends Meet by Thick as Thieves, and a special thanks to Benavieri Counseling and Active Healing Psychiatric Services for sponsoring our show.
