Struggling to sleep? Discover the science behind sleep, its impact on mental health, and practical strategies to improve your sleep quality and reduce anxiety.
Learn how to:
Create a calming bedtime routine for adults to prepare your body and mind for sleep.
Manage anxiety-related thoughts and break the cycle of overthinking and worry that keep you awake.
Improve sleep quality through practical tips and strategies.
Understand the impact of sleep deprivation on your mental and physical health.
Key Takeaways: Bedtime Routines for Adults are Important
The importance of a consistent sleep schedule.
The benefits of a relaxing bedtime routine.
Strategies for managing anxiety-related thoughts before bed.
The connection between sleep and overall well-being.
Join me as we explore the power of sleep and discover how it can help you feel more confident, calm, and resilient.
Grab my How To Sleep Tips Here
Podcast Transcript:
Welcome to episode three. Welcome back, I am thrilled that you're here and I'm going to share some really important information about what I think is one of the biggest problems in America right now on why so many people are anxious. There's a couple, but this one is big. This week, we're going to talk about sleep. We're going to talk about what it means to get really good quality sleep, what to do, when you can't sleep, and what to do when you finally nod off and then you wake up in the middle of the night feeling anxious, or just restless. So this is going to be a powerful episode, I'm going to share some best practices with you, and at the end, if you go to the show notes, you'll be able to find 10 really good tips on how you can get better sleep and create some powerful routines for yourself. So let's go ahead and dive in.
01:39
What I think about sleep is that when I was in the middle of a my most anxious period of my life, and when I think back what I feel like was the most anxious period was probably the time when I was in college. And at this point in time, in my own life, I was experiencing really frequent panic attacks mixed in with anxiety attacks that would last for... like some of them lasted for even a week or two; where I was just spent and always spiraling in this - in this cycle of anxiety or panic. And at the end of a panic attack, or a really intense anxiety attack. I was exhausted. And I just wanted to sleep. I wanted to sleep it off, because when I slept, I couldn't think. And for me, I feel very lucky that in the middle of that period of my life, I didn't struggle with being able to sleep. As a matter of fact, I probably slept away too much, because whenever I felt anxious, I knew if I slept, I would feel better. For other people, they experience a little bit different situation where they're so anxious that they can't sleep and their mind spins. That has not been my experience. But it is incredibly common. So if that is your experience, hang tight, I'm going to talk to you as well.
03:06
America is incredibly sleep deprived, the whole world is incredibly sleep deprived, and it's because humans are distinctively the only mammals that willingly put off sleep. We put it off as moms: I put off sleep because I knew that after my kids went to bed, the house was quiet and I could do whatever the heck I wanted. We will put off sleep because there's something fun coming up, or we've got work we want to accomplish. Or we just don't feel like going to bed because we want to binge watch NetFlix, we have so many reasons that we don't sleep, that we live in a deficit, that it's really impossible to make up. Most adult women, adult women... need seven to nine hours of sleep at night. Now if you are listening to this and you are in high school, you are not an adult yet. I know you think you are but you're not. And you actually need more sleep than that. As we age, our bodies sleep less. We don't require as much energy we're not doing as many things. So when you are an older adult woman, you may not require or you may not be able to even achieve seven to nine hours at night. But for a typical adult women, an adult woman needs seven to nine hours of sleep a night. The average number of hours of sleep in America is only five! And I know there are people out there that are saying, "You know what, Megan, I can survive on four hours of sleep. I feel great" Yeah, try seven to nine and then get back with me. Because I know you can survive on that it's very possible that you are living and doing fine. But my guess is that you are not running at your full potential, and I'm going to say this over and over, this world needs everyone running on full potential right now. We need you to feel positive and powerful and capable and to think clearly, ...and to not be full of snappy anger. And when we aren't getting enough sleep, those are things we experience and a lot of stress and anxiety. So we're going to cover all of that today, and go ahead and dive in. Are you ready?
05:18
All right, the best bridge between anxiety and feeling calm and present in your body, and being able to bring some hope back into your life, is sleep. And here's why. When you sleep, your muscles and your blood and your organs all get to detoxify and rebuild, which means that your body is performing at its best when it is rested. Even an hour sleep deficit cuts this down. Your liver isn't detoxing; it's not taking the things out of your body that it needs to be out of there. Those, those chemicals that we eat, when we eat processed food or that are sprayed on our foods or anything else, those just get stuck. They don't get, they don't get flushed out the way that they need to if we're not sleeping. Researchers have found that people who are prone to anxiety... if you are highly sensitive, if you've had some trauma in your life, if you are like empathic, if you are any of those things, and you are more sensitive to being anxious, and maybe it is that it runs in your family line. That can be a thing too; doesn't have to be but, it can be those people are especially sensitive to the effects of insufficient sleep! Those people are especially sensitive to not having enough sleep. If they're tired, they are more anxious. They are more sensitive. They're picking up other people's feelings, and it causes them more anxiety. And another thing we know is that your body actually has a natural circadian rhythm that it follows. Now, maybe you've heard of circadian rhythm, and maybe you have it and maybe you're like, I think I know what that is,but I'm not sure. So I want to explain this to you. And the best way I like to describe this is that your body actually follows the progression of the sun across the sky in terms of energy. This is a really, really cool thing. I had always heard of circadian rhythm, but when I started paying attention to it, so much made sense about how I felt during the day about when I was hungry when I was tired when I need a little nap. It all came together.
07:44
Okay, so let's start at about 6am. 6am - Right around the time you would wake up, some of you are already up with me, some of you sleep a little later. But at 6am between six and seven, your melatonin release stops. And this does not mean the gummy that you took before bed at night. This means your natural melatonin release turns off, and when that melatonin turns off, you naturally start to wake up. You start your day, and you get up.
08:16
By 10 o'clock you should be should be getting some sunlight. The sun is up and you are up. So imagine the sun going across the sky and as it comes up, so do you. Remember that before we had clocks before we had like standard time and all of these other things people got up when the sun went up and they went down when the sun went down. That's all this is and that's a very nice natural cycle that your body has.
08:45
So you wake up at six, melatonin turns off, by eight o'clock you should be up in in the daylight. Sun should be coming in or light should be coming into your house. You might have to open the curtains, you might have to go outside, that's okay. Your highest level of alertness during the day is actually right around 10 o'clock.
09:06
At noon, you are at peak. You are most coordinated, this is crazy; if you want to pay start paying attention to your body you are most coordinated at around one or two o'clock in the afternoon - followed by your fastest reaction time.
09:25
By five o'clock in the afternoon, when it's later in the afternoon, you should be limiting your caffeine. I'm going to put a caveat on that and say, you should not be having caffeine after two o'clock in the afternoon. Especially if you're not sleeping.
09:40
By seven o'clock you should be dimming the lights. The sun is going down, it's time to dim the lights in your house.
09:48
By nine o'clock. You should have all of your screens off. That means no more phone, no more iPad, no more laptop and that is when your melatonin starts to kick in again. Again, this isn't because you took a gummy or a pill. This is because your body naturally produces melatonin.
10:08
Starting at 10 o'clock. And that's when you need to go to bed. Some people go to bed earlier than that some people go to bed later than that, but 10 o'clock, your melatonin is in and you need to be down with the lights off.
10:22
Restorative sleep happens between about between like one and two, and you hit really, really deep sleep at about two o'clock in the morning, between two o'clock and four o'clock.
10:36
Five o'clock, you start having REM sleep and REM sleep is dream sleep. And that's often right before we wake up. That's why we remember our dreams, because your brain is starting to come back online. Those dreams that we think lasted all night long usually lasts maybe like a minute, two minutes, not very long at all.
10:59
And then we get back to six o'clock in the morning when the sun starts to come up. And so do you. That's a very natural cycle of how our body works.
11:11
What we do is we come up with some crazy ways to disrupt this natural sleep cycle with our very busy lives. We love coffee, as I sit here and hold my little cup of coffee while I'm talking to you. We visit Starbucks like it's our job; it might actually be my job. If I calculated the amount of money that I spent at Starbucks, I would probably throw up. Dang, I love it. We alcohol we drink alcohol before bed, which disrupts our sleep. We eat big meals and night. This is a really interesting fact about Americans that I think and maybe the rest of the world, but it's hard for me to tell because I don't live there. We have this habit of skipping breakfast, picking through lunch and eating a larger dinner, which is exactly the opposite of what our bodies need. They need us to eat a medium sized breakfast, a giant lunch and a tiny dinner. Because your body does not want to digest food when it's sleeping. It's busy trying to get all the other gunk out of there. But we have this way of disrupting our sleep cycle by eating big meals, or having a drink before bed.
12:27
There are some other things that can disrupt your sleep as well. Things that are keeping your brain awake and making it difficult for you to fall asleep. I mentioned screens here's why. And people will argue this with me. I actually you know what my 16 year old son argues this with me frequently, but here's the God's honest truth. The blue light from the screens stimulates your brain to mimic the UV light from the sun telling it that it's not time to sleep yet. Yes, you can put a yellow screen over, you can get like the like the yellow filter to take the blue light out, that can help. But that light is telling your brain to stay awake. That's why when you're on your phone, you're like I don't know, I couldn't fall asleep. So I put on my phone then I couldn't fall asleep. Yes, that light is keeping your brain awake. I know that's annoying, and it's really fun to play on your phone before bed. It's not helping you sleep though.
13:24
Caffeine, food, medication can disrupt your sleep. I know that some medications are very necessary, and if that were an issue, I would recommend that you would talk to your doctor about possibly taking it earlier in the day rather than right before bed. So that it's not as at a high level in your system when you're trying to sleep. Other medications that make you drowsy, take those before bed.
13:50
Stress, my friends stress, and not managing your stress and not learning ways to get the cortisol down in your body so that your body can relax, and learning how you can really effectively manage stress, without alcohol or caffeine or anything else is mind blowing! It's so much of what I work on with clients in coaching about, let's just talk about what we're going to do about these stressful feelings in your body and about the stressful thoughts that you have. Because when you bring that stress level down, your body can relax and when your body can relax, your brain will follow. And of course, you're here so we know anxiety can keep us awake, all of those scary thoughts that pop into your head, especially when your brain is tired, because a tired brain is an anxious brain and trying to work those out before you fall asleep. Those are all really difficult situations when you're trying to fall asleep. And just making bad sleep, bad sleep habits. "I don't know, I play on my phone until two o'clock in the morning, and I drink coffee until about 11 at night, and I try to only get two to three hours of sleep at night." The things that I hear sometimes I'm like, "Yeah, man, there's a reason you're anxious! You're tired!"
15:17
So we really want to find some ways to get better sleep, and you need to have some really solid sleep practices. I want you to picture like go back to when you were little, and I hope that you had the experience of a bedtime routine, because that bedtime routine was not just meant to help your parents get you to bed. Although as a parent, I'm saying it definitely is a bonus that we know that when we start bath time, that bed is coming soon. But it also helps kids prepare their bodies and their brains to sleep. And the same goes true for adults. There are sleep practices that you can put into place that will help you prepare your brain and your body to fall asleep.
16:06
So I know I said that according to circadian rhythm that you should stop drinking caffeine, about five hours before bed. If you are sensitive to caffeine, I'm going to sit back and on up, let's go seven, maybe even eight. You will survive. You might want to like take it back a little bit at a time. I don't know if you've ever done a caffeine detox. I told you I drink a lot of coffee. And one time I decided I was gonna see what it was like to not do that. It was painful, my friend. It was painful! It was six - I did this for six weeks where I, cold turkey stopped drinking coffee. And I thought I'm gonna have a headache. But that was the least of my problems, because if I'm being honest, the thing that was the hardest - and the whole thing was - but I didn't know this was a thing, but my lower back and the backs of my legs all the way down to my knees hurt so damn bad...hen I gave up coffee. Oh, it was like I was teaching at this point, and I remember standing in class and thinking I'm going to need to stretch or sit down because my legs hurt so bad. So I've done the coffee detox, like the whole like cold turkey no coffee thing. It's painful. I'm not recommending that you do that. What I am recommending is that if you are enjoying caffeine without having bad side effects, causing you to feel more anxious, yay. So am I. Caffeine is not always something that you have to give up on your anxious, that doesn't hold true for everyone. I am recommending though that you back it on up and maybe don't shrink it for seven or eight hours before bed.
17:52
Another thing no strenuous exercise for two hours before bed. When you exercise, you increase cortisol level if you work out hard, and you increase your heart rate, which makes you more alert. Exercise is great. Keep it to the morning or the early afternoon. Just don't do it a couple hours before bed. Instead, do some stretching, do some yoga and some breath work. Loosen those muscles up, get your zen on, and really chill out. Some gentle stretching is fantastic before bed.
18:28
Okay, the next tip I have make your own bedtime routine and this can be as lavish and extravagant as you want it to be. Create a bedtime routine that makes you feel cozy, and comfortable, and ready to tuck yourself in. Buy yourself a teddy bear if you want or a new blanket. Did you have a blanket when you were little? A baby blanket. Maybe you still have one. I know a lot of adults still have their baby blanket, snuggle that thing! There's no shame in that at all in my book; go ahead!
19:04
Have a little snack. Maybe get your Teddy Grahams back out or something. Not a big meal, just a small snack if you - especially if you tend to wake up in the middle of the night feeling hungry. Have a small snack, a cheese stick, maybe a graham cracker with some peanut butter on it. Something like that.
19:22
Do a little bit of yoga, take a bubble bath. These are great bedtime routines, They calm your body. They bring your stress level down. They get you ready to sleep.
19:35
Meditate or pray. It's really the same thing. Honestly, I know that sometimes people of faith get really freaked out about the meditation word. Christians in particular and as a Christian, I can tell you that sometimes you say meditate and people are like, "Oh, Hey.." Pray, use whatever word you want, okay? The point of this is to clear your brain out and to really just allow yourself to be to simply breathe. Shut your brain off, and maybe use a guided meditation if you have trouble shutting your brain off.
20:13
The next thing that I'm going to recommend is to journal or read a paper book. So I told you that screens are a big no-no before bed. Paper books! Go old school. Find something that you can read, that is actually paper or journal. Now, journaling before bed when you're anxious is especially powerful and I want to spend some time on this and explain why. For a lot of people who struggle to fall asleep, they lay there and stew over anxious thoughts. "What if this happens", "what if this is wrong", all of those things that are going through your head that are causing you to feel more anxious, are especially loud when your brain is tired because it doesn't think clearly. A tired brain is an anxious brain! You're already running in fight or flight, which makes that part of your brain that's able to think rationally not work. And we know that when we're tired, we make bad decisions. We don't drive well, we don't learn well, and we certainly don't think through our fears when we're exhausted! So when you take time to journal before bed, you are giving your brain an opportunity to get those fears out of your head, where they just grow and get bigger and bigger and onto paper where they become more concrete. So let's say that your fear is that, I am really afraid that my best friend is furious with me and she'll never speak to me again, because I said something stupid. I don't know I'm making this up... If that is your fear, take some time to grab a journal and a pen and write it all down. Move it from your brain onto paper and make it concrete. Do not edit this - just scribble down all of your scary thoughts and move them from your brain to the paper. Then take a minute and go back and read them because once you're reading them off of the paper, and they're more concrete, you're able to see the fallacies in those thoughts. Like, well, that is a weird thing for me to think! But just the simple task of moving them from your brain to the paper, gets them out of your thought cycle so that you can start shutting your brain down. If you are laying in bed stewing over scary scenarios, get them out of your head, through journaling. Get out some pretty colored pins, if you want, make it fun. Make it as part of your bedtime routine, to be able to do that. Then, make an agreement with yourself that when you start to think about those, if you start to think about those thought again, that you will address them in the morning. "This problem isn't going anywhere, I'll address it in the morning." That holds true for if you wake up in the night with some anxiety as well.
23:30
If you wake up, in a moment of -this horrible thing is going to happen... "Whoa! A tired brain is an anxious brain. I will think about this in the morning!" I have had to do this countless times in my own experience, and I still do this. I still wake up and I will flashback to some weird health anxiety issue that I had a long time in the past. And I'll be like, "Okay, I am exhausted. If I'm so worried about this in the morning, I will deal with it, then my brain is not working. This is just anxiety." And I've never thought about it again in the morning one time. Being able to say, "this is exhaustion and my brain is tired, and if this is a problem, I'm going to I'm going to worry about this tomorrow" and allowing yourself to worry about it the next day if you need to will help you get better sleep. And I can almost guarantee that the next day, it's not going to be in your head anymore. It's moved through because those anxieties are very fleeting.
24:39
So what I really recommend beginning this, beginning of this week, take time and create a bedtime routine for yourself so that you can get to sleep at a normal time.
24:52
So what do you do when you can't sleep? Maybe it's that you can't fall asleep or that you wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble going back to sleep. And this can happen for a lot of reasons. It's kind of like, I like to call it airplane syndrome, where the night before I have to fly somewhere, I can't sleep. And it's not because I'm nervous about flying. I actually enjoy flying. It's because I'm afraid I'm gonna get to the airport late. And if I do sleep, I usually have a dream that I get to the airport late for my flight. So when you can't sleep, there are some things that you can do to help your body prepare for that. One is to create that bedtime routine we just talked about.
25:35
Here are some other ways that if you're laying in bed, you've been there for 25 minutes, half hour, 40 minutes, and you're like, I cannot fall asleep. Okay, what I want you to do is get up. Don't continue to lay in bed. Get up, with the caveats, one, the phone stays asleep - you don't get to grab your phone, and you don't get to turn on the lights. No screens, no lights. Just get up out of bed and move to the couch or move to a different room in the house. Maybe even go sit on your back deck and look at the stars, or the moon, or the clouds, or whatever is going on outside. But don't get back on your phone and don't turn on Netflix or the news or anything else like that. You could grab a book, a paper one, of course. You could grab crossword puzzles. You could grab a coloring book. You could grab, you know, maybe you like to crochet or do crafty stuff. Those are all great.
26:43
Another thing you can do is just to close your eyes, sit on the couch, close your eyes. And breathe. Just breathe. That's it. Counting in, breathe in one. Breathe out two. Breathe in three, breathe out four. Go up to eight and then restart because you'll lose count.
27:06
Keeping the screens off practicing some breathing, get some chamomile tea, continue to journal, look at the stars. And when you start to feel drowsy, then go back to bed and try again with no pressure. When you start to say, "oh my god, I can't sleep! I have to be up for work! I have to do these things! I'm gonna have to go to sleep! I can't sleep! That is counterproductive. "Okay, I can't sleep I guess I'll just get up." Take the pressure off. Take the pressure off. Go get some tea and sit on the couch and watch the stars. That's it. But don't stay in bed because you're stressing yourself out by laying there and tossing and turning.
27:49
Another thing that you can do when you're having trouble falling asleep is called progressive muscle relaxation. This is a technique that I started to learn when I did that really short stint in therapy that I mentioned in episode two. This is something that you can do even if you're at work. This doesn't necessarily have to be a sleep thing but it is beneficial for sleep. It's really great for tension and releasing tension in your body. It's super simple to do. You just start with your feet or your toes and you move all the way up to your head. So the progressive muscle relaxation is really progressing from your toes to your head. Start with your feet and stretch your toes out as far as you can for 10 seconds. I'm sorry if you get a cramp in your foot because that happens to me. So stretch your toes for 10 seconds, as much as you can. And then relax them. Really make them relax. Then point your feet and tense your leg muscles really, really tight for 10 seconds,... then relax. Stretch your fingers and your arms, tense your muscles, hold them for 10 seconds...and then relax. Tense your entire body at the same time...stretch your legs and your arms out really really wide... clench your stomach muscles for 15 seconds...then relax. And then I want you to take take three slow breaths and exhale really, really far further than you think you can and feel your body. Is it relaxed? And if it doesn't feel relaxed, do it again.
29:29
All right. So let's recap really quickly. When you can't fall asleep, get up. Stay in dim lights and in the quiet. Breathe, journal and sip some tea. How's that sound? Pretty easy, right? It's not so bad. So you can add progressive muscle relaxation anytime to your anxiety toolbox. It's a great way when you can feel your shoulders maybe up around your jaw to let everything go and to relax. Progressive muscle relaxation is not specific to bedtime.
30:03
That is what I have for you this week. Don't forget to go to the show notes. And to find those sleep tips that you can download. It'll be there, you just click the link. And I would really recommend starting them just one at a time, pick one sleep tip that you're going to try and commit to it. Don't try and do all 10 At once your brain will freak out on you and will be like, "This is way too much. This is ridiculous. I can't do it!" Just one one is good.
30:29
I'm super glad that you're here. Thank you for listening. And of course, if you enjoyed this episode, I would be thrilled if you could leave a review and share it with your friends. And I will be back next week to talk to you again.
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