For a good night’s rest, combine general sleep hygiene with mindful and cognitive techniques

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Most Sharp­Brains read­ers under­stand the ben­e­fits of stress reg­u­la­tion, and also the ben­e­fits of sleep. Rec­om­men­da­tions for sleep hygiene are well pub­li­cized. They include avoid­ing alco­hol and stim­u­lants like caf­feine; stick­ing to reg­u­lar bed and wake times (even if you don’t get enough sleep); expos­ing your­self to light in the morn­ing and after­noon; exer­cis­ing in the ear­li­er part of the day; using your bed only for sleep and sex; and lim­it­ed or no napping.

But what should you do when in bed, eyes closed, wish­ing to fall asleep? Many who have trou­ble falling asleep rumi­nate, wor­ry, and reap­praise in bed. They might active­ly try to sup­press these thoughts. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this strat­e­gy tends to back­fire. Many old-school tech­niques, like count­ing sheep, don’t work either. And wor­ry­ing you won’t sleep only makes mat­ters worse.

While there is no sil­ver bul­let for get­ting to sleep, psy­chol­o­gists have devel­oped and test­ed a num­ber of help­ful tech­niques. Let’s review them.

Some peo­ple find med­i­tat­ing in bed to be help­ful. How­ev­er, med­i­ta­tion is meant to pro­mote alert­ness. If you prac­tice mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion dur­ing the day, then at night you’re like­ly to be less per­turbed by the thoughts and wor­ries that come to your mind. When thoughts come up while you’re wish­ing to sleep, thank your brain for the unhelp­ful con­tent, and return to your cog­ni­tive plan. You’ll be bet­ter pre­pared to accept the pos­si­bil­i­ty that you will not get much sleep, and hence be less pro­duc­tive the next day. The goal isn’t to fall asleep, but, para­dox­i­cal­ly, gen­uine accep­tance can pro­mote sleep onset.

Falling asleep nor­mal­ly comes auto­mat­i­cal­ly. Giv­en that striv­ing to con­trol nor­mal­ly auto­mat­ic process­es, such as speak­ing, uri­nat­ing or gain­ing an erec­tion can inter­fere with them, Dr. Col­in Espie and his col­leagues pro­posed that striv­ing to fall asleep delays sleep.

So, they found that para­dox­i­cal inten­tion (the delib­er­ate prac­tice of a neu­rot­ic habit or thought, under­tak­en to iden­ti­fy and remove it; as pro­posed by Vik­tor Fran­kl) can some­times facil­i­tate sleep. Com­fort­ably lie in bed, in the dark but with your eyes open. Try to keep them open just a bit longer, and con­grat­u­late your­self for doing so. Remind your­self that you are not try­ing to fall asleep. If you wor­ry that you’re not asleep yet, con­grat­u­late your­self for being suc­cess­ful. But also, do not resist sleep if it comes.

This tech­nique doesn’t work for every­one. If you have a lot on your mind, you might not be able to focus on this bor­ing, coun­ter­in­tu­itive task. For­tu­nate­ly, this tech­nique can be com­bined with mind­ful­ness train­ing. In The Hap­pi­ness Trap, Dr. Russ Har­ris pop­u­lar­ized a well researched vari­ant of this: accep­tance and com­mit­ment train­ing (“ACT”). With ACT, you learn that your brain pro­duces all kinds of unwant­ed feel­ings and thoughts. You also learn to mon­i­tor and tru­ly accept unpleas­ant feel­ings. You’re not asked to like your feel­ings, but to be aware of them, rec­og­nize they are nor­mal, and not fight them. Sim­i­lar­ly, your brain gen­er­ates a lot of unhelp­ful thoughts, judg­ments and images that can be stress­ful. With prac­tice, how­ev­er, you can learn to rec­og­nize and “defuse” them by treat­ing them as mean­ing­less back­ground noise. This doesn’t make them go away; it makes them less arousing.

There are also three promis­ing tech­niques to replace stress­ful thoughts.

1. Dr. Les Gel­lis found cog­ni­tive refo­cus­ing to be help­ful. Dur­ing the day, choose an inter­est­ing, non-stress­ful activ­i­ty to think about. It could be redec­o­rat­ing a room, plan­ning a foot­ball game, or some­thing else you like fan­ta­siz­ing about. Then, when you go to bed, you think about the play­ful activ­i­ty. If you get dis­tract­ed, then mind­ful­ly acknowl­edge the dis­trac­tion and gen­tly refo­cus on your topic.

2. Anoth­er help­ful cog­ni­tive tech­nique is imagery dis­trac­tion. Dur­ing the day, review col­or pic­tures of neu­tral con­crete objects to imag­ine, such as a can­dle, a light bulb, an hour glass, a kite, a stair­way, and a palm tree on a beach. Prac­tice visu­al­iz­ing them a cou­ple of min­utes each. Then, when you wish to go to sleep or return to sleep, imag­ine one of the objects for sev­er­al min­utes at a time.

3. Some peo­ple find these tech­niques too bor­ing to dis­tract them from their press­ing con­cerns. Ser­i­al diverse imag­in­ing is a new, more engag­ing form of imagery dis­trac­tion. It is meant to put your brain in a drowsy, dream-like state sim­i­lar to sleep onset where one’s mind drifts from one top­ic or image to anoth­er. In bed, imag­ine an object, place or scene for 5 to 10 sec­onds, and then switch to a dif­fer­ent one. Delib­er­ate mind wan­der­ing with­out an algo­rithm is tricky, so a fel­low researcher and I cre­at­ed an app, mySleep­But­ton, that reads you diverse things to imagine.

In sum, com­bin­ing gen­er­al sleep hygiene with med­i­ta­tion and cog­ni­tive strate­gies is prob­a­bly the most rea­son­able approach to good sleep. Bed­time is not a good time to be pro­cess­ing con­cerns, and direct­ly sup­press­ing thoughts or striv­ing to sleep isn’t help­ful. Mind­ful­ness train­ing (espe­cial­ly when also prac­ticed dur­ing the day) can help you accept your prob­lems, emo­tions, thoughts and wake­ful­ness. And cognitive/ imagery tech­niques like those described above can help you replace stress­ful thoughts.

– Dr. Luc Beau­doin is an Adjunct Pro­fes­sor of Cog­ni­tive Sci­ence  and Edu­ca­tion at Simon Fras­er Uni­ver­si­ty. A self-described pro­duc­tiv­i­ty geek, with a PhD in Cog­ni­tive Sci­ence from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bir­migham in Eng­land, he recent­ly released the app mySleep­But­ton.

Relat­ed articles:

• Why cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py (CBT) should be first-line treat­ment for chron­ic insomnia
• Six tips to build resilience and pre­vent brain-dam­ag­ing stress
• Study: Brain waves help pre­dict stress-relat­ed sleep problems
• French neu­rotech start-up Rythm rais­es $11m to help improve sleep quality

Bib­li­og­ra­phy

• Beau­doin, L. P. (2013). The pos­si­bil­i­ty of super-som­no­lent men­ta­tion: A new infor­ma­tion-pro­cess­ing approach to sleep-onset accel­er­a­tion and insom­nia exem­pli­fied by ser­i­al diverse imag­in­ing.  Retrieved from http://summit.sfu.ca/item/12143
• Beau­doin, L. P., Dig­don, N., O’Neill, K. & Racour, G. (Abstract accept­ed for 2016 pub­li­ca­tion). Ser­i­al diverse imag­in­ing task: A new rem­e­dy for bed­time com­plaints of wor­ry­ing and oth­er sleep-dis­rup­tive men­tal activ­i­ty. Poster to be pre­sent­ed at SLEEP 2016 (A joint meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Sleep Med­i­cine and the Sleep Research Soci­ety). Den­ver, CO.
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