The longer you stay awake the more likely you will start to feel sleepy and have a hard time staying awake. Seems like basic common knowledge doesn’t it? This increasing sleepiness is known as the homeostatic sleep drive in scientific circles. In 1987, Dr. Spielman and his colleagues created a therapy for insomnia based on this biological drive.
This therapy is known as Sleep Restriction Therapy and it is very effective at eliminating insomnia in a very short time…providing you are tough enough to endure it. I say tough enough because it makes you feel like a cantankerous zombie for a few days. If you want to try it, you should let everyone around you know and you should also avoid driving or operating heavy machinery for a couple of weeks. Here are the steps:
- Keep track of how long you sleep each night for the next 5 days.
- Calculate your average sleep time across the 5 days by adding the hours of sleep for each day and then dividing the sum by 5.
- This average sleep time is now the maximum allowable time you can spend in bed. Go as low as 4.5 hours but no lower.
- Choose a wake up time you can stick to for the next few months and then work backwards the same number of hours as your maximum allowable time in bed. For example, if your maximum allowable time in bed is 5 hours and your wake up time is 7:00 am, then your bed time will be 2:00 am.
- For the next 5 days maintain this new restricted sleep schedule and record how long you sleep each night.
- On the 6th day, calculate your sleep efficiency by dividing your average sleep time by the average time in bed across the past 5 days. The sleep efficiency formula is: average total sleep time/average total time in bed x 100%.
- If your sleep efficiency across the last 5 days is greater or equal to 90%, then give yourself an extra 15 minutes in bed by going to bed that much earlier. Don’t change your wake up time.
- If your sleep efficiency is less than 90%, remove 15 minutes from your total time in bed by going to bed that much later.
- Follow this new sleep schedule for another 5 days and then repeat steps 6 to 8 until you can sleep for about 7 hours with an average sleep efficiency of 90%.
To make this therapy work, you have to avoid napping, lying down at any time other than bed time and even avoid monotonous sleep-promoting activities like reading in a comfy chair. You can stay up later on weekends, but you have to maintain the wake up time you set in step 4.
Keep in mind that although Sleep Restriction Therapy is very effective, it is a grueling approach and you will feel much worse before you start sleeping better.
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Thanks for the info Clint. It may sound like I’m being hard on myself, but I do feel like I’m a pretty bad sleeper in general. It’s fairly evident when I compare my sleep with that of others’, and given that I regularly seem to be tired throughout the day. Very rare is the day lately that I feel completely rested and alert.
That journaling technique sounds good, I think I remember doing something similar a few years ago; an exercise to ‘bleed’ the brain so to speak. I’ll give that a try for a while and see how it goes. Although it’s rarely a feeling of anxiety or worry that causes me bad sleeps, but rather being anxious or excited for something to occur – what I refer to as the “Xmas morning syndrome”, if that makes sense.
Those sleep coaching packages do sound interesting – I would be interested in the details for sure (frequency, duration, cost etc…), but for now, I’ll definitely try the journaling exercise and will keep you posted.
I wanted to write you a note to update you on my sleep and to touch base with you. The sessions I had with you were very helpful and informative indeed, and though I don’t adhere to a strict sleep restriction program, I do keep in mind and try to implement some of the things I learned in our sessions. But to be honest, I’m quite a poor and inconsistent sleeper in general. I don’t think my problem is so much sleep related as it is a problem of staying relaxed enough to get solid sleeps on a consistent basis. I can’t seem to go for much more than a few days of consistently good sleep before having a bad night or two, if not more. Occasionally, I seem to wake up in the middle of the night and remain awake for an hour or two, or I wake much earlier than I should feeling a bit anxious or restless. I recently had about a month of very poor sleeps where I was probably averaging 5 – 6 hours of sleep per night, although that was an exceptionally long period.
I feel like the problem lies with my nervous system or my “hard-wiring”. Small events (ie. trips, work items or social gatherings) can cause me to have anxious (as opposed to nervous) sleeps the night before, or the nights leading up to it. It’s likely somewhat of a psychological issue. I don’t generally feel anxious the next day at the event or trip, but rather the night before. Sometimes though, I seem to feel anxious or restless over apparently nothing. I have a fairly low stress life and occupation, but it seems like small things can impact my sleep, which at times is a definite hindrance on my life.
I exercise quite a bit, consume almost no caffeine (certainly never after 3 or 4 pm), and generally try to go to bed and wake at the same time, though I could certainly be a bit more consistent in that regard.
I know you’re no longer providing your services to me, but I would be very interested in hearing any thoughts you have on this whenever you have a few free moments. No rush whatsoever of course. I’m just wondering if perhaps you have some recommendations for, or can point me to some information on, staying relaxed enough to sleep well, or if perhaps even another quick session might be in order.
Good to hear from you. I am glad you found the sessions helpful. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Most people who report that they sleep well will actually have 1 or 2 poor nights of sleep per week. It’s quite normal to sleep poorly a couple of times per week and to have varying degrees of quality sleep. Sleeping 6 hours per night is also not that bad. Most people can actually adjust to sleeping only this much every night.
It sounds like your sleep is very much affected by your “anticipated” daytime activities. This too is very common. I can coach people on all the sleep rules until the “cows come home” but without some strategies for reducing the general stress levels, the sleep progress is difficult to maintain. I can help coach you through this stress/anxiety reduction if you’d like. I have a lot of tools at my disposal and it is a great complement to the sleep coaching, I see it all as part of the same system. I can help you via email or by phone if you’d like. If you want more details on the coaching packages, let me know.
If you’d like to try one helpful technique, consider journaling. I use it during my stressful periods and it provides me with relief immediately. Buy a special notebook and pen and keep it all confidential. Before bed every night, write about the topics you think may become sleep disturbers. Just write whatever comes to mind. Try listing all the reasons you should be anxious about each topic until you have exhausted all the reasons. Then list all the refutations for each reason you can think of. It sounds like a bit of work, but it does help.