In this episode, Nathan talks about sleep difficulties, problems, and insomnia and how to improve those for nurses and midwives.

In the previous episode, Nathan talked about some general tips and tools for improving sleep. Today’s episode focused on people struggling with sleep; this episode is part two of a series about sleep tips.

Here is a summary of key points from the episode:

• Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder; it is a problem in initiating sleep in the first place or a problem with waking at night. 
• Insomnia causes functional impairment where your sleeplessness or your perceived sleeplessness bothers you.
• Sleep difficulties likely started from stress and worrying about something.
• The leading cause of insomnia for people is stress in the short term. Irregular sleep-work-wake cycles also lead to insomnia. 
• It is the things that we are doing unintentionally that are maintaining the problem. 
• Sleep is a natural behavior. The problem is that we focus on sleep as something to be controlled, and the unintentional consequence is that it creates more anxiety.

Nathan shares several tips to improve sleep and break the cycle of insomnia.

1. As you notice worries coming into your mind, acknowledge them as worries. Give your fears a name and change your attitude towards the concern. Try and disengage from thinking about how insufficient your sleep was and how it will affect the rest of your day.
2. The other one is questioning the validity of your thoughts. Examining what your mind is saying as you go about the rest of your day is essential.
3. Try and put yourself in the shoes of someone who is a good sleeper and apply that to your thinking.
4. You have to start abandoning what you are doing to try and control sleep.
5.  Try to reduce the extent to which you’re obsessively monitoring yourself internally. People with insomnia tend to focus negatively on their internal sensations.
6. Sleep window- Set your bedtime and waketime and stick to it. Get out of bed when your alarm goes off, even if you feel you have not slept well. 
7. Stimulus Control- Even going to bed creates that sense of worry and anxiety. You have to start retraining that association with the bed as somewhere calming and where you can fall asleep.
8. Have a balance between having healthy sleep habits and what we call sleep hygiene and then using sleep hygiene-type behaviors to try and make ourselves sleep.
9. Managing insomnia is emotions. Allow those sensations and emotions to be present, and open yourself up to them. Focus on breathing- breathing into your nose and out through your mouth.

Sleep has a massive impact on our physical and mental health. Share this episode with your colleagues and have more conversations about sleep. This way, we can help more people get adequate rest and improve their well-being.

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