Sleep and mental health

Nowadays there is a lot of talk about the importance of good sleep, and good sleep hygiene to help you get it. We're told sleep supports good mental health. This is absolutely true!

But do you know why?

There is a stage of sleep that is critical to our brain processing events of the day. It's known as Rapid Eye Movement, REM, which you've probably heard of.

REM uses up a lot of energy, it's not restful sleep. So the amount of REM we get per night is restricted. If we have too much stuff on our mind to process and REM is going on a bit long, our mind actually wakes us up.

You might well be familiar with your brain waking you up in the small hours - around 4am seems a common time for people. Perhaps you feel a bit miserable and find it hard to get back to sleep? Maybe your thoughts start thundering around your head? It's different from the dog barking or the baby crying and waking you up, isn't it?

But REM being stopped mid-processing means we wake up the next day with things still not processed, and these unprocessed items accumulate and add to our stress. The thoughts we didn't process continue to whirl around our mind and we have a busy head, maybe find it hard to concentrate or have brain fog. All of this can contribute to anxiety and depression.

The same effect occurs if we can't get off to sleep in the first place, or we wake up too early - we're not able to process enough in our sleep and it all just builds up.

Sometimes, people 'sleep like the dead' and find even if they have ten hours' sleep they still feel tired and sluggish. In this case, the brain is trying to process everything and REM runs on and on - but of course it is not restful sleep at all.

Help is at hand

I have a free tool you can use to help you drift off to sleep and boost your REM and quality of sleep in general. One of my former clients is a psychologist and he told me the positive effect the audio had on his sleep was "game-changing."

Good sleep is at the bedrock of good mental health. So, you can download one of the MP3s of guided relaxations on this page: https://www.beaconhypnotherapy.co.uk/relaxation-recordings

The second recording is especially good for anyone who fulfils any sort of parent or carer role, or for those who find it hard to put their own needs first.

Enjoy!