Sleep and Stress

Have you found yourself on occasion lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, and wondering why you never learned any sleeping techniques to reduce stress? You’re pretty sure that you’re tired, but you just can’t seem to fall asleep. Your mind is racing around and it’s not letting you drift off the way you want to, the way you need to in order to feel human the next day.

Sleep and stress have a love-hate relationship. If you are suffering from an imbalance of sleeping and stress, we have some sleep advice that might make your life more manageable. First, stress messes with your sleep patterns, affecting both falling asleep and staying asleep. Stress causes sleeping disorders, and there are studies on how sleep deprivation and stress are linked to long term health effects.

To fix the stress and lack of sleep problems, the most important thing to do is find out what is causing the stress. When you find what the underlying problem is, get rid of the stress and sleep will follow. Once you answer the question, “How does stress affect my sleep?” you will be able to plan a course of action that will reduce your stress. When that happens and you are able to fall asleep again, your new stress-free sleep will actually be able to keep you from getting too stressed during the day, letting you go out into the world well-rested, feeling awake and able to take on the challenges of the day.

If you don’t’ have anyone you can talk to about your problems, consider starting a sleep blog. This way you can be anonymous and talk about what is causing you stress and even get advice on how to fix the problem so you can rest more easily at night. After you set up a free blog and start writing about your sleep issues, you can also chart daily how much sleep you got the night before. Then you can use that information and see if there are patterns in your sleep and stress disturbances. Maybe you get stressed when a certain bill is coming due, or you have one weekend a month where you have to go out of town. You may not consciously be aware these things are causing you stress, but when you look back on your sleep blog you will be able to detect patterns because it’s all right there to see on the blog.

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