Three Things You Should NOT Be Doing if You Want to Sleep Well

Time and time again I see that people who are struggling to sleep well, spend a lot of time thinking of all the things they should be doing to make a change and improve their sleep.

However, the reality is, that rather than starting a lot of new things in a drive to fix their sleep, there are actually things they should be stopping.

So, if you’re struggling with your sleep, here are three things you should NOT be doing if you want to sleep well.

1. Going to bed too early – When you go to bed too early you have no sleep drive, meaning you don’t fall asleep easily and you don’t stay asleep. Sleep drive is essentially your appetite for sleep, and we can easily build this by going to bed later and waking up earlier.
   
   Fix it - Set an alarm in the morning and stick to it (even if you’ve had a bad night) and don’t be tempted to go to bed too early, make sure you’re truly tired when your head hits the pillow.
   

2. Checking the time in the night – When you wake up in the night it’s often really tempting to check what time it is. However, when you do this, your body gets in a pattern where it starts waking at the same time every night. What’s more, this can also trigger unwanted negative thoughts. The likelihood is, seeing the time will only make you think about how long you have left before your alarm, and how you might feel tomorrow if you don’t get any more sleep tonight.
   
   Fix it - Make sure you just set an alarm for the morning, then don’t look at your clock until this goes off.
   

3. Using sleep trackers– If you’re already anxious about your sleep, using a sleep tracker will only increase this anxiety and add even more pressure. The reality is, if you’re sleeping badly, you’ll know this without tracking it! Equally, some trackers aren’t always accurate, and if you’re someone who fidgets in their sleep, they might tell you that you’ve slept poorly, when you were just wriggling.
   
   Fix it- In my opinion, sleep trackers only increase hyper vigilance around sleep, which is one of the main causes of insomnia, so steer clear! If you really want to track your sleep, keep a sleep diary and fill this in first thing in the morning as part of a CBT-I treatment programme.

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• The 3 things you need to control your sleep.
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• The number 1 thing you are doing which is sabotaging your sleep.

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