What keeps you awake at night?

Not sleeping well is a bad place to be.   It seems so much harder to cope with day to day life when you are tired.  It becomes so easy to snap at other people.  You can end up worrying about not sleeping and this can create a vicious circle.  Lots of clients come to counselling and mention that they are having trouble sleeping.  It’s very common, especially if you are experiencing some kind of psychological distress.  So what can you do?

There is a lot of helpful information available on the internet.  Try searching under ‘sleep hygiene’ and you will find lots of common sense articles about how to get a good night’s sleep.  Try some of the things suggested in these articles for about 2 weeks and see if things improve.  It is amazing how many clients come to counselling and say that if they wake up in the middle of the night they go downstairs and make a cup of coffee.   Caffeine is not known for its sleep inducing properties.

So what happens if you are still not sleeping well?  It’s really important to try and figure out whether this is a normal response to an abnormal situation.  If you are recently bereaved then it is possible that this will interfere with your sleep.  If you have recently experienced some kind of loss, for example redundancy, again it is likely to impact on your sleep.  Or it may be that you have some regrets about things that have happened in the past.  And these keep ticking over in your mind at night.  Maybe you feel guilty about something you have done.  Or haven’t done.

If you are having difficulties sleeping you could go to your GP and ask about medication.  Or you could try some counselling and try to process those losses or regrets or feelings of guilt.  Sleep well.