Tired Mind, Troubled Thoughts

Why catching Zzz's is important to your mental health.

Yet again, you've tossed and turned in the sheets - and not in an enjoyable way. You heave yourself out of bed and shuffle to acquire caffiene with eyes still itchy from your poor night's sleep. The rest of your day: torpid, irritating, and seemingly insurmountable. Life just seems so much worse when you're not well rested doesn't it?

Sleep and mental health are so deeply intertwined that there is no current mental health diagnosis that doesn’t mention sleep in some way. If you happen to pick up the DSM-5 (Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder – just a casual light read) you’ll find some mention of the impact of sleep in all conditions; not to mention the whole section on Sleep/Wake disorders.

Dr Matthew Walker is a sleep researcher and has a lovely British accent. He talks about sleep and mental health based on his research, and if you’ve got a spare couple of hours you should listen to his series on the Huberman Lab podcast about it.

But listening recommendations aside, here’s some reasons why sleep might be an important first stop to improving your mental health.

Body Reset. When we sleep our body takes the time to rest and reset. Throughout our sleep cycles our bodies get us ready to go again the next day by repairing tissues, building muscle and bone, strengthening our immune system, regulating release of hormones, regulating our metabolism, and brain development/repair. When we don’t get enough sleep, or good quality sleep some of this goes haywire and makes it harder for us to function. We might get (or stay) physically sick, have difficulties with our weight, have chronic pain or injuries that won’t heal, or find it hard to focus when we’re awake.  

Emotional Reset. Sleep, particularly Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, helps to regulate our emotions. It does this by resetting the brain’s emotional circuits and helping us process emotional experiences. During REM sleep our pre-frontal cortex (the part of our brain responsible for thinking) is engaged and helps us put emotional experiences into perspective with less interference from the “fire alarm” part of our brain that deals with threats. The neurotransmitter, norepinephrine (linked to stress and fear) is also turned off or limited during REM sleep, allowing our brains to process emotions without triggering a major stress response.

Non-REM sleep (NREM) is when our stress hormones, like cortisol, decrease along with activation of our amygdala (see mention of fire alarm earlier). When we don’t get enough sleep, this fire alarm becomes more active, making it more difficult to manage our emotions, and more sensitive to emotional outbursts. So that adage of “never go to bed angry”? Wrong. Go to bed angry, sleep on it. You’ll probably feel better in the morning.

Also, a note on cortisol. Cortisol gets a bad rap among health influencers on social media. Whilst too much cortisol is bad, so is not enough. Not to mention cortisol is part of what wakes us up in the morning; it needs to spike in order for us to become alert and awake.

Memory Processing. Sleep consolidates and reorganises our memories. When we don’t sleep, our memories tend to get worse, which is not conducive to smooth daily functioning.

However, sleep is particularly important when it comes to trauma memories. Under the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model of memory when an experience is inadequately processed, we can get stuck in the response to the experience, even though it’s not happening anymore – the memory elicits the same response from our bodies as if the experiences was happening again (thanks, hippocampus and amygdala). So, trauma bad (obviously), inadequately processed memory also bad. There is research to suggest that the horizontal eye movement of REM sleep naturally facilitates trauma reprocessing (so much so EMDR was created); making them feel like past memories rather than ongoing threats. Sleep helps us find a place to put our big, bad memories that makes sense and feels okay.

Of course, trauma has a lot more impact on other things, not just sleep. Nevertheless, sleep may be a very important factor when it comes to your trauma treatment and recovery.

Professionally, I always like to spend time with my clients to work on their sleep if it’s current not working for them. We all know that we need a good night’s sleep, but good sleep hygiene and routines are some of the first things to fall to the wayside when we become unwell, stressed, or traumatised. Whilst I’m not a sleep scientist or physician, I am a big fan of sleep professionally and personally. I always notice how much of a better human I am when I’ve had a good few nights of rest.

So how do we actually make your sleep better?

Of course, if you have a sleep condition that impacts your sleep, it will be important to get this addressed through appropriate assessment and treatment. But here are some quick things to help you implement a good night’s sleep – pick a couple and see how you feel after a week or so.

• Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, even on weekends. 

• Keep your bedroom temperature around 18 to 22°C – a cool room helps induce sleep. 

• Avoid coffee, tea, energy drinks and alcohol after 6-8 hours before you’re due to go to sleep.

• Aim for 30–60 minutes of sunlight exposure, especially in the morning. 

• Exercise, but not too late – no intense workouts 2-3 hours before sleep.

• Establish a relaxing pre-bedtime routine (no, that doesn’t include social media scrolling)

• If you can’t fall asleep after 20 minutes, get up and do a relaxing activity in dim light (e.g., reading a book – not on a screen). 

• Keep naps to a minimum. If you must nap, do so between 2-4pm and make it either a 20 minute power nap or a 90 minute nap to allow you to complete a full sleep cycle.

  
  

Happy sleeping!