SelfhelpMagazine

By Connie Saindon, MA, MFCC, CTS

In animal sleep, a sloth sleeps 20 hours a day while a porpoise sleeps half a brain at a time. Birds do not sleep and rabbits and squirrels sleep 10-14 hours a day. People need a wide variation of sleep and can range from 1-10 hours a day. There is more need for sleep at birth, while as we age our sleep needs are less and lighter.

Sleep problems are a common symptom for people who are recovering from traumatic events. One's usual methods for falling asleep may no longer work. Disturbing thoughts of reenactment, rescue or reunion may interfere with one's sleep cycle. Nightmares and sleep terrors occur in response to adjusting to shattered realities.

Practice "Good Sleep Hygiene". Here are some tips for you to try:

1. No reading or watching TV in bed. These are waking activities. If your insomnia is chronic, it is not a good thing to do, says Dr. Alex Clerk, head of Stanford Sleep Disorder Clinic in Palo Alto.
2. Go to bed when you're sleepy-tired, not when it's time to go to bed by habit.
3. Wind down during the second half of the evening before bedtime. More specifically, 90 minutes before bed, don't get involved in any kind of anxiety provoking activities or thoughts. Don't open your mail, email or watch the evening news. Those events are not always anxiety producing, but you never know when they will be.
4. Practice breathing with your abdomen, using low slow evenly spaced breathes that make your belly move more than your chest. Focus on tightening then relaxing major muscle groups, starting with your toes and ending with your forehead.
5. Your bed is for sleeping, if you can't sleep after 15-20 minutes, get up and do something relaxing.
6. Set your room temperature to be cool rather than warm.
7. Don't count sheep; counting is stimulating.
8. Exercise in the afternoon or early evening, but no later than 3 hours before bedtime.
9. Don't over-eat; and eat 2-3 hours before bedtime.
10. Don't nap during the day. If you get sleepy and are not ill, try to postpone that nap. See if you can delay it and forget about it altogether.
11. If you awake in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep within 30 minutes, get up and do something else. Avoid turning on the lights or working at a computer. Light entering your eyes will stimulate your brain's day/night balance and keep you awake.
12. Avoid all coffee, alcohol and cigarettes 2-3 hours before bedtime.
13. If you have disturbing dreams or nightmares, use your mind's eye to "add" and ending that you prefer. It sounds a bit weird, but force yourself to imagine a whole different ending scene. Write the replacement ending in a notebook if you can't hold onto it.
14. Schedule a half-hour writing about your concerns and hopes in a journal every night to free up your sleep from processing your dilemmas as much.
15. Listen to calming music, self-hypnosis or brain recalibration tape for sleep.

If sleep problems persist, contact your physician or mental health professional. Let them know what is happening in your life. Your problem may have either organic or psychological contributors. Sleep disorders are classified as chronic if they persist more than one month.

There are of two major categories of sleep disorders. They are Dyssomnias -- when there are problems with the amount, quality or timing of sleep and Parasomnias -- when there are abnormal events occurring during sleep stages.

Sleep difficulties can mean that there is an underlying problem that needs treatment. J. Christain Gillin, M.D. states that most patients that have a sleep disorder have an underlying psychiatric disorder.

The different kinds of sleep disorders include Insomnia, Hypersomnia-(excessive daytime sleeping), Nightmare Disorder, Narcolepsy (irresistible attacks of sleep), Sleep apnea and Sleepwalking. Add your own preferred nighttime relaxation tips if it is not entered here. Or let us know if any of these are helpful for you.

About the Author:

Connie Saindon, M.A., MFT has been a Licensed Marital and Family Therapist since 1979. In addition to providing services for Individuals, couples and families, Ms. Saindon is among the few specialists in the field of violent death bereavement. Founder the Survivors of Violent Death Program and volunteer faculty at the University of California Medical School Department of Psychiatry, she is author of The Journey, Violent Death Bereavement: Adult Survivors Workbook and contributing author of Violent Death: Resilience and Intervention beyond the Crisis. To reach her, please see this page.