Are you having trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep? Lying in bed awake and staring into space, tossing and turning, your mind won’t shut down? Having a few drinks to knock yourself out? Are you waking up distressed and tired, dreading the next night? Most people will suffer from a bout of insomnia at some point in their life, and for most people, a bout of insomnia lasts for a few days or weeks. However, for others it can become a long term pattern of difficult sleeping.
Types of Insomnia
- Acute insomnia: A short period of troublesome sleeping, which is often caused by a specific situation like a change of job, jet lag or working late. Acute insomnia often resolves itself without any treatment.
- Chronic insomnia: A long period of troublesome sleeping, which includes poor sleep for three nights per week for three months or longer. Can be caused by anxiety or depression, medical conditions, medications or poor habits including excessive caffeine consumption.
- Onset insomnia: Having trouble initially falling asleep.
- Maintenance insomnia: Having trouble staying asleep, waking up and having trouble falling back to sleep.
Consequences of chronic insomnia
- Feeling tired, unwell or sleepy during the day
- Lower performance at school or work
- Risk of diabetes
- Memory issues
- Mood changes
- Weakened immunity
- Weight gain
- Slow reaction time
- Poor balance
- Risk of accidents
- High blood pressure
- Poor sex drive
There are many causes of insomnia
- Stress
- Depression
- Anxiety or worry
- Drinking or substance abuse
- Upsetting traumatic experiences
- Medications that affect your sleep
- Health problems that affect your sleep
- Poor habits like caffeine or stimulating activities before bed
- Changing shifts at work or jet lag
How Counselling can help with insomnia
Of course as your Counsellor I will check in to see that you are not making sleep hard for yourself by doing things like working late on devices, or drinking too much caffeine. Then we will seek to understand if you are running with any habitual thinking patterns that are keeping you locked in this distressful space. Some examples of thinking patterns that can cause troublesome sleep are habitual worrying over and over about something, or having a tendency to take on too much responsibility and pressure. We will work together to discover your mental on-ramp that you take to get into these habitual states, and then I will design for you interventions that will assist you to behave differently.
