Pop Culture Care Package: Sleep Hygiene
This is bad advice we should not follow! Oh, wait, what’s that? Reverse psychology, you say????
Hi, I’m Sophie & I struggle with insomnia on a good day! I understand that many people who normally sleep, well, normally are having a rough go of it since These Weird Times began. I’m going to share the strategies I apply to myself and then turn it over to you, in the hopes that you’ll share your techniques and help your fellow Dames Nationals out.
First up, most of what I know about sleep hygiene I learned from Dr. Marc Weissbluth, author of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, a book that my husband & I would not have survived our child’s early years without. It turns out, strategies that work for babies often work for adults, too. Here’s what what’s helped me. I would love to know what works for you, so drop us a line & let me know if we can share your strategies & tools in Friday’s issue.
Routine: this may be the toughest one to stick to, especially for people who live alone. The days just stretch out like long lazy stretchy things. We joke about time being a construct but when you’re self-isolating in isolation, that’s revealed as quite literally true. If your bedtime has gone off the rails, nudge it back. Be the (good) boss of you, and set an alarm to go to bed. You can do this incrementally: the day you decide to start, go to be a half-hour earlier than you did the night before. Set it a half-hour earlier the night after that, and so on, til you get to the bedtime you want. Then be…well, be kind of a draconian bitch about it. That’s your sleep! Your rest! It belongs to you! Don’t let anyone steal it from you, not even yourself!
Atmosphere: Turns out our bodies like to sleep in cool, dark environments. Set your thermostat to 60-ish degrees (I go for 62 or 63), put on your PJs (or change out of your daytime PJs into your nighttime PJs), read for a little (a magazine or a book, not your phone, but I’ll tell you that I often scroll through the Strategist’s Twitter right before I go to sleep; it is enormously soothing), and then turn out the light.
Breathing: Listen. I know. I’m typing this list of things out and am annoying myself, even. I know this is so boring! Like so many things that are good for us, it’s boring & obvious, to boot! Let me zhuzh this up a little: it’s not just breathing. If we’re lucky, we get to breathe all the time, without strain or struggle or even thinking about it. Forever may it be so! When it’s time to send yourself off to the snooze lagoon, though, think about it. Breathe in for three, hold for a beat, then breathe out for four (the exact numbers aren’t important; just breathe out for a beat longer than you breathed in). For good measure, you can engage your muscles from foot to head — contracting them, then relaxing them as you go — to help your body understand its job as well as your mind.
Sound: this one is really sleeper’s choice. White noise machines work for some folks. Others prefer weather-type sounds. This app can give you both, and a whole bunch of other sounds like windchimes, urban traffic, little frogs, and singing bowls. I’ve been relying on listening to audiobooks I’ve listened to previously, setting a 15-minute timer and then doing my breathing exercises.
Better Living Through Chemistry: Getting to sleep is just phase one. I rely on a combination of melatonin, medical marijuana, and a couple of prescribed pharmaceuticals to help me stay asleep.
What works for you in these categories, friends? If anyone has advice on anxiety dreams in particular — preventing them, getting out of them, and recovering from them, I am all ears. But I want to know your other methods, too!
Ok, this doesn’t make me sleepy but it is hilarious, and we need good laughs as well as a good night’s sleep.
Thanks for reading, Dames Nation! This issue is free, so pass it around to anyone who might find it useful. Upgrade to a paid subscription if you wanna!