How Did You Sleep Last Night?

Most people I speak to these days say they are sleeping fitfully, badly or not at all. Some are struggling to fall asleep, some are struggling to stay asleep and some are struggling to wake up in the morning. And some unfortunate people are experiencing all of these struggles.

There are a whole lot of reasons that sleep is such a site of struggle right now; spending too much time too late into the night on our screens (hello, Netflix), information and bad news overload, compassion fatigue, grief, worry, stress… and anxiety.

Even the most calm, centred and even-tempered amongst us have been experiencing anxiety during this awful, challenging and scary time. And, to quote Oprah, what I know for sure is that anxiety is treacherous; it exhausts us at the same time as putting us into a state of high alert. This ‘wired and tired’ feeling is particularly challenging because it makes us too jumpy to rest but too weary to do anything helpful for ourselves.

I firmly believe that it is going to be years before we are able to realistically measure and recognise the full emotional and relational toll that this pandemic is taking on all of us. While we are in this State of Disaster, we have all been in survival mode and have been doing whatever we need to do in order to get through and to the other side of this horrific experience. Yet, even though we have been coping, under the surface our anxiety has been bubbling away and creating a soundtrack of worry, discomfort and uncertainty.

The good news? We don’t have to wait a few years, or even a few months, to start addressing our anxiety…

You can support yourself to calm your fears by trying some of these tricks:

• Remember to breathe. Whenever you feel that sense of panic rising up in your chest, take a few deep and cleansing breaths. Breathe in for a count of 3 and out for a count of 5 at least 5 times.
• Get moving. Daily exercise – even a gentle walk – does great things for processing your worries, calming and releasing tension and stress from your body and mind, and getting some oxygen into your blood. And it’s good for helping your sleep, too.
• Step away from the screens. Reduce the time you spend on all digital gadgets (they overstimulate your brain and worry-centre) and limit your exposure to news (especially bad and scary news). You will serve yourself much better by reading a good old fashioned book, drawing a picture and/or doing a jigsaw puzzle.

If you are looking for some deeper insights and more comprehensive anxiety-reduction skills, the Managing Anxiety in Times of Crisis* programme I have created with my colleague Kirsten Thomson is just the thing. You will learn practical, effective tools to understand and manage your unease so that you can feel calmer, more present, more centred, and more productive – and get more and better sleep! Click here to read more and sign up.

I hope that the next couple of weeks bring you some peace and quiet – and some deep and refreshing sleep.

Love,
Judy

*we first named this programme Coping with Burnout and Trauma in Times of Crisis but have retitled it to better reflect the content and the outcomes.