How to stop the sleep roller coaster and make sleep more consistent and more predictable

Описание: Many people who struggle with sleep experience nights of very little sleep followed by a night or two of long "catch-up" sleep before the process repeats itself over and over again. If your sleep pattern is like this, you are almost certainly either allotting too much time for sleep or you aren't following a consistent sleep schedule — particularly when it comes to getting out of bed by the same time every day.

If you experience a good night of sleep only after a string of bad nights, the good news is that this is evidence your sleep drive system is working as it should be — after enough time spent awake, you are able to sleep.

If you have any sleep-related worry or anxiety, the arousal system is able to suspend sleep but, in the end, sleep drive is able to overpower the arousal system and make sleep happen. Sleep drive ALWAYS wins in the end!

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When sleep drive makes sleep happen it can be so tempting to stay in bed and enjoy as much sleep as possible! However, although this feels good at the time, it can mean that there just isn't enough time to build sufficient sleep drive to help you sleep the following night — and this is exactly why it can be hard to string together two good nights of sleep in a row.

If you implement a regular and appropriate sleep window you will only allow sleep to happen during your sleep window. Since sleep drive builds with every minute of wakefulness, if you only allow yourself to sleep during your sleep window, then you will start to fill your sleep window with sleep.

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Getting out of bed by the same time every day might mean sacrificing a little bit of sleep in the short-term but it will improve your sleep over the long-term and bring far more consistency and predictability to your sleep. This will help you regain and strengthen your sleep confidence, and this will improve sleep quality and help you get more sleep.

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My name is Martin Reed and I am the founder of Insomnia Coach®. I offer sleep coaching services that give people with insomnia all the skills and support they need to enjoy better sleep for the rest of their lives. I also offer a free two-week sleep training course for people with insomnia at https://insomniacoach.com/sleep-train...

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