![]() ![]() You might be given worksheets or documents illustrating examples so that you can see the cycle of emotions and actions visually. ![]() ![]() Plenty of examples will be used to help you to understand this. Pivotally, you’ll also learn what cognitive distortions are and how damaging they can be. During this stage, you’ll learn about the cognitive model, which is simply a theory explaining how your thoughts, perceptions, and emotions influence your behaviours. Psychoeducation is typically the first stage of cognitive restructuring. This is a tough cycle to break, but this is where cognitive restructuring comes into play. As a result, your anxiety will continue, as will your negative thoughts and insomnia. This ‘proves’ to your brain that your thoughts were true and that you should feel anxious about sleep, even though this isn’t really the case. Since these behaviours worsen your insomnia, they’re reinforcing the negative thoughts you had about sleep. This makes you less likely to sleep at night and more likely to feel sleepy in the morning when you’ve been getting extra sleep. Staying in bed for longer in the morning confuses your circadian rhythm (the system which regulates when you should be awake and asleep). Sleep is involuntary, so trying to force it only causes you to be more aware of your sleep loss and increases the anxiety around sleep. Both of these behaviours actually worsen insomnia. For example, if you worry a lot about sleep, you might start to try to force sleep or start to sleep in for longer periods in the morning to ‘catch up on sleep’. These behaviours also become negative and worsen our insomnia. This means that when we have negative (and often incorrect) views about sleep, we typically begin to behave in accordance with these thoughts. The National Sleep Foundation explains: “In people with insomnia, inaccurate or dysfunctional thoughts about sleep may lead to behaviours that make sleep more difficult, which then reinforce the dysfunctional thoughts”. All of these thoughts are natural and valid, but unfortunately, they feed into a negative cycle of anxiety about sleep loss worsening your insomnia.Īnxiety isn’t the only problem which stems from negative thoughts about sleep. These might be thoughts like: “I should be able to sleep like everyone else,” “I’m never going to be able to sleep normally,” or “my performance at work is going to be affected and I’ll get into trouble”. You may begin having very negative thoughts about your sleep. It’s common to start feeling anxious close to bedtime, worrying about whether you’re going to be able to get to sleep. If your insomnia is ongoing, this anxiety about sleep and sleep loss might grow. In turn, the stress response strengthens the wakefulness system”. Unfortunately, this frustration and worry makes you ‘wound up’, which makes it even harder to get to sleep! This document from the University of Massachusetts Medical School explains: “Negative, stressful thoughts about sleep worsen insomnia by triggering emotions such as anxiety or frustration that mobilize the stress response. These are all common, very understandable feelings. You might start getting very worried about how your lack of sleep is going to affect you the next day. You may start looking at the clock and thinking about how many hours of sleep you are going to get. When you’re lying awake in bed at night, you might start feeling increasingly frustrated.
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