Eleven tips to help you get a better night's sleep
Hello, friend.
If you are like many of my girlfriends right now, you are facing a lot of challenges. And one of them is making everything else worse, because one of those challenges is getting a good night’s sleep.
Photo by Alexandra Gorn
Stress, anxiety, worry . . . they’ve all been made worse as a result of the recent coronavirus stuff. Either we are now working from home and have hunkered down, or we are still having to report to work. No matter what our daily reality, our nightly drama is making it worse.
Also? If you're in perimenopause, this stuff is gonna hit you much harder than it hits people who are not. That’s because your hormone levels are swinging wildly on the best of days, and these right now are likely not the best of days. I’ve been in menopause for the past four years, and taking hormone replacement therapy, so I find that my estrogen and progesterone being well-regulated really helps when it comes to night-waking and stress/anxiety dreams, though of course I still have issues when things are topsy-turvy. Like now.
I’m so worried about you that I’m interrupting my usual program of one blog post a week to bring you this one, plus at least eleven more. Because I want you to be able to restore yourself with sleep.
Here is a list of eleven things you can do to help you get a better night’s sleep.
And these are legit off the top of my head.
1. Meditate daily. Even 5 minutes is good.
2. Phone and TV and other screens off at least an hour before bedtime. Preferably 2.
3. Reading a book before lights out is okay. Reading a back-lit e-reader is not.
4. Try sex if possible (alone or with a partner) to release feel-good chemicals. Cuddling is also good. Cuddling naked is better still. Skin-to-skin contact also releases those good things.
5. A hot bath an hour before bed can help. Add epsom salts to boost your magnesium level, which is liable to be depleted, and to reduce aches and pains.
6. Write out a brain dump in the late afternoon or early evening: write down all the things you can think of that you have to do. Every last thing. Now it’s on paper and the little man in the file room upstairs who has been running around with his hair on fire can calm the fuck down and go back to gliding around on his desk chair.
7. Consult the brain dump pages each morning. Pick three must-dos for the day, and three more to get to if you can. Let that be enough.
8. Try no caffeine after 7 pm, and if that doesn't do it, none after 4, and if that doesn't do it, none after 1.
9. If it doesn't disagree with you, apply lavender essential oil on the soles of your feet before bed. It (mostly) works for me: I put a drop or two in my right palm and swipe my left foot, then skim my palm across one side of my pillow, then repeat on the other side (left palm, right foot, flip pillow). Vetiver is also supposed to be good for this, but I haven't tried it.
10. Drink a cup of chamomile tea before bed. Or Sleepytime. Or the enhanced Sleepytime that includes valerian, if that is okay with you (and your physician).
And lastly, here’s number 11. Number 11 is for when you shoot awake due to a stress dream (no pants, haven’t studied for the exam, have a big work meeting and can’t find the room—all common work-related anxiety dreams). Or for when your body is resting, but your mind hasn’t turned off, so you spend time thinking that you aren’t sleeping.
Give your brain something to do. But make it something non-threatening.
This is a thing I discovered for myself when I was still a practicing attorney and having stress dreams related to work, and I’ve used it since then to great avail. I’ve shared it with friends and family who have tried it and found that it helps. I can tell you WHY it helps in a later post, but this is the task.
Give your brain a task to do, but make it something non-threatening.
My favorite non-threatening assignment is to pick a room in your house that needs some help. Maybe it needs a complete renovation, maybe you just want to spruce it up. Just pick a room, and start planning.
This is both a worthwhile thing to do, so your brain won’t balk at it, and a non-threatening thing to do, so your brain will calm down and eventually realize it’s tired and go to sleep.
Give yourself free rein here. In your ideal world, where you don’t need to consult others, what would you do in that space?
What wall color do you want? Or do you want wallpaper? Do you want curtains or blinds or what? What might you want to put on the floor?
You don't follow rabbit holes like "what if the floor is rotten?" If they crop up, and they might at the start, just steer yourself back to the decorating task. What colors, what furniture, what sort of faucet in the bath, etc. The same goes for if actual work stress (or homeschooling stress) pops in: Just tell it that you will get to it tomorrow, you are working on redoing the master bath just now. Or turning the spare bedroom into a craft room. Or whatever. It may take a few reminders, but it will eventually stop pestering you.
As you plan your remodeling/renovation/spruce-up, the part of your brain that was all ALERT ALERT DANGER WILL ROBINSON will find it all very boring. The chemicals it was pumping into your system will stop, and you will find that you are more calm, and possibly able to fall back to sleep.
This exercise is a win-win. If you succeed at falling all the way back to sleep, you get real sleep. If you don't, you will at least have gotten some rest while you worked out what you might want to do with that room. Even if all you know for sure is what ideas you've already rejected ("no, not puce").
Heads up
I’m going to embark on a series of daily posts for you on this, starting with the eleven tips I have here. I’ll tackle one a day, so expect to see one tomorrow that gives a lot more info about meditation, one on Saturday, that is about screens, and so on.
Want it in book form?
I rounded up all the sleep posts into this e-book. Available for just $10 on sale.
