Dr Guy Meadows
Co-founder and clinical lead of Sleep School
Achieving a full night of consolidated sleep involves a delicate balance between daytime and night-time strategies. By day, it requires adopting a healthy sleep routine. This includes such factors as maintaining a consistent sleep schedule, even on weekends, moderating caffeine and alcohol intake, engaging in regular physical activity, and ensuring a peaceful bedtime routine, all of which significantly contribute to improved sleep quality. Yet the real transformation often occurs at night when you embrace an attitude of acceptance.
It is crucial to recognise that waking up during the night is commonplace and not necessarily a problem. The more you resist or become anxious about it, the more challenging it becomes to return to sleep. Resistance can inadvertently train your brain to perceive it as a problem, leading to more frequent awakenings.
Instead, shifting your perspective can be groundbreaking. Viewing night-time awakenings as moments of rest and granting yourself permission to be awake can transform your relationship with sleep. This shift from tossing and turning, frustration, and anxiety to relaxation, self-compassion and acceptance helps to signal to your brain that you are safe, a vital cue for natural sleep to take its course.
At Sleep School we have pioneered the use of acceptance and commitment therapy. This behavioural therapy empowers you to liberate yourself from the persistent cycle of night-time awakenings, allowing you to rediscover restful sleep and reclaim your life.
Dr Sophie Mort
Psychologist
If you feel overly stressed when your head hits the pillow, try writing down everything that is on your mind about two hours before bed, then identify solutions for the things that can be solved and agree to let go of those that you can’t solve.
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Try practising mindfulness meditation exercises — for example, Finding Your Best Sleepby the app Headspace — to learn the skills to let go of thoughts that might get in the way of your sleep.
Prioritising your sleep hygiene — for example, by reducing caffeine and sugar intake, and getting bright light exposure in the mornings — can also help to regulate your sleep pattern.
Setting a sleep pattern — waking up at the same time every day and going to bed only when sleepy — and finding a bedtime ritual that helps you to wind down can also help your mind to associate your bed with sleepiness.
Dr Roger Henderson
GP and health broadcaster
Most of the reasons for sleeping badly are very common and simply cured, but many people do not consider them. Tobacco, alcohol and caffeine all disturb sleep in everyone, even those who think they have no effect on them.
Routine also appears to be important in many people. Waking at the same time each morning helps the body’s natural rhythms, which in turn help the onset of sleep. Try to get into the habit of doing some exercise every day since this often deepens sleep over time.
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Don’t go to bed hungry or overfull, and do not have the bedroom too warm since this can lead to early-hours awakenings. View the bedroom as a place for sleeping rather than for watching TV or working.
Try to avoid sleeping tablets whenever possible. Apart from the problems of dependence, they do not promote true restful sleep. They should be used only in the short term to try to encourage an initial change in your sleep pattern.
