Guided Imagery for Insomnia: Getting to Sleep and Staying Asleep
At some point in life, each of us gets clobbered with some kind of sleep issue. Traditional medicine helps with conditions like sleep apnea but doesn’t have many answers for anyone struggling with insomnia. Traditional medicine most often offers one suggestion…pharmaceuticals.
Sometimes physicians will call me and say that they cannot put a patient on sleep medication because of contraindications. Other times patients will say, “Gail, I don’t want to take medication month after month to help me sleep.”
Can anything besides a prescription help you find those elusive ZZZs?
When I interview clients, I ask them what happens when they lay down in bed and put their head on the pillow. 99% of the people report that at 2…3 in the morning, they wake up and can’t get back to sleep. My response is to focus on what they’re thinking about when they wake up. Answers vary but often include troubles and worries: children…job…COVID…partner…illness…upcoming surgery…exams and schoolwork…and the list goes on.
Anxious chatter, insomnia and fight or flight
We all have difficulties and challenges in our lives. When your brain kicks in with busy and anxious chatter about personal stressors, your body goes into a fight or flight response. Harvard Health Publishing describes this reaction well in an article titled “Understanding the Stress Response”. The paper explains “a stressful situation — whether something environmental, such as a looming work deadline, or psychological, such as persistent worry about losing a job — can trigger a cascade of stress hormones that produce well-orchestrated physiological changes. A stressful incident can make the heart pound and breathing quicken. Muscles tense and beads of sweat appear. This combination of reactions to stress is also known as the "fight-or-flight" response because it evolved as a survival mechanism, enabling people and other mammals to react quickly to life-threatening situations. The carefully orchestrated yet near-instantaneous sequence of hormonal changes and physiological responses helps someone to fight the threat off or flee to safety. Unfortunately, the body can also overreact to stressors that are not life-threatening, such as traffic jams, work pressure, and family difficulties.”
In this stress response, it is impossible for our bodies to sleep, digest food or even heal. When you explain this to people, they get it and desperately want to find something to relax their body and minds so they can fall asleep, stay asleep and fall back to sleep if they wake up.
Four things to try tonight
Develop healthy sleep habits like having a dark and quiet bedroom.
Turn off electronic devices and keep them out of your bedroom as much as possible.
Avoid caffeine and alcohol entirely and most especially near bedtime.
Try Guided Imagery (also often called Guided Meditation).
In a few words: It’s as easy as turning on a relaxing recording as you lay in bed to fall asleep. And if you wake up, simply turn it back on. Guided Imagery is a simple technique where someone’s soft voice on a recording distracts that busy irritating chatter in the mind and relaxes the body. Moving the listener from the fight or flight response into a relaxation response. When you listen to guided imagery for a period of time, you can actually train yourself to have peaceful sleep without even listening to the recording. Sleeping on your side is the only side effect you’ll experience.
Wishing you sweet dreams!
