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Sleep better by taking small steps that make a big impact
- thesleepnerdhq
- Mar 26
- 7 min read
Updated: Mar 30
This week, I want to give you some hope that fixing your sleep is possible and it doesn't need to be complicated.
I want to share the story of how one of my clients went from having life-long sleep problems to a sustainable healthy routine within just a few weeks and without completely overhauling his entire life.
I want to show you how through just a few very simple steps, you can finally break out of a cycle of neverending tossing and turning so you can become the best version of yourself.
When Alex first started working with me, he was struggling with sleeping for only 4-5 hours on average every night and claimed to be a "bad sleeper' for many years and decades even.
Every night, he would wake up in the early hours unable to go back to sleep, worrying about work and personal struggles.
He was constantly feeling exhausted and struggling to keep a healthy exercise routine. He even stopped pursuing hobbies he once loved such as reading simply because he couldn't stay focussed long enough.
In a previous job, his sleep got so bad, he passed out due to exhaustion, was admitted to hospital and only a very strong sedative could get him to sleep and essentially knocked him out for a week!
He knew something needed to change and he had tried so many different things over the past years including supplements, CBD oil, a weighted blanket, meditation and the list goes on.
Some of it helped for a while and the weighted blanket reduced his anxiety and increased his sleep slightly but nothing really addressed the problem entirely and even then, he was only sleeping for about 6 hours at most.
He started implementing "power naps" during the day which would boost his energy for a short amount of time but was really it was really just a desperate attempt to catch up on lost sleep from previous nights.
So he came to me be because he wanted to finally get into a good routine, something that would help him establish a natural sleep pattern and reduce nighttime disruptions.
When trying to fix any sleep issue - whether it's short or long term - it's really important to do a thorough assessment of your situation.
When you go to your doctor's with a health problem, you don't want them to just prescribe you some random pill and send you away after 10 minutes of talking to you - the same principle applies to sleep.
It's even more important to be thorough when it comes to sleep because there are many different aspects of your life impacting your sleep including your daytime and nighttime habits, your diet, your exercise routine, your social activities and your work schedule.
Everything we do can impact our sleep and our sleep can impact everything we do.
A crucial aspect of this assessment is the sleep diary. It's a weekly log that includes critical areas of one's sleep such as the time you go to bed, how long it takes to fall asleep, the number and length of nighttime disruptions , wake up time and the subjective feeling as the individual is getting up and starting their day.
But I also like to include a daytime log so I can see how diet or exercise may impact sleep on a day-to-day basis.
You can download my free template to kickstart your own sleep health assessment here: Download Your Free Template
We quickly established in our very first session that there are 2 major issues we needed to address:
His sleep drive
His racing mind at 4am
So let me break down each of them into the problem and then the solution that led to a major breakthrough for Alex and helped him to increase his sleep by 1.5 hours in just a few weeks:
Sleep Drive
The Problem:
His sleep drive was not high enough when he went to bed.
Sleep drive (or sleep pressure) is the chemical in our brain that makes us feel sleepy.
It builds up whilst we are awake and depletes when we are asleep. It's a pretty simple concept but many people don't know how they are going against this natural process and are sabotating their sleep unknowingly.
Alex was going to bed around 10pm which sounds reasonable but he picked the time simply because of his daughter's bedtime routine and because that's when they had finished putting her to bed and when his wife wanted to go to sleep.
He went to bed out of convenience and routine and because he felt like he had to but his body wasn't actually ready. He didn't feel sleepy enough at this time of night and it was causing a bunch of problems for him.
It's a myth that we can just go to bed early to "catch up" on sleep or to bank sleep in advance.
The truth is we can't force our bodies to go to sleep.
Only when our sleep drive is high enough and we align our schedule with our natural body's rhythm, we are more likely to fall asleep and sleep well through the night but we can never control it or force it.
His naps during the day also further reduced his sleep drive and were actively working against his ability to sleep at night.
The Solution:
It sounds counterintuitive but I told him to go to bed later and to wait until he feels "ready" and actually sleepy.
This part can be tricky because people often don't know what that feels like after having very erratic sleep for so many years. But he ended up adjusting his personal bedtime to around 11pm which meant that he was able to sleep deeper and longer and reduce nighttime disruptions significantly.
He also stopped napping ensuring this sleep drive was high as he was going to bed.
Racing thoughts at 4am
The Problem:
But it wasn't as simple as that of course because he still had nights where we would wake up and his mind would start racing, going into "problem-solving" mode and immediately trying to process everything that's happened over the last few days, what may happen the next day, analysing where he may have said something wrong to a friend or a colleague, worrying about the future and how his lack of sleep is going to make him unable to focuus in work meetings the following day.
It was really hard for him to get out of this cycle and settling back down so he would often end up getting up super early or just having a short nap later in the morning to to make up for the lost time at night.
The Solution:
This issue is a little bit more complex and there are multiple layers we had to work through but the solutions were quite simple.
The first part of the solution was increasing sleep drive and reducing the likelihood of these disruptions (see previous point).
The second part was addressing the "problem solving" and the related worries and thoughts.
It is completely normal for our brains to try and process information at night, in fact it is a crucial part of why we sleep. During REM sleep for example, we process emotions and sort through situations we faced during the day and we try to make sense of them.
It becomes a problem when this type of processing continues as we wake up at night and disrupts our sleep.
But more importantly, the fact that we are now awake unable to get back to sleep can lead to even more anxious thoughts and worries and this is what's really preventing us from getting back to sleep.
So the first thing we worked on was sleep related thoughts and beliefs. Many of us have misconceptions about how sleep affects us and it's causing more problems than caffeine or diet could ever do.
If you're interested in learning more about sleep beliefs and how to reframe them, I go deeper into this topic here:
For Alex, it was clear that he was worried about the impact of sleep on his health and how the lack of sleep was affecting his ability to function the next day.
Both of those beliefs are not wrong but putting a lot of emphasis on them and worrying only makes it harder to get back to sleep so we had to work on ways to reframe them and overcome these strong feelings in the moment.
Through this process, he also realized that the reason why he was overthinking so much at night was because when he was a chile, his dad would make him go to his bed whenever he did something wrong so his brain was associating the bed with a place of shame and a place where he had to reflect on the things he was doing wrong.
Journalling and trying to process his thoughts outside of the bedroom was crucial in "retraining" his brain to associate the bed with rest instead of worrying.
What happened next
Addressing those 2 main problems (sleep drive and the racing mind at night) led through a very quick breakthrough and from there we made a few lifestyle changes, introducing more regular walks, reducing alcohol intake late at night and focussing on balance over restrictive rules or a rigid routine.
We only introduced lifestyle changes once we worked through the basics of good sleep and the underlying problems he was facing.
Once his sleep solidified, everything else fell into place and he was more motivated to go on regular walks, go swimming in the ocean (he lives by a beach) and using his home gym for the first time in months.
He also naturally started to drink less acohol and saw the impact this had on his sleep.
As you can see, sometimes small steps can lead to big breakthoughs and can enable more positive changes that will snowball into more sustainable healthy habits over time.
If you have been struggling with sleep for a long time or feel like you just can't get into a good routine, please know that change is possible and it doesn't need to be complicated.
You just need to know where to start.
I'm always here for a chat if you have any questions or need help - simply reply to this email or book a free 30mins consultation with me by clicking the link below:
Sleep well,
Anne - The Sleep Nerd 😴🛌⭐
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