What is Insomnia and How Sleep Therapy Can Help

Often, we get stuck in spirals of fear and guilt about not sleeping or insomnia. Our minds race, our hearts pound, and anxiety piles upon anxiety. We feel alone and disconnected from our loved ones.

What is insomnia

If you have troubles sleeping, you may be suffering from insomnia. Insomnia isn’t simply “not sleeping.” It can mean you struggle to fall asleep, or to stay asleep; it can mean you wake up too early leaving you feeling unrefreshed and poorly rested. Sleeplessness comes with a variety of symptoms really! And it affects women more often than men.

How long your experience sleep problems can also vary. Acute or short-term insomnia last for a few nights or couple of weeks. Chronic or long-term insomnia means struggling with sleep on 3 nights or more per week and for at least 3 months.

What can cause insomnia

A range of things impact the quality and quantity of your sleep, and this can have a profound knock-on effect on how you feel and function the next day. Modern life presents multiple challenges to sleeping well – its relentless pace can leave little room for quality ‘me time’. Maybe you have develop coping strategies to deal with the lack of down-time, such as staying up late to watch TV or scrolling through social media. But often these habits are unhelpful and steal sleep from you.

Unfortunately, simply changing a few bad habits may not be enough to improve your insomnia and daytime exhaustion. And that’s because something else has started to develop: bedtime anxiety.

You go to bed worrying about how the night will go. Or you wake up during the night, grabbed by anxiety about whether you not you will fall asleep again soon. You might also feel frustrated or angry even. Or lonely!

All very normal but not nice and not helpful.

What to do about it or rather where to start

Rediscovering good sleep requires a balance of actions, mindfulness and compassion.

But there’s something else that can help – Sleep Therapy for Insomnia. Many of my clients say being able to share their experience with someone who knows and understands what they are going through is already helpful. Helpful in the sense that they feel validated and no longer alone. I think that being heard and understood makes a person feel deeply connected to another person. And therein lies the holistic benefit of being listened to for sleep: you no longer feel alone but feel safe instead. And with that comes a sense of calmness and clarity.

I believe feeling safe and connected is essential for sleeping well.

I see myself as a partner on your sleep journey: somebody who not only feels your pain of not sleeping, but can help you work through it. My aim is to help you recover the energy and mental space you need to enjoy life to its fullest. 

Let’s together take the first step on the journey to sleeping well and leaving insomnia behind.

Email or book a call with me.

Warmly,

Dr Kat