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How Well Do You Sleep?

The Link Between Sleep and Depression

When it comes to being healthy and happy your sleep patterns count and the hours you sleep matter more than you realise. When you don’t sleep enough you become tired, cranky, moody and just plain CBA and this is why you can’t get things done.

People who are dealing with depression are often sleep deprived. One of the first questions they are asked by their doctor is regarding their sleep patterns. It may seem irrelevant to you but your sleep and your mood are totally interlinked. Your dream time is your subconscious trying to make sense of your expectations of the day. So, to give you an example, I went through a phase of feeling let down and unsupported by family, and I would dream every night that my legs wouldn’t work. See how this happens? If your expectations haven’t been met during the day, your dream state will be trying to explain this, and your waking state will be a hangover from your dream. Shite.

There are lots of different sleep issues that we have to contend with. One is the problem of just being able to fall asleep each night. The next major problem is staying asleep all night without constantly waking up. I’m sure we’ve all visited both of these states a few times. Then we get the more complicated areas of sleep paralysis and REM sleep behaviour disorder (that’s my speciality, goes great with early onset parkinson’s)

Your goal each night should be to sleep around 7 or 8 hours each night. The amount of sleep you require varies depending upon your own personal needs. If you find that you constantly wake up after a few hours you want to try and see why this is happening. Are you waking up because of a noise or because you are too warm? If you can identify the distraction it will be much easier to try and fix it. My dog sleeps with me, and I’m regularly woken in the night by her standing on my head because she needs to go out, but we both can usually get back to sleep without too much hassle after that. 

If you are not sure why this happens you may need to take a deeper look at the things that are going on in your life. It is possible that you may be stressed out or worrying about something. When these problems spill over into your sleep patterns then it does become a problem. I can help you to identify these issues and to help you put together a plan to help you sleep and tailor a relaxation audio for you to listen to each night as you fall asleep.

Have a listen to this sleep audio I put together on soundcloud, and then contact me if you would like something made personalised for your own needs.