What can I do if I cannot sleep in bed?

Many people fall asleep on the couch, but when they get to the bed, they can't sleep. (Getty Images)
Many people fall asleep on the couch, but when they get to the bed, they can’t sleep. (Getty Images)

Have you ever been sitting on a living room couch watching TV, nodding off when you were sitting on the living room couch, but getting completely sleepy as soon as you went to bed? Or is it easy to sleep in a bed in your own home while traveling outside? This may mean that you and the family bed, need to repair the relationship.

In general, people tend to have a calm, comfortable, positive feeling about the bed. For people with insomnia, however, this is not necessarily the case. When these people lie in bed, their heads are often still in motion. In the long run, the brain unwittingly connects the feelings of anxiety and frustration with the bed. From then on, as soon as they go to bed, the habitual tension and worry will follow. To be the most obnoxious bedfellows.

Unfortunately, this negative connection can overwhelm sleepiness, so even when the body is tired, the mere sight of the bed or lying down triggers the fear of not being able to sleep again. This frustration experience can make sleepless people more anxious, more difficult to fall asleep, resulting in lying down more awake, or even as soon as the night comes to panic.

The Society of Clinical Psychology notes that in such cases, some doctors may recommend the use of Stimulus Control Therapy to alter the link between sleep and anxiety. What sleeplessness should do is let the place that sleep and relax mood pair up, let the body make bed and bedroom afresh, memory can rest and relax the environment.

Doctors recommend that in order to break the previously unpleasant connection and re-establish a good relationship with the bed, the first thing to do is to separate the function of the bed from work, and avoid reading in bed, playing on the mobile phone, watching TV, and even less working in bed. Or engage in complex or heated discussions.

When it’s time to sleep, if you can’t sleep over and over again, after about 20 minutes, don’t stay in bed “fighting hard”, get up and get out of bed first. Do something static and relaxing, wait until you feel sleepy and then lie back, bringing the feeling of relaxation back to bed. If you still can’t sleep, repeat these steps.

After getting up, you can do something to help relax, such as sit-ins, abdominal breathing, reading easy reading, etc., mainly activities that can be stopped at any time, and do not increase the level of alertness. If you want to watch TV or movies, you can choose more static, interruptible, such as geographical channels; movies, serials and so on are not recommended.

While the notion of not sleeping on your feet may seem disruptive to many people, research suggests that lying down at this time tends to only lead to more pain, which in turn strengthens the bed’s link to sleeplessness. Doctors point out that many insomniacs get better sleep after several weeks of stimulation control.

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