Why Sleep Matters
“I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death,” Nas, NY State of Mind
You don’t want to sleep on the job, sleep on your responsibilities, or sleep on that new record…But if you don’t actually sleep (like overnight) and give yourself a chance to rest, you’re more likely to sleep in other areas of your life instead. That’s why for the past few weeks we’ve been giving you tools to Assess Your Sleep Hygiene and to Improve Your Sleep. Helping you rest is important to us because the quality of your sleep affects your physical wellness, your cognitive functioning, and emotional health. This week we’re doing a deep dive on the importance of sleep including a number of resources for further reading - learn more about why sleep matters today.
Sleep and Your Physical Health:
Getting good quality rest helps your body to function at its best and supports the highest performance of every one of your body’s functions. Your body performs its best today when it’s well rested and good rest is a predictor for long term health outcomes.
Sleep provides you with energy: Sleep helps you to be awake, alert, have energy to move your body. Good sleep provides you the energy to best engage in your relationships, career, hobbies, and athletic pursuits.
Sleep gives your muscles a chance to repair and recover: It’s hard to push your PRs if you’re not resting - elite athletes need elite rest.
Sleep is good for your heart health: Poor sleep can be a risk factor for future cardiovascular health problems.
Sleep is good for your immune system and healing: It’s harder to fight off illness when you’re not getting enough rest.
Sleep helps you control your appetite: Good sleep helps your body regulate chemicals that govern appetite and fat storage.
Sleep and Your Mental Health:
Good sleep is foundational to supporting your mental health! Think about times in your life when you were functioning your best - it’s easier to think when you’re not exhausted!
Sleep helps you with problem solving: If you’ve ever been stuck on a problem because you’re too tired to figure it out, that demonstrates this impact. Sleep is especially important for solving difficult problems.
Creative thinking: Your technique will be more precise when you’re well rested. So will you’re ability to imagine meaningfully, or to proverbially “think outside of the lines.” You can think more quickly on your feet and improvise when you’re rested. Naps have even been found to aid in creativity.
Motivation: When you’re tired, it’s hard to want to do anything other than get rest. Getting better sleep empower you to do what you want to do.
Improving Memory: Have you ever forgotten something because you were too tired to store it to memory? Or maybe forgot something that you know you know, but you can’t recall at the moment because you’re just too tired to remember? That’s because your memory is impacted by how rested you are. Your best sleep helps you remember to the best of your ability.
Helps with decision making: Have you ever heard the phrase, “let me sleep on it?” It’s because being well rested can help you make the most thoughtful decisions.
Sleep and Your Emotional Health:
If you’ve heard “Don’t talk to me before I’ve had my coffee,” you know exactly what I’m talking about. When we’re tired, it affects our mood. It can make you more susceptible to irritation, lack of patience, or to larger mood swings or simply feeling blue. It might be harder to want to access your support network when you’re feeling down.
Sleep affects Feelings and Feelings Affect Your Sleep: It’s harder to regulate your emotions when you’re tired, and experiencing unpleasant feelings like stress make it harder to get sleep.
Good sleep helps with Processing Emotions: Lack of sleep makes it more difficult to process what you’re going through and may make you more emotionally reactive when you otherwise wouldn’t be.
Good Sleep Supports Better Moods: Good sleep increases the likelihood of pleasant moods and sleep deprivation increases the likelihood of experiencing unpleasant emotions and decrease accessibility to the more pleasant ones
Sleep Helps You to do What Helps You: It’s easier to access your support network and you’re coping skills when you’re rested: When you’re not resting, you’re only motivated to rest, which makes it difficult to engage in your preferred coping skills or to reach out to a friend when you most need it.
How Future Full of Hope Can Help:
Clients often seek support from Future Full of Hope when dealing with problems with sleep and sleep quality. Maybe you’re living with insomnia, defined as having difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or falling back to sleep after you’ve awoken early. Or maybe you’ve having the opposite problem with your sleep - hypersomnolence (formerly known as hypersomnia), which is characterized by getting too much sleep without feeling rested. Therapy can help you to better understand the problems you have with sleep and Future Full of Hope can collaborate with you to develop your game plan to improve your sleep quality.
Even if you’re not seeking therapy for sleep specifically, attuning to, and making adjustments to, your sleep habits can help with other symptoms. For example, if your hardest days always follow the worst nights of sleep, then getting better sleep can help manage depressive or anxious symptoms. Or if you always struggle to sleep before a workday, that may be an indicator of work-related stress and burnout. Or if you’re always exhausted Saturday that might be a sign that Friday night party habits are impairing your sleep quality the night before. Your mental, physical, and emotional health are all impacted by the quality of your sleep, and lack of adequate rest can contribute to challenges in your mental, physical, and emotional functioning.
At Future Full of Hope, we specialize in helping our clients to process their past, embrace their present, and to create their future. Processing the past might mean exploring other factors impacting your sleep quality, from anxiety, to trauma impact, to addiction behaviors among other conditions. Embracing the present includes learning to recognize sleep hygiene habits and to plan to adjust accordingly.We’ll also collaborate to develop a plan for your own sleep hygiene habits - your sleep hygiene plan will be customized to your needs. Then we’ll work together to implement your sustainable plan for supporting sleep hygiene and putting that plan into action.
If you’re ready to start therapy to work on improving your sleep, follow the link below to schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation with Kevin
AI Disclaimer: This post is original and written by Kevin Boyd of Future Full of Hope, PLLC. No AI tool was leveraged in the development of this post
