Part 3: Harnessing the Power of Mindset: Better Sleep with Help from Hypnotherapy

Most adults have had a sleepless night or a ‘didn’t sleep well last night’ experience at one time or another. This experience can be simply a passing annoyance. However, for some of you, frequent or chronic insomnia can be a debilitating problem with significant mental and physical health implications.

Juanita had done an excellent job of training herself to get by on 3 (yes, 3!) hours of sleep a night.  She was a young mother, working part time and going to school.  She literally believed that she had no time to sleep.  10 years later, her son (and now daughter as well) were 8 and 10 and she wanted to sleep more and better.  Could I help? Of course I could.

First of all, we talked about her goals and how important getting a better night’s sleep was to her.  She felt that at her age, she needed more sleep.  Her goal was 7-8 hours a night.  The first thing we did was come up with a set of affirmations changing her mindset about sleep.  Instead of “I won’t be able to sleep more than 3 hours tonight,” we changed her self-talk to “I easily get 8 hours of sleep every night.”  In hypnosis, she was really relaxed for the first time in a long time.  I encouraged her to listen to the recording of her hypnosis session as she was falling asleep so she would be very relaxed.  Each time she listened to the recording she reinforced that feeling of complete relaxation.  Soon, she was sleeping 7-8 hours every night.

After your first few hypnotherapy sessions, you may also feel like you have had a ‘good night’s sleep’ for the first time in weeks, months, or even years. You fell asleep easily, slept through the night, and woke up in the morning feeling alert and refreshed.

This third installment of the series explores the critical role of mindset in achieving better sleep and how hypnotherapy can be a transformative tool in overcoming sleep-related challenges.

Understanding Sleep Goals:

Quality sleep is essential for overall health and well-being, yet many individuals struggle with sleep-related issues. The five most common reasons people set sleep goals are:

1. Improved Health and Vitality: Adequate sleep is crucial for physical and mental health, supporting immune function, cognitive performance, and emotional well-being.

2. Enhanced Productivity and Performance: Quality sleep promotes alertness, concentration, and productivity, facilitating success in work, school, and daily activities.

3. Stress Reduction and Relaxation: Deep, restorative sleep helps you reduce stress levels, promote relaxation, and recharge your body and mind for the day ahead.

4. Emotional Regulation: Sleep plays a vital role in emotional regulation, helping you manage mood swings, irritability, and emotional reactivity.

5. Disease Prevention: Chronic sleep deprivation has been linked to an increased risk of various health conditions, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and depression.

The Sleep Mindset and the Mind-Body Connection:

Your mindset profoundly influences your sleep quality and patterns. Through the mind-body connection, your thoughts, beliefs, and emotions can impact sleep onset, duration, and overall sleep quality. Here are the attitudes/beliefs associated with negative and positive sleep mindsets:

Negative Sleep Mindset:

1. Catastrophic Thinking: You dwell on worst-case scenarios or potential sleep disturbances, leading to anxiety and heightened arousal.

2. Sleep Avoidance Behaviors: You engage in activities that disrupt sleep, such as excessive screen time, caffeine consumption, or irregular sleep schedules.

3. Hyperarousal: Heightened vigilance or arousal before bedtime, makes it difficult for you to relax and fall asleep.

4. Clock Watching: Obsessively monitoring the clock and calculating how much sleep you will get, leading to increased stress and sleep disturbance.

5. Daytime Sleep Anxiety: You worry about the consequences of poor sleep or feeling anxious about not getting enough rest, perpetuating a cycle of sleep-related stress.

Positive Sleep Mindset:

1. Relaxation and Acceptance: You embrace relaxation techniques and accept sleep variability, letting go of perfectionism and sleep-related worries.

2. Establishing Sleep Hygiene: You prioritize sleep hygiene practices including a consistent sleep schedule, a relaxing bedtime routine, and a comfortable sleep environment.

3. Mindfulness and Present Moment Awareness: You learn and practice ways  to stay present and grounded, reducing pre-sleep rumination and anxiety.

4. Trust in the Body's Ability to Sleep: You are confident in your body's natural ability to regulate sleep and restore balance, fostering a sense of ease and trust in the sleep process.

5. Gratitude and Positive Outlook: You practice gratitude and focus on positive aspects of the day, promoting relaxation and emotional well-being conducive to restful sleep.

Hypnotherapy for Sleep Mindset Transformation:

Hypnotherapy offers a unique approach to transforming your sleep mindset, addressing underlying beliefs and emotions that may be contributing to sleep-related challenges. Through techniques such as guided imagery, progressive relaxation, and hypnotic suggestion, hypnotherapy can help you:

• Reduce pre-sleep anxiety and hyperarousal.

• Cultivate a calm and relaxed state conducive to sleep onset.

• Overcome sleep-related fears and negative thought patterns.

• Enhance sleep quality and duration through subconscious reprogramming.

• Develop healthy sleep habits and routines to support long-term sleep success.

Summary:

By harnessing the power of the subconscious mind, hypnotherapy empowers you to align your mindset with your sleep goals, paving the way for restorative and rejuvenating sleep.

Working together with your hypnotherapist using proven hypnotherapy techniques in a series of hypnosis and counseling sessions, you can discover/clarify your general sleep health mindset and specific beliefs and concerns about your current sleep hygiene, establish and prioritize your sleep goals, envision the thoughts, feelings and activities of an updated mindset that supports your goals, craft customized personal affirmations in alignment with your updated sleep mindset, and  establish a daily affirmations and gratitude practice that reinforces your mindset, celebrates progress and propels you toward successful achievement of our your specific sleep goals.

If you are considering working with me as your hypnotherapist, I am available for a free 30 minute consultation for new clients. Please call me at 818-929-4944 or go to cindaroffman.com to book a free consultation.

Stay tuned for Part 4: Harnessing the Power of Mindset: Stop Smoking Now with Help from Hypnotherapy, where we turn our focus to smoking cessation goals and explore how hypnotherapy can support you in breaking free from nicotine addiction and you can delve into the transformative potential of mindset in achieving smoking cessation with the help of hypnotherapy.

Sincerely,

Cinda

HypnoNews and Resources

One man’s personal, post pandemic story that you might relate to:

I Tried Everything to Cure My Insomnia. This Is What Finally Worked.

 https://www.yogajournal.com/lifestyle/hypnosis-for-insomnia/

For the research minded:

Hypnosis Intervention Effects on Sleep Outcomes: A Systematic Review

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5786848/

Nine Things You Can Do To Help Yourself Sleep Better

Recently I worked with a client who was not sleeping well.  At his second appointment, he reported that he had had his first good night’s sleep in years. If you are one of the millions of people who don’t get the sleep you need, here are some of the things I shared with my client that he could do to lock in his better sleep habits.

1. Try and get to sleep by 10 pm every night.  Your body produces a very beneficial hormone for brain function and physical endurance.  The best hours for production of this hormone are between 10 pm and 12 am.

2. Sleep in a dark bedroom.  Melatonin is produced when the sun is down and it is dark where you are sleeping.  If necessary, invest in blackout curtains or shades.

3. No screen time 90 minutes before bed.  Blue light close to bedtime suppresses melatonin production.

4. Get as much sunshine as possible during the day. This helps your body’s circadian rhythm so that your body knows when to sleep and when to be awake.

5. A warm bath actually cools you and when you are cooler you get a better night’s sleep.  For sore muscles, Epsom salts can be helpful.  My favorite – Epson salt with lavender and bubbles.

6. The old fashioned remedy of a cup of warm milk actually works – even better with raw honey, saffron, nutmeg or poppy seeds.

7. Short naps are beneficial to your health – people who nap reduce their risk of heart disease death by 37%.  Take a couple a week, but not close to bedtime.

8. Take a tip from Indian feng shui expert Michael Mastro and sleep with your head in the south or east.  This can help with blood flow, circulation and digestion.

9. Try hypnotherapy – working with affirmations and gratefulness can help get you in a better place to sleep well every night.

I’d love to chat with you about how to help you sleep better

Give me a call (818-929-4944) or join us any Wednesday on my Hypnotherapy Q & A. Register here: 
 https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0tdeGtqTkuGtZCVlhQCzVEeRkxbTigRbBW

Sincerely,

Cinda

HYPNONEWS AND RESOURCES

Here’s exactly what lack of sleep can do to your body.  Lack of Sleep.  Can It Make You Sick?  https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/insomnia/expert-answers/lack-of-sleep/faq-20057757

And another one:  What Not Enough Sleep Does to Your Body, Say Doctors

www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/not-enough-sleep-does-body-110204841.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFKM2S8GTeSSuULlKf7mTCl0V3WevsouyjalpHTEwAo4q7o1W1xMLven3CGT8jW4sgWWD

Insomnia and Hypnotherapy

A few nights ago I went to bed an hour later than my usual routine and fell asleep thinking about the busy day ahead of me. Several hours later, around 3:00 a.m., I woke up with my mind in a whirl of stress and worry. What if tomorrow goes wrong? What if I forget something important? What will be the outcome and impact of the upcoming election? What if there is a power failure tomorrow and the internet is down? When will the pandemic ever end? What if I can’t get back to sleep now?

Insomnia is defined as difficulty getting to sleep or staying asleep long enough to feel refreshed the next morning. Some common symptoms of insomnia include:

·        Being awake for long periods at night

·        Not being able to fall asleep

·        Waking up several times during the night

·        Waking up very early and being unable to get back to sleep

·        Feeling tired and groggy the next morning

·        Finding it difficult to concentrate or function properly

·        Feeling irritable

Insomnia is a significant problem for many of my clients.  For some it is debilitating, for others it is an annoyance.  When it becomes a significant problem, we can address it effectively through a few focused hypnotherapy sessions.  

We start by developing an evening ritual.  What makes you feel relaxed and restful?  I usually suggest cutting out violent television and the news close to bedtime.  Watching a comedy or reading are good activities for just before bed.  It’s important to stick to a ritual so that your mind and body become accustomed to knowing that it is bedtime. You will get a personalized recording that you can play the help to drift off to sleep easily. You will also develop a personal anchor to your naturally relaxed state that you can use to get back to sleep if needed.

As I lay in bed at 3:00 unable to sleep, I was clearly experiencing an episode of insomnia. I decided to take my own advice to my insomnia clients:  Focus on your anchor, your special place that always makes you feel good, positive and happy.  I went to my favorite beach in my head and imagined sitting there with my son and grandson.  I remembered what time of day it was, what the temperature was, the sounds and the smells of that special day.  Before I knew it, the sun was peeking through the window and I had had a good night’s sleep after all.

If you would like some tools and training to help you get a good night’s sleep, please call 818-929-4944 to arrange for a free, private, personal, online consultation.

Sleepless in Socal - Pandemic Insomnia

She was going to school full-time, working full-time and was a single mom to 2 toddlers. She very carefully trained herself to get by on 2-3 hours of sleep per night. She was constantly in a state of stress and anxiety.

Eventually, she finished her degree, got a better job, and met a great guy.  Now she had time to sleep, but she was so well trained, she could only sleep 2-3 hours a night.  She wanted to be more rested, calm and relaxed. We worked on her bedtime ritual, adjusted her sleep environment so she was sleeping in a dark, quiet place. Soon she began enjoying a peaceful, refreshing, full night’s sleep on the same schedule as her family.

We are all under a tremendous amount of stress and anxiety during this pandemic. One of the best ways to counteract all that negativity is to take care of yourself. That begins with getting a good night’s sleep. Ever notice how everything looks better in the morning? That’s because your body and mind are more rested. With a good night’s sleep, your individual cells get rejuvenated and your conscious mind gets cleared. This can be compared to a computer re-boot – a necessary task to help your computer run better
and faster.

So what can you do if you have trouble getting a good 8 hours of sleep
every night? 

• Be consistent – start your bedtime ritual at the same time every night, do the same things and get into bed at the same time.  Your mind and body can be trained to expect sleep at the same time every night and you will sleep better and easier.

• Sleep in a cool dark room.  Limit outside light and computer light.  An eye mask can be a lifesaver.

• Limit caffeine and alcohol to 2 hours before bed. Stop drinking caffeinated beverages 6-8 hours before bed. While alcohol appears to relax you for a while, it causes stimulation after the first hour and this can interfere with good sleep.

• Limit eating to 2 hours prior to bed. If your stomach is digesting food, it is not ready for good sleep. 

• Keep electronics out of the bedroom. TV and computers should be off or in a different room while you are sleeping. Your bed should be for sleeping (and related activities) only. It’s probably OK to be unplugged for 8 hours each night.

These suggestions may help you improve your sleep. Many clients are also helped through hypnotherapy. I am ready to work with you online. You can reach out today.