Have you ever had a terrible night of sleep and then found yourself crying over a mildly inconvenient email? Sleep affects us in more ways than we sometimes realise. While we think of sleep as a chance to rest and recharge, our brains are still doing important work. Sleep supports memory, emotional processing, concentration, and our ability to cope with the day ahead.
When we haven’t slept well, everything can feel a little harder. A small problem can suddenly seem enormous, our patience can disappear, and the critical voice in our head may become a lot louder.
The Sleep-Mental Health Connection
Sleep and mental health have a two-way relationship. Poor sleep can make it harder to cope with anxiety, stress, and low mood. At the same time, stress and difficult emotions can make it much harder to fall asleep or stay asleep.
For many of us, bedtime is when the brain decides it finally has some free time to think about everything. Suddenly, you’re remembering an awkward conversation from five years ago, worrying about tomorrow’s to-do list, or wondering whether you sent that email to the right person.
Unfortunately, trying to force ourselves to stop thinking usually doesn’t work particularly well. The more we tell ourselves we need to fall asleep, the more awake we can become.
Your Mindset Matters
Even small changes to your daily routine can make a difference to your sleep. A regular wind-down ritual can help signal that the day is coming to an end. Reading, stretching, listening to music, or reading can all be ways of creating some calm before bed. Keeping your bedroom cool, dark, and comfortable can help too.
It can also be useful to notice what happens when your thoughts show up at night. Rather than getting pulled into every worry, try noticing the thought and allowing it to be there without having to solve it immediately. You don’t need to figure out your entire life at 2 AM.
If you’ve had a bad night’s sleep, try not to turn it into a verdict on how the rest of your day is going to go. If you convince yourself that your day is ruined, you may find yourself noticing all the things that seem to prove you right. Instead, you can remind yourself that you might be tired but that you will be okay. A little kindness towards yourself can change the way you move through the day.
When Sleep Becomes a Struggle
Sometimes sleep problems are connected to anxiety, depression, stress, trauma, or a period of transition in your life. If you’re exhausted but still can’t sleep, or if you’re becoming increasingly worried about whether you’ll be able to fall asleep, it can be helpful to look at what’s happening beneath the sleep issues.
Counselling can provide a space to explore the thoughts, emotions, and behaviours that may be getting in the way of rest. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) can offer useful ways of addressing and managing these difficult thoughts and feelings. For ongoing insomnia, cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is an approach specifically designed to address the patterns that can keep insomnia going.
If sleep is starting to affect your mood, relationships, or everyday life, counselling can help you understand the patterns that may be keeping you stuck and work towards a healthier relationship with sleep.