Differently
Simple, yet powerful ideas for building a life, differently. Hosted by Carla Reeves, creator of The Differently Coaching Experience, this podcast offers thought-provoking conversations and practical insights for anyone looking to get out of survival mode and build a life that is truly your own. From the highs and lows of love and relationships, to the challenges and opportunities of work and career, Differently will challenge you to to rethink what’s possible.
Differently
Tips for Getting Better Sleep: Non-Medication Strategies for Overcoming Insomnia and Anxiety with Savannah Hipes
If you’re struggling to get better sleep, to feel refreshed and restored in the morning, and to overcome anxiety that leads to insomnia, this is the episode for you.
Savannah Hipes, is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Behavioral Sleep Medicine provider who uses evidence-based treatments to help people get a better night’s sleep. With her advice, you’ll look forward to climbing into bed instead of dreading the fight for such a basic human need.
Join us as we unpack the ways our modern lifestyle disrupts our sleep and simple yet effective tips for getting better sleep. Whether you're a chronic insomniac or just looking to get better sleep, Savannah’s insights offer valuable strategies to help you reclaim your sleep and, ultimately, your overall well-being.
Episode Highlights:
2:51 You aren’t alone, society devalues rest! Learn what happens during sleep and why it’s so important to our mental, emotional, and physical well-being
7:19 Why hyper-achievers are particularly prone to sleep issues
10:09 The threats our modern brains perceive that keep us up at night
14:20 The role of cognitive behavioral therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy for insomnia
16:45 How to communicate safety to your body during the day to help you relax at night
20:56 Understanding your homeostatic sleep drive
24:40 The role of exercise in helping your body’s drive for sleep, how much and when
28:14 The surprising research findings about the effects of light before sleep and what to focus on instead
29:36 What’s happening when we fall asleep, then wake up. How to handle waking during the night. What to do if you get up to go to the bathroom and can’t fall back asleep
36:26 All about sleep medications
39:36 How designating a “time to worry” is helpful to emptying the mind and calming anxiety
45:30 Practical sleep hygiene tips
47:48 The critical role using a behavioral sleep medicine provider can play to get helping you get better, restorative sleep
Savannah treats people in-person in Florida and online in Florida and New York.
Enjoy!
Guest Information:
Learn more about Savannah: https://www.savannahhipeslcsw.com/
Connect on FB: https://www.facebook.com/savannahhipeslcsw
Connect on IG: https://www.instagram.com/savannahhipeslcsw/
Connect on LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/savannahhipeslcsw/
Learn more about Carla:
Learn more about Carla:
Website: https:/www.carlareeves.com/
Connect on LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reevescarla/
Connect on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@differentlythepodcast
Go to https://www.carlareeves.com/getunstuck.com to download Carla's on demand journaling workshop + exercise to help you stop spinning and start moving forward.
Explore Coaching with Carla: https://bookme.name/carlareeves/lite/explore-coaching
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Thank you for listening!
I'm Carla Reeves, and this is Differently. Whether you feel stuck in survival, navigating a change, or seeking more for your life, may this podcast be your weekly nudge to take a risk to build a life that is uniquely bold, authentic and in alignment with your deepest values. What if you worried less about the bumps in the road and instead got equipped for the journey? Get ready to rethink what's possible. Welcome back. I'm so excited to share this conversation with you. Listen in for some real solutions to unlock the secret to a truly restful night's sleep. This one is near and dear to my heart.
Speaker 1:In our fast-paced world, sleep often takes a backseat, but what if we could rethink this crucial aspect of our lives? I want you to meet Savannah Hipes. She's a insomnia specialist and psychotherapist. She's helps us explore today approaches for improving sleep that don't include medication, from the power of journaling to the art of maintaining a consistent sleep schedule. So grab a cozy spot, relax and let's dive into the world of restorative slumber. I hope you love this one as much as I did. Welcome Savannah to Differently.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here chatting with you.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited to have met you just recently. So everybody meet Savannah Hipes. She's a . She's a psychotherapist and an insomnia specialist and I was really excited to meet you because I know myself I have struggled with sleep issues over periods of time. I work with people who are high achieving, driven people who often, often share that they struggle to sleep and there's such a ripple impact of that not only mentally, emotionally, physically and I was really excited in talking to you that you have a different approach and we love to think about things differently here and do things differently so that we can create more lasting results. And when you and I talked, you shared that it's a non-medication approach, really Like you're looking to help people retrain their minds and their bodies so that we can sleep well. So speak just kind of high level, a little bit to your heart for this work, why it matters to you, and just a little bit generally, like teach us a little bit about sleep in general.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I really love this work because, like you said, so many people struggle with not getting enough rest and the society that we live in tends to encourage that to an extent, like we just don't value rest anymore. There's just a lot of pressure in this world, especially in our particular culture, to achieve, to constantly be driving forward, to be producing something, for your time to be productive, and some people consider sleep or rest as non-productive time, and so they try and just get it done so that they can get back out there and get to what they're trying to do. I consider sleep to be extremely productive time. There's so much that your brain accomplishes during deep sleep. Actually, a lot of your learning is happening during sleep. Your memory consolidation is happening during sleep, meaning that your brain kind of refreshes the queue. You know you stuff information in your brain all day long and then, while you sleep, your brain takes all that information and stores it somewhere else so that it can be pulled back to the forefront when you need it, and it clears out the queue so that you can add in more information the next day. So sleep is so important for us and I like to give people permission to value that because there's a lot of us who just are like trying to really push it and we need to give ourself a break and value rest At the same time.
Speaker 2:I really love, in particular as a therapist, working with helping people sleep well, because the treatment for insomnia is so concrete, it's so effective, it's so short term, and I'm a little bit of a hyper perfectionist myself, naturally, so I'm really drawn to things that have a lot of research behind them and that I feel confident will work. And this is something that I feel confident that works, based on the 20 plus years of research that it has behind it, as well as just. I've seen it over and over and over in my practice. People come to me and say I don't know if you can do anything because I haven't been sleeping for decades, and then six weeks later they're saying wow, I never thought I would be in this position to wake up and feel good. So that's a little bit where my heart is at with it. I just really enjoy giving people the hope that they can actually get rest and they have the permission to seek that out.
Speaker 1:That is so encouraging. I can imagine that's just like a salve to somebody who's been thirsty for, like you said, decades, and I think that that's true. I've heard that that people have struggled for decades and I know, just in seasons of perimenopause like where I had stretches where I really struggled with sleep and like the impact that had on my brain and my thinking and the stress that that created inside. I can only imagine what the work you do and the impact that that is having and I'm so grateful for you doing this work.
Speaker 1:I want to go back to something you said about rest in general. I've done an episode on the podcast around rest because I used to have the same feeling that I love to be doing and our society is like go, go, go, produce, produce, produce, achieve, achieve, achieve. And I reached a point in my life where I needed to break that cycle in my life and in my brain, like retrain my brain, that sleep is productive and rest in general is productive and it doesn't mean I have to sit on the couch and watch TV and eat bonbons, but that literally my brain just needs to rest. And when I allow my brain to rest by doing, you know, drawing or coloring or anything like that, that I do come back refreshed and rejuvenated and with clarity and more space in my brain to do the important things I want to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that mental space is really important and so many of us have so many wonderful goals and things that we want to be doing that we don't give ourself a whole lot of space to just be. I love reminding myself about the verbiage difference between am I a human being or am I a human doing, Because I feel like a human doing a lot of the time. So when we give ourselves the space to just be, so much more comes to the forefront. Our creativity is able to unleash, and that's something that I encourage people to do during the day. That is directly going to impact their sleep is spend time just being and allowing whatever is in the back of your brain that you've been shoving back there because you've got too much to do and too much to think about. Give it space to come to the forefront.
Speaker 1:Wow. So go back to. I was going to ask you about some of the challenges that you see show up again and again, but what is the and I think this is one of them right, when you're a high achiever driven like, our brains are busy, my brain is going a lot, I'm an overthinker. What is the impact of that, when we're going at that pace, on our sleep? And what are some of the other challenges that you see?
Speaker 2:on our sleep and what are some of the other challenges that you see. So, yeah, I absolutely see this certain quality of person I call it cognitive hyper arousal that you've got a brain that is like jumping around all the time and has lots of thoughts and ideas, and it's wonderful. There's so much creativity that's happening there, but it also takes up so much space that when you lay down to rest, there's not rest happening. You don't go to sleep, you keep thinking, you keep imagining and dreaming and planning and worrying, and all of those things are going to keep you awake. So that's a really common thing that I see happen for people and primarily the reason that happens is because our body and our brain has an internal safety mechanism called the arousal system, and this is like the emergency brake on sleep. If sleep is going well, our body and our brains already know what it's doing in terms of regulating our sleep and our wake cycles. But if our body or our brain perceives that we are threatened, it's not going to allow us to sleep, because it needs to keep us awake and alert, to monitor for safety, to be able to run or hide or fight off our attacker, and this is a really useful safety mechanism, except for in the current day and age, we're not as often fighting off physical attackers.
Speaker 2:However, our brain has started to interpret other things as threats. Things like am I going to be able to get everything done tomorrow that I have planned? And if I don't, what's going to happen to me? Am I going to let someone down, and that feels like a threat to us, because community is a big part of our survival or am I going to lose my job if I'm not performing well enough? That's a threat to us, makes us feel unsafe.
Speaker 2:I can't provide for my family if I think that's going to happen. It makes us feel unsafe. I can't provide for my family if I think that's going to happen. So those things, even though they are not right now, today, as I'm laying down in bed, they are not threatening me. My brain has evolved to see future possibilities as present threats, and so that arousal mechanism kicks in and says oh, we've assessed that we do not feel safe, so we're not going to go to sleep right now, because we think that you need to stay awake and alert to your surroundings in case you get attacked by this storyline in your mind about your future failure. Right that story. I mean, I even wonder for you and the clients that you work with how often does that story about future failure come up for them?
Speaker 1:All the time. I mean, it's like you know, we're always projecting out into the future and that creates anxiety right the time, worrying about either in the past worried about what has happened or what I've done, or rehashing conversations or situations over and over and over again, or projecting in the future about what could happen, All the what if? Scenarios that just create turmoil in their mind and body.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and the thing is, it's really normal and it's actually extremely effective for your mind to have the ability to do that. However, it's got some false alarms going off sometimes. Sometimes there are real threats that need to keep us awake. Where we need to be awake and working through some turmoil, we need to our body prompts us to stay awake so that we can support a family member who's in a crisis or do something. There are appropriate times for our body to say you're being threatened, you need to stay awake.
Speaker 2:However, there's most of the time that we are getting these false alarms and so we have to talk to our mind and say hey, thank you for doing this. I recognize what you're doing. You're trying to keep me safe. Actually, right now, I am safe. These things I'm thinking about for tomorrow or for the future, I can pull back and say those are not going to impact me. Right now I am safe. Right now, I know I'm safe because I can feel my bedsheets and I can see, you know, the painting on my wall and I can feel my heart beating. We can connect with ourself and use some mindfulness to ground us into the present reality, as opposed to the spot that our brain jumped forward to 10 years in the future.
Speaker 1:It's so true, like being present is is is truly a gift, and it's it's amazing how often and how easy it is to not be present, like right here in our bodies. My husband and I just remind each other all the time like where are you? Are you here be minute? But it is. It's a practice, and so is that. A big part of what your training involves is helping people to one talk back to themselves, right? Not listen to everything the mind is. You know, one of the greatest pieces of advice I ever got was don't believe everything you think.
Speaker 2:Don't believe everything your mind tells you.
Speaker 1:Making up stuff. That's right. So is that a big part of yes?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so the the treatment that I use.
Speaker 2:I I alternate between cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia and acceptance and commitment therapy for insomnia, and they're very similar in that they both utilize a lot of behavioral change regarding your sleep, meaning that me and whoever I'm working with are going to be reviewing your sleep data, Like we'll record that every night and review it together and make specific changes regarding what time you're going to sleep, what you're doing when you're awake during the night.
Speaker 2:Are you laying in bed tossing and turning and having your arousal system flashing the alarms, or are you spending time doing relaxing and breathing and calming down? So a lot of it is behavioral change and then the other part of it is kind of learning what the facts are around sleep and debunking some of the myths that come up and that incite a lot of fear. Being awake during the night is enough to tell our arousal system we're not safe. Like we've experienced fear, that must mean there's a threat. Even if there's not, Even if the threat is, I'm going to be uncomfortable for a little while while I'm waiting to get sleepy. So it's kind of debunking some of those things that our brain tells us should be feared. So that's a big part of it as well.
Speaker 1:So that's a big part of it as well. I remember during that season of, like, lack of sleep, how it would. I would fear going to bed because of that process and the fear of not being able to go to sleep and what am I going to do? And I mean, it's a real, it's a real thing. So question for you when I say one of the things I worked on was breaking that cycle of productivity, and part of that cycle and I often talk to my clients about this is like I noticed during that time that I, literally, during the day, would sit on the edge of my seat. My stomach was clenched, like I'm in this state of urgency and my body posture and that's something that I've really worked on is being able to, like, sit at my desk and work and be productive, but be relaxed in my body, and that is something that I've really had to learn. And I'm curious, I'm wondering if that has had an impact on my sleep, because I am sleeping better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're nodding your head Because you're telling what you're doing is communicating safety to your body throughout the day and that is going to continue to last. You are teaching your body how to experience the stimuli of the day and have a calm response. That doesn't mean that we never experience anxiety or frustration or fear. We're naturally still going to experience those. But the more we can practice having thoughts, having sensations of anxiety, urgency, pressure, all of that and then saying, okay, that's here, and also I'm going to relax my muscles, I'm going to lower my shoulders, I'm going to let my jaw kind of go slack, like doing that. It's like muscle memory, so our muscles get used to oh, every time we tighten. We don't have to stay like that for the rest of the 12-hour day.
Speaker 2:We can tighten and then go, oh, I'm tight. We're just teaching our body how to do it automatically. And it won't do it automatically. First we have to intentionally do it by attending mentally to that sensation, saying, oh, I recognize that my fists are tight, let me let them go slack. We have to choose to do that over and over and eventually it becomes a pattern that our muscles recognize and they will start to do it automatically. Which means when you're in bed and you're used to being really frustrated because you're not asleep and you're like, oh, I'm hot and I can't fall asleep, and like all of the frustration is in your bed with you. The more you practice during the day experiencing frustration and then letting relaxation come over you, um, or even inducing relaxation to come over you by manipulating your muscles that's called progressive muscle relaxation you tighten your muscles and then you loosen them, um, you're training your body to do that, even while you're in bed, so it will eventually automatically go oh, we're tight.
Speaker 1:Wow, that makes so much sense. So I used to do hot yoga and in the yoga room they would, um, we did like a set of 26 postures it was the Bikram yoga and they would always say, like you know you're doing, you're holding a posture for 20 seconds and then you relax for 20 seconds, and they would always say, like it's maximum exertion and then maximum relaxation. And it was such a good training tool to like be able to be in exertion mode and then instantly almost like get relaxed. And so that's what you're training people to do is manage their own systems really and and mind. And that's so powerful and so aligned with the work I do with clients is really teaching them how to manage their mind and manage their thoughts and letting go of outdated old ways and rules, and all of that so aligned. Now I know why I was so excited when you and I met, because our approaches are really really aligned.
Speaker 2:I felt the same exact way. When we started talking, I thought oh, she already. I thought you were already using some of the treatments that I use, because how closely your language and your perspective aligns with what I do. I was like oh, she's got it.
Speaker 1:Oh, this is so exciting to me, for people, so let's talk about. I asked a few people to submit some questions, so I'd love to have you answer those. I'm just going to read the question. The question was my main issue is falling asleep. My monkey mind is nocturnal. What are some good techniques for quieting my mind? I've tried EFT, meditation, breathing, maintaining sleep hygiene, but none seemed to work. And the longer I'm awake, the more anxious I become. It's a vicious cycle and this has been an issue since I was in my 20s and I'm now in my 60s, so really going back to what you said, decades.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. So there's a lot of different things that can go into this. We've got things on like the mental side and then also things on the physical, like body, biological side. On the body side, something that helps to understand about sleep is that our part of what regulates our sleep automatically, this, just it's an internal drive, it's called the homeostatic sleep drive, which is very similar to like a hunger, like your drive for food or water. It's an appetite that we have for sleep and when we are awake throughout the day, that appetite continues to grow. It starts out low. We've just woken up, we had like a full meal of sleep, and then there's a chemical pressure that builds up on our brain throughout the day and our drive for sleep gets higher and higher and higher. So by the end of the day, we have a really large appetite for sleep and that's what helps us fall asleep consistently.
Speaker 2:Sometimes people, when they're having a period of not sleeping well, they will try to do something to feel better, which makes sense. Like you're exhausted, you want to feel better. So you'll do things like drink caffeine, which actually relieves the chemical pressure on your brain. They'll do things like take a nap, which can feel really good in the moment, and it's very individualized for some people which can feel really good in the moment, and it's very individualized for some people. Napping is effective, especially if it's a short nap earlier in the day. But and depending on your age, I won't go into all of that but, um, for the sleep drive, when you take a nap, it's like you eat a snack before dinner. You get to dinner and you're like well, I just kind of ate, so I'm not really that hungry, so maybe you eat a little bit of something, but then you are full before you finish your whole dinner or you're like, ah, I think I'm going to skip dinner tonight, and then at midnight you're starving.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what happens with our sleep. When we do things to lessen the tiredness we're experiencing during the day and we don't let it build like it needs to, it's not high enough to make us fall asleep effectively at night. So that's one thing to kind of understand about sleep that contributes to people not falling asleep. The same thing can happen if we're not waking up at the same time every day. If we're sleeping in on different days that we're more available, like on the weekends, we're decreasing our sleep drive. Our drive didn't start building until 11, when it usually starts building at eight. So by the time it gets to 11 PM, we're like four hours less, three hours less of a sleep drive. So even though we feel tired, our brain is not actually sleepy enough to put us to sleep effectively. Wow, thoughts on that before I go to like the cognitive side.
Speaker 1:Well, I just I was thinking about we started swimming recently and I've had the before actually kind of closer to the nighttime recently and I've had that before actually kind of closer to the nighttime and I've had the experience of going to sleep feeling really like not only mentally tired but like physically and how good that feels. And so I'm sure there are ways that we can make ourselves more ready for sleep, make ourselves more ready for sleep. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like when we are, especially in our work from home sedentary lifestyles. Our brains are going to be super tired and fatigued by the time nighttime comes, but sometimes our bodies really haven't done enough to build up the physical tiredness that we need to go to sleep.
Speaker 1:That makes so much sense. So do you recommend just more physical activity, getting up and moving more during the day, like what is your perspective on?
Speaker 2:that I don't recommend people exercise vigorously, like right before bed, because that actually can do a lot of activating in your system and sometimes give you more energy, and then you don't feel like going to sleep, even if you do feel sleepy, or it'll make you kind of wake up after you've been asleep for an hour. So I do recommend more exercise in the morning or in the midday, and not necessarily even vigorous exercise, but just moving around and being more active and changing your environment if possible, just to give your whole sense of self some different stimulation to help your body be nice and tired by the end of the day. Another thing that I also tie in with this is getting lots of daylight. So the second part of our biological system that regulates sleep is called the circadian rhythm or the body's clock, internal clock, and our body only knows what time it is based on the light that we expose it to. When we get daylight, that goes through our eyes back into a spot in the back of our brain where our clock is housed, and it says it's daytime, be alert. And it starts sending signals to the rest of our body saying be awake, be awake. And as we're getting light throughout the day it continues to send out that alerting signal, but we start to get darkness. You know, once we have darkness for a couple hours, our brain goes oh, we haven't had light in a while, it must be nighttime. So it stops sending out that alerting signal and it starts us in the process of getting sleepy. But if we are exposing ourselves to light at vastly different times each day, so if we're waking up at really different times, or if we're spending a lot of our day like with all the windows closed, kind of in like a cave, like environment which I honestly love because I like to be cozy and I like when it rains and to watch a movie but that impacts my sleep because my brain gets confused about what time it is if I'm not getting enough light exposure. So, along with being active and helping your body's drive for sleep go up throughout the day, we also want to communicate to our body what time it is by getting light in the morning and by keeping a routine like eating breakfast at the same time every day. That gives our brain a cue about what time it is.
Speaker 2:You know how sometimes you think I have like an internal sense, like I think it's about lunchtime. I'm starting to feel hungry. It feels like it's lunchtime, but I don't know for sure. And then, like your alarm, you know, goes off to remind you to break for lunch and you're like yep, I called it, it was lunchtime. It's like your that alarm is giving you confirmation that your internal body clock was right. So when we eat lunch, it confirms it, versus if we're eating at vastly different times every day, our brain's like wait, I thought it was lunch, is it not lunch right now? Does that mean I'm not sure when bedtime is? And if it doesn't know when bedtime is, it's not going to let you get sleepy.
Speaker 1:It's amazing how perfectly designed our bodies are to regulate all of this for us, but we have to acclimate to these changes in the way that we live, in our culture, and so I mean just really quickly, can you touch on the impact that our devices have on that light issue Like is you know when people are laying in bed, scrolling before they go to bed? That has to have an impact.
Speaker 2:So there's a little. The research used to show that there was gonna be a big impact from that light. The more recent research is showing that it's not quite as impactful as we thought it was. If you're getting enough daylight during the day, then the light you get from your screen in the evening isn't necessarily going to be counteracted, as long as you're getting enough natural light throughout the day. However, if you're in a cave all day long and then you turn on your screen at 8 pmpm and have two hours of bright light, that's going to disrupt your circadian rhythm.
Speaker 2:The other piece is we're discovering that with technology use, sometimes it's less about the light exposure and it's more about your engagement with the device. So, exactly, you're basically turning on your arousal system, whether or not you're getting fearful because you're comparing yourself to the other moms on Instagram, or if you're getting excited by something that you're seeing online. But it gets my heart pumping and I get excited and my brain is misconstruing that arousal as wait, are we safe right now? I don't know. We're experiencing all of these things, that kind of feel like fear. So it's going to keep us awake because it doesn't think that we're safe Makes sense.
Speaker 1:So what happens when we fall asleep but we wake up? Like you know, that happens to me a lot, where I fall asleep, I feel like I'm tired and I fall asleep, but then I'm awake, I don't even know how, and half hour hour later, two hours later, yeah, so part of that could be.
Speaker 2:You know, you didn't. Your drive wasn't quite high enough. Maybe you went to bed too early because you were anxious about not getting enough sleep, so you got in bed too early when you weren't actually experiencing the sensations of sleepiness, like yawning, like your eyes feeling really heavy, your head kind of nodding. If you get in bed too early, then you're going to have a snack of sleep and then wake up, as opposed to a meal of sleep. But the other part of that, too, is that something that happens is when we spend time in our bed or our bedroom and we're experiencing a lot of arousal in some way, so like a lot of awakeness, alertness, we're like really working hard. You know, if we work from home and work in bed sometimes which I do occasionally we're creating a sense of like got to get this done. Like you know, my body's like energized and experiencing that arousal. Or maybe it's that I woke up during the night and I'm laying in bed and it's been a while I haven't fallen back asleep and I start to get frustrated or anxious about that and I'm tossing and turning and my muscles are tense. Whatever it is, if we spend that period of time that we're experiencing that in our bed. We're actually creating an association in our brain between the bed or the bedroom and arousal. It makes a pairing so that eventually, when you start to get ready for bed and you go and you look in your bedroom, your brain goes oh like, immediately the bed becomes a cue for arousal. So that can happen. Your brain creates that association. So maybe you're really sleepy when you get in bed and you fall asleep, but then you wake up to use the bathroom or whatever and your sleep drives a little bit lower, which is normal. Usually you would fall back asleep, but because you tend to spend a lot of time in bed awake and alert and your brain has created that pairing, it cues you to actually start feeling arousal and wakeness and frustrated. So what I recommend for people is getting out of bed as soon as that starts to happen.
Speaker 2:Everybody wakes up during the night, whether you remember it or not. A lot of us don't remember it, but we wake up two to three times a night. You remember it or not. A lot of us don't remember it, but we wake up two to three times a night. If we are older, you know, 50 and above we're going to be waking up four or five times a night probably, and that's very normal. The problem is when we can't fall back asleep within 10 minutes or so. So if you're waking up, it's fine, but then if you decide, oh my gosh, this is a problem, I'm not going to be able to fall back asleep, you're creating that arousal and anxiety, and then your bed pairs it and then it cues it. So it's like this whole cycle of things that we're doing by deciding that being awake during the night is a threat, a problem or a. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So that was one of the other questions is like any tips for you know, after you wake up and either go to the bathroom or something going back to sleep, like, do you? You said you recommend actually getting up.
Speaker 2:Really so. If you go to the bathroom and then you get back in bed and you're feeling drowsy, give it 15 minutes or so and you it's likely you'll fall back asleep. Minutes or so and it's likely you'll fall back asleep. However, if you've for decades kind of created all these new cycles, maybe you're still awake, you know, 20 minutes in and you start to feel that like annoyance or frustration or a little bit like fearful about it. That's when I have people get up, go to a different room, create a cozy space for them to do something enjoyable and or boring, so that they can allow sleepiness to come back on for them. We're not looking to force anything Like. I will never be able to force your body to sleep at a certain time, and neither will you. That's not a thing that you can do. But you can create the environment for your body to allow sleepiness to come back, the environment for your body to allow sleepiness to come back. So all you have to do is leave the space so that you're not continuing to reinforce that.
Speaker 2:Your bed is the place to be awake and alert and anxious. Go somewhere else and do some deep breathing or do some journaling, do some wind down techniques to create that relaxation or just decide to enjoy your time. You know, sometimes we don't have a lot of spare time as busy professionals who are trying to go, go, go. Sometimes we don't give ourselves space to just do stuff that we like. That doesn't seem super productive and that's a great time to do it. You're awake in the middle of the night. Your body is telling you I think I'm too tight to fall asleep right now. Okay, go do that puzzle that you've that's been on your table for three months. That would be really nice Like and let yourself enjoy it, and then your body will feel safe, sleepiness will come back and then you go back to bed.
Speaker 1:So I'm guessing not a good idea to go do something like creative or mentally like work related kind of things yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's hit or miss. You know each person is going to decide what's best for them. I would warn against doing something like that that's going to get your brain like on fire with excitement or with ideas, because we want our brains to kind of be slowing down and now at the same time we can't control that. So if it is on fire, like, do some of those calming activities. But if you decide like I think I would really enjoy just being creative right now, give that a shot. This is all experimental in a way, because each person's body and brain is unique. So take, you know, for like a week or two straight. Every time you get that urge to be creative, go do it. And then, at the end of those two weeks, assess okay, did that thoroughly disrupt my sleep? Did that make it harder the next couple nights to be asleep during that time, or did that actually work out really well for me and it decreased my anxiety? Assess for yourself.
Speaker 1:That makes perfect sense. I love and I love that approach because it's it's about teaching people how to work with their innate design and it's it's not all the same. Um, so one question that just popped in my head is I know that I've talked to people who are medicating to sleep right, which you can totally understand, like the desire to do that, but I'm curious, like from your training and perspective, like what impact is that having on your sleep and how do you begin to shift or change that and get off of those? Absolutely? That's one of your goals in working with people right Is to help them.
Speaker 2:If that's their goal. If someone comes to me and they're fine taking their medication and they're happy to continue doing that, then we'll work on impacting their sleep, but not necessarily with the goal to get off the medication. But most people come in saying I kind of hate that. I am taking this consistently and the thing is, for so many people the medication works in the beginning it works really well. It's very effective.
Speaker 2:Those meds were designed to be short-term. They were never designed to be long-term. Things that we took, like the sedative, hypnotic medications. Those were not things that were designed for us to take for years and years, I think. Actually the recommendation is like six weeks.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of other impacts that happen when we take those for years and years and one of them is the effect of the medication actually starts to go down but we've become psychologically dependent on it. We have so much fear around what happens if I don't take that and what happens if I do have disruption of my sleep I stop sleeping again. So much fear around that that we feel like we have to continue taking the medication, even though it's kind of stopped working, like it might work a little bit but like we still find ourselves waking up during the night, or we find ourselves like feeling really groggy the next day, or we find ourselves being so sleepy because the medication can disrupt the stages of sleep that we spend time in, can disrupt the stages of sleep that we spend time in. So there are different stages of sleep that we all need, and deep, restorative, non-rem sleep is called slow wave sleep, and sometimes taking those sedative and hypnotic medications can decrease the amount of slow wave sleep that we're getting. So technically we're getting maybe the same amount of sleep and we're not waking up as much, potentially, but the quality of that sleep might be different.
Speaker 2:So people come to me and what I've noticed is that they'll say, well, it was working, but now it's kind of not like it, but I'm too afraid to not take it. Or I've tried getting off it on my own and it was terrible. I was awake for two days. They'll have these like really dramatic experiences, which is frightening, absolutely, and so miserable.
Speaker 2:So the work that I do with people is helping them identify. Can we get your body ready to come off that medication as opposed to just like doing it immediately? Can we build up your sleep, drive nice and high so that when we do taper slowly off that medication, your body's ready to put you to sleep on its own rather than relying on that? And can we help you learn how to interact with your mind and the thoughts that you're having about your sleep so that you don't feel like being awake during the night is as threatening to you, because that's the biggest issue is, sometimes the med is literally not working at all. It's not having any impact anymore. It's just your own fear that is the problem. Um, so tapering off that medication is really about fear management.
Speaker 1:Wow, that makes so much sense. You're a wealth of information, my friend. This is so insightful and there's so many little avenues I could keep asking you about. Yeah, let's talk about journaling for a little bit, because I think when we first talked, you said you have a strategy that you give your clients and we love to talk about writing and the power of that so I'm really curious how you use that as a strategy for sleep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this is called designated worry time.
Speaker 2:You and I were talking at the beginning about how we just don't let there be any space in our brain for the random thoughts or the reflective thoughts, like we're just so go, go, go. And for those of us who have a lot, our lives are very busy, we're doing a lot of things, we have a lot of big goals. We don't give our brain that space to dream and to imagine and to be kind of ADHD and like go lots of different directions. We also don't give our brains a lot of space to worry, like we're so focused on shoving those worries away and by the time we get to the end of the day and we're getting ready and we to bed, we go lay in bed. That's the one time where our brain finally is like okay, walls are, walls are down because the walls have to be down to go to sleep. So we take the walls down and it's like the floodgates, you know everything that we've been pushing off just floods in and we're like oh, now I'm talking about everything.
Speaker 1:Now I'm talking about everything that makes so much sense. It's like because I wondered that, like why do all of those things come at night? But you're exactly right, that makes perfect sense. Okay, keep going.
Speaker 2:So what we have to do then is say my brain needs some more time to be reflective, to have ideas, to worry about. Stuff Like the things I'm worrying about are worthwhile worries, whether or not they are unfounded which sometimes they are or if they're extremely legitimate worries that we're having, or if it's just planning. It's like what am I going to have for lunch for the next couple of days? Like even unthreatening thoughts like that. All of that stuff needs a space, and if we don't give it space, it's going to come at night. So I ask people to set a timer for 20 minutes earlier in the day, either during a break at work or when they get back from work, maybe right before dinner or right after dinner, but not a time that's like right before you go to bed. I want this to be earlier in the day and a time that you really carve out and protect. And you set that timer and you grab a sheet of paper and you say okay, brain, I'm ready, give me what you got, I'm here for it. And you let all of it come the ideas, the concerns, the planning thoughts, the worries, the fears, all of it, the reflections, the dreams and you write it down and you just give it space and you put a timer on it so you're not going to be there for hours and hours. You say, okay, I'm welcoming all of this. I'm welcoming it without fear. I'm saying there's a lot of things been on my mind. I've been shoving away, so let's welcome those, invite them in.
Speaker 2:Write it down If there are problems that are solvable, then maybe take an action towards solving that. You can write down like I have an idea for solving this, here's the idea and here's the action that I can plan to take on that tomorrow. Write it down. If this is not something that's solvable, I'm like, okay, I don't have a solution for that. Here's what I'm feeling about it. I'm going to write that down. Here's who maybe I can go to to get some support around this feeling. Or here's a thing I can do to kind of help my body feel good Even while I'm worrying about this. I'm going to do that later today.
Speaker 2:Write it down. Great, that way you're communicating to your brain. I'm addressing this, I'm giving it space, I'm not ignoring it. I'm making plans for what to do about it when I can and I'm supporting myself through the experience. That way, when your timer goes off and you're done. You say, okay, thank you, brain, thanks for giving me all that. It was really helpful. It was a little uncomfortable, but it was helpful. I gave you space. Now I'm going to continue my day and do my other things that I am invested in and care about and want to be doing.
Speaker 2:And when I go to bed, when those thoughts come up as they will, because it's a pattern that you've ingrained you say, oh, thanks for that reminder. I actually already wrote all that down. And say, oh, thanks for that reminder. I actually already wrote all that down and I know that I'm going to do that again tomorrow. So that'll be a thing to add to my list tomorrow. I'll do that. You continue to tell your mind. Thank you, I appreciate the reminder, but I actually don't need it. And eventually your brain will trust you that, oh, they are actually going to sit down and think about this tomorrow. It might not at first. At first it's going to be like, no, we don't believe you. You did this once and it's going to keep bugging you. But when you regularly do it and kind of put some trust pennies in the bank of your brain, it will learn oh, they're trustworthy, they are actually going to give this some space, so I don't have to bug them right now.
Speaker 1:So helpful, yeah, so helpful, yeah, so helpful. And just just doing that every day in addition to your sleep, I believe, has tremendous benefits, because that stuff is is taking your attention and your energy and robbing you of peace of mind and on and on, and on and on. So I love that strategy, peace of mind, and on and on and on and on. So I love that strategy. Any other simple strategies that we can give someone listening today that wants to try something. Is there anything else you'd like to share before we wrap?
Speaker 2:I mean, we've talked about a lot of things that I think people could pull from. The things I usually have people start with are getting up at the same time every day, which is like a feat on its own for some people. Trying to get up at that same time is really gonna help your body to build up the sleep drive that it needs to, and it's gonna help your circadian rhythm feel confident about what time it is throughout the day and when to tell you to be sleepy. And then I also have people try not to get into bed until you actually are sleepy, so not just tired or fatigued or mentally exhausted, but your body is telling you, it's giving you the signals that it could fall asleep in the next five minutes If you're not there yet.
Speaker 2:Enjoy your evening time doing something else, something else relaxing, while you're waiting for sleepiness to come. Don't be like, dang it, I'm not sleepy enough yet. Like, just enjoy that time. Like, choose that you're going to take that time and give yourself some me time. Do something enjoyable, but don't get into bed too early because you're afraid of how much sleep you will or won't get.
Speaker 1:Really quick on that. So the body signs are the yawning, the tired eyes. Are there any others? Those are the big ones.
Speaker 2:If your body feels really heavy, especially if you're like sitting on the couch and your you know your eyes Exactly you start to nod off, that's a perfect signal. Try your best not to actually fall asleep on the couch. As soon as this happens, go, okay. Thanks, body, I hear what you're saying. Let's go to bed.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Okay, I cut you off. Was there anything else you were going to recap from what you said earlier?
Speaker 2:That's really the main stuff. I mean, each person is so individual, so it's all about doing something for a week or two straight, like not sporadic, but do it for a week or two straight and then reevaluate, find a provider if you need some support, because it's really tough to do this stuff. It might sound like I'm saying oh yeah, just don't sleep in and just stay awake until you're really sleepy. For some people that means staying awake till 2 am for a couple nights because their body is so out of sync and they have to do like a hard reset. And that's what I do with people is giving them all the education, all the recommendations and support while they're doing that hard reset.
Speaker 2:During those that first week or two, when it's like really difficult to do this After those two nights you're like crap, I'm tired. And then you start to like well, maybe I'll get up a little later, or well, maybe I'll take a nap. Well, maybe I'll avoid this thing I was going to go do because I think I'm too tired. So working with a provider can help you avoid those pitfalls so that the hard work you're putting into resetting your sleep continues to build and become effective If you are noticing that you're waking up with a headache, if you're noticing that you snore really loudly, if you're noticing that you kind of wake up, sometimes gasping, that is a sign that you should talk to your doctor about potentially experiencing sleep apnea, and that is something that's really serious and could leave you feeling so exhausted for so long and can lead to other conditions like heart conditions. So just a tidbit there definitely go see someone if you're experiencing some of those.
Speaker 1:So I know that you, as a provider, like you, can serve people in New York. Is it in Florida?
Speaker 2:Yes, that's right. Virtually You're all about an in-person in Florida.
Speaker 1:Okay, and I know that you're all about education and teaching people and, um, I would love to have you back because I feel like this is just a topic that we could talk about on the regular. Um, that would so support people. So tell everybody where they can find out more about you and what you're doing, and maybe tap into some of the resources that you have, even if they're not in your particular area.
Speaker 2:Yes. So if you want to connect with me or read more about me, you can go to my website, wwwsavannahypeslcswcom, and hypes is spelled H, I, p, e, s. You can also find me on Facebook, instagram, linkedin. Savannahypeslcsw is the handle On my website.
Speaker 2:There's a media page and that has all my podcast appearances and some articles I've been quoted in, so that's a good place if you're just wanting to like get it, get a more firm foundation of what are all these things that I should kind of be aware of as I'm looking into my sleep and optimizing my sleep. And then you can also give me a call and just have a free conversation where I hear what's going on for you and I give you some recommendations about whether getting treatment for sleep would be appropriate for you, whether that's with me or with someone else who's more specialized in a specific area, like sleep apnea or narcolepsy. There's lots of different sleep disorders. It's not just insomnia, there's like a whole host of other things that you could be experiencing. So I would definitely recommend just call me and say, hey, I don't even know. You know what I should be doing, but here's what I'm experiencing and I can give you some guidance.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, and I think that I read on your site that you actually do speaking as well. So if somebody listening has a group or an organization where this would be really valuable, you do. Do you travel and speak?
Speaker 2:this would be really valuable. You do, do you travel and speak? Absolutely. I would love to chat to any organization or team who just needs some of those basics um to be able to really make the work that they're doing more effective.
Speaker 1:Amazing Savannah. This conversation has been so good and I just I know it's going to touch people. Um, thank you so much for the work that you're doing and just for being with us today and sharing all of this, Thank you. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Differently. It's been an honor to share this conversation with you. You know, one of the keys to living fully is to take action when you're inspired to do so. I hope you found that spark of inspiration today and would you help us spread the word. Did someone you know come to mind while you were listening? If this episode could impact someone you know, please share it and pass it along. New episodes drop weekly, so tap that subscribe button and join us next time as we continue to challenge the status quo and get equipped to live life differently.