Yesterday, I painted the bench we have in the garden. We have had the bench for many years, and every couple of years I sand it down and repaint the parts that have got a bit worn. While I was painting, it occurred to me that repainting the bench is a metaphor for looking after our own minds – the bench becomes worn after a while and needs repair, just as our minds develop too much stress and need repair.
The bench needs attention every couple of years, but our minds need a bit of maintenance more regularly than that. And sleep is a major part of the maintenance regime.
When we sleep, we go through different stages:
- NREM Sleep – where our body performs routine maintenance
- REM Sleep – where our brain performs routine maintenance
Of course, this is a gross simplification – we don’t know the half of what sleep does for us, but what we do know fall roughly into those two categories.
During REM sleep our eyes move rapidly around – REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement – and it is in this phase that the brain consolidates our memories. If moves memories around, deleting some of them, or maybe just taking a bit of the emotion out of them. It is a time when the stresses that we have built up can be resolved.
A build up of unresolved stress can lead to anxiety developing, so sleep is a very important part of our mind’s maintenance programme. However, if there is too much stress in the first place, we don’t get enough time when we sleep to process it all, so it builds up. And a build-up of unresolved stress can lead to anxiety.
Unfortunately, anxiety can wake us up – this is our subconscious reminding us that we need to do something to sort it all our, so we wake up worrying or ruminating about things. This disrupts our maintenance and so we just add to the stress even more.
So if you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night ruminating, get up and write down your thoughts. Simply writing your thoughts down seems to have the effect of allowing you to go back to sleep again. Try it – you never know how well it will work for you until you have a go.
And Finally …
If you have a problem with sleep or with anxiety in general, you should do something about it. If you need help, you are welcome to Contact Me. I help people with anxiety using hypnotherapy to allow them to get back to normal again.