Mini-Series on Sleep: Part Three
Thus far we have touched on developing a sleep schedule and a before bed routine so you are really ready to fall asleep when your head hits the pillow. But what if you are doing these two things already but still having trouble falling sleep? If you get in bed and it takes more than twenty minutes to fall asleep you should get back out of bed. That might sound counter intuitive but there is a good reason to do so, a couple in fact. First your body and mind need to associate your bed as a place of rest and relaxation. Likely if you have been struggling with sleep your bed may consciously or subconsciously be associated with stress, exhaustion, anxiety, or frustration. To help break that association you need to be sleeping while in your bed rather than laying awake wishing you could sleep. So after twenty minutes if you are still awake, get up. Now that you are up you need to do something slow down and relax so when you return to bed you can sleep. Maybe that would be rea