What is Psychotherapy for Sleep Disorders like?
Sleep disorders are a very common problem in today's society. In addition, they have a great capacity to damage physical and mental health; These types of alterations not only cause fatigue, but also generate a chain effect of affectations in such varied areas. such as the management of emotions and personal relationships, work performance, or even the predisposition to suffer infections.
In this article we explain how lack of sleep affects the mental health and how to work from the psychological intervention for sleep disorders.
What are sleep disorders?
As its name indicates, sleep disorders are health problems in which the person's ability to sleep adequately on a daily basis is affected. This may imply both not getting enough sleep (due to the number of hours in a row or due to the poor quality of rest), and performing dysfunctional behaviors while sleeping.
In this sense, the main sleep disorders are the following:
- Insomnia: Trouble falling asleep or getting enough sleep.
- Sleep apnea: trouble breathing while sleeping.
- nocturnal enuresis: tendency to urinate during sleep, very common in childhood.
- narcolepsy: the person falls asleep unexpectedly and in inappropriate situations.
- Parasomnias: chains of abnormal movements while dreaming (includes sleepwalking and night terrors, among other disturbances).
- bruxism (grinding teeth while sleeping).
How does lack of sleep affect mental health?
All animals need a good night's sleep for their bodies to function properly. Sleep allows our body to regenerate and recover from the stimuli of the day. For this reason, an excess of waking time causes alterations, not only physical, but also mental. If poor quality or lack of sleep accumulates for too long, the complications can become extremely dangerous.
The lack of hours of sleep produces symptoms on the first day: we feel more tired, perform less and have less retention capacity. However, it is obvious that these symptoms are increasing as the days go by and our sleep does not improve.
Below, you will find some of the consequences on our mental health that occur when our sleep is not what it should be.
1. high anxiety
Anxiety disorders are closely related to lack of sleep. However, before I get to it, we can go through states of quite high anxiety (without becoming disorders) if we do not sleep enough hours or without the quality we need.
But why is there such a close relationship between sleep deficit and anxiety? It has been studied that lack of sleep has a negative impact on the immune system, which gives rise to the development of infections that cause the body to be excessively activated. This state of hypervigilance can have an impact on the development of anxiety.
On the other hand, the fact of not getting enough sleep causes our attention to drop, making it much more difficult for us to carry out the assigned tasks in our day to day. This causes obligations to accumulate and our anxiety to intensify.
- Related article: "Types of anxiety (characteristics, causes and symptoms)"
2. apathy and irritability
Lack of sleep can lead to symptoms related to depression, such as the abulia, which is the inability to motivate oneself to perform non-compulsory activities. Therefore, the initiative when undertaking actions decreases, and the result is a stagnation that can worsen the situation.
In addition, sleeping few hours of sleep leads to not only physical fatigue, but also emotional. This exhaustion incapacitates the person to react in a measured and proportionate way, since fatigue activates a state of irritability that makes us act impulsively and aggressively.
People who are in this state are practically incapable of answering assertively, they have outbreaks of anger that are seemingly unwarranted and meaningless and may continually feel frustrated by things that, in other circumstances, would not would affect so much
- You may be interested in: "Irritability: what it is, causes, and what to do to manage it"
3. It makes the person more prone to fall into addictions
This is another aspect that makes psychotherapeutic intervention for sleep disorders more necessary, since the work of a psychologist can prevent the appearance of addictions.
And it is that by activating a state of anxiety and depressive symptoms, lack of sleep can lead to a greater vulnerability to falling into addictions. This is so because addictions are experienced as a quick way to solve anxiety. The problem is that, in the long term, this "solution" ends up being much worse and can lead to complications.
4. Predisposition to suffer psychotic breaks
This is not an immediate consequence, of course, but it has been proven that, if the lack of sleep lasts long enough, it can cause psychotic symptoms. These symptoms are generally hallucinations and delusions, similar to those that can cause certain drugs.
This is because the lack of rest alters the brain, which has not been able to regenerate properly. If you experience any of these symptoms, it is essential that you see a professional immediately, since these psychotic breaks They can also lead to cardiovascular attacks.
How is psychological therapy for sleep disorders?
Like many of the sleep disorders, their main effects and symptoms manifest during a time of the day in which the person is not in a state of consciousness in which they can perform actions voluntarily or apply strategies therapeutic, psychological intervention focuses on generating changes around the time the person is sleeping, both just before and just after, and even during the day to day. The main goals are:
- Establish a series of healthy lifestyle habits that promote good sleep hygiene. minimizing the probability of manifesting the sleep disorder over and over again due to the physical and mental wear and tear suffered during the day. For example, in therapy the patient is trained in time management techniques, anxiety management, and preparation of environments in which it is easy to sleep better.
- Increase the degree to which the patient understands what is happening to him and stops trying to combat it through counterproductive actions.
- Adapt the context of the person (both the physical environment and the social environment, made up of friends and family) to avoid problems linked to poor sleep quality and lack of support.
- Correcting and redoing daily habits (which a therapist can help you with) is very useful for improving your night's rest. Among the tools that a specialized psychologist can give you are relaxation and sleep induction techniques and good rest guidelines. These exercises are learned in psychotherapy sessions and, once they have been put into practice under professional supervision, they can be applied by the patient in his daily life, in a way autonomous.
The rest guidelines are based mainly on going to bed always at the same time, not eating excessively during the previous two hours and not entertain yourself before going to sleep with electronic devices, especially mobile phones, tablets or television. Think that these types of devices excite your mind and, therefore, make it difficult for you to fall asleep.
In extreme cases, doctors can prescribe a medication to help you sleep (remember that you should always take it under medical supervision, since misuse can cause side effects secondary); in any case, psychologists do not work prescribing drugs, but rather offering learning strategies and self-knowledge that can be complemented with the solutions provided by the field of medicine.