Here, I provide several steps that people can take to assist them sleep. Obvious ones are taking no caffeinated drinks or foods that cause indigestion before bedtime, taking medication for pain and dealing with anxieties in the daytime rather than facing them at night. That last bit of advice is easy to say but not always easy to do. Here are some other helpful tips (Kupfer & Reynolds, 1997):
- Go to bed only when you are sleepy. If you lie in bed for 20 minutes and still awake, get up and do something like reading or watching television until you feel sleepy and then go back to bed.
- Don't do anything in your bed but sleep. Your bed should be a cue for sleeping, not studying or watching television. It is because sleeping is a reflex response, using the bed as a cue for sleeping is a kind of learning called classical conditioning or the pairing cues and automatic responses.
- Don't try too hard to get to sleep especially don't look at the clock and calculate how much sleep you aren't getting. That just increase the tension and makes it harder to sleep.
- Keep to a regular schedule. Go to bed at the same time and get up at the same time, even on days that you don't have to go to work or class.
- Don't take any sleeping pills or drink alcohol or other types of drugs that slow down the nervous system (depressant effects). These drugs force you into deep sleep and do not allow you to get any REM sleep or the lighter stages. When you try to sleep without these drugs the next night, you'll experience REM rebound, which will cause you to feel tired and sleepy the next day. REM rebound is one way to experience the form of imsomnia in which a person sleeps but sleeps poorly.
If none of these things seem to be working, I really encourage you to seek any psychologists or sleep experts who can help people with imsomnia. One new treatment that seems to have more success than any kind of sleep medication is the use of cognitive-behavior therapy, a type of therapy in which both rational thinking and controlled behavior are stressed (Bastien et al., 2004; Irwin et al., 2006).
References
Bastien, C. H., Morin, C. M., Ouellet, M., Blais, F. C., Bouchard, S. (2004). Cognitive-behavioral therapy for imsomnia: Comparison of individual therapy and telephone consultations. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 72(4), 653-659.
Kryger, M., Lavie, P., & Rosen, R (1999). Recognition and diagnosis of imsomnia. Sleep, 22, S421 - S426.
Kupfer, D. J., & Reynolds, C. F., III. (1997). Management of imsomnia. New England Journal of Medicine, 336(5), 341 - 346.
Irwin, M., Cole, J., & Nicassio, P. (2006). Comparative of meta-analysis of behavioral intervention for imsomnia and their efficacy in middle aged adults and in older adults 55+ years of age. Health Psychology, 25, 3-4.
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