Stressing Out About Sleep Routines

Having a sleep routine can be extremely helpful to falling asleep. An established routine will train your body into feeling sleepy during the same time every day (and help you wake up during the same time every day as well).

But when you’re constantly stressing out about missing on sleep, the anxiety actually keeps you from falling asleep! And once you associate your bedtime “routine” to lying awake unable to fall asleep, then it’s going to keep happening again and again.

Dr. Clancy says that “Once we start conditioning and associating the bed with lying awake for hours, then that association becomes entrenched and it’s very difficult to find your way out of that.”

She suggests that a good way to get a good and restful sleep is by not forcing yourself to go to bed, but only when you feel “sleepy”, not just tired. This way, you’ll fall asleep way faster.