Margaret Thatcher who he was known to sleep only four hours a night, often credited with saying “Sleep is for wimps!” But sleep is actually work. Putting down the phone, putting aside personal or political worries – it takes discipline. True relaxation requires training.
Sleep trainers mainly treated newborns (and their exhausted parents). But recently, as concerns about sleep have increased, adults have also found they need lend a hand with their habits. A 2023 Gallup poll found that 57 percent of Americans believe they will feel better if they sleep more, up from just 43 percent in 2013. Only about a quarter of those surveyed said they were getting the commonly recommended eight or more hours a night – down from 34 percent 10 years earlier.
Sleep specialists take the opportunity to lend a hand adults realize their dream of waking up feeling refreshed. WIRED spoke with a sleep consultant who, after years of working with children, connected with this underserved population. She says it’s entirely possible to change your day and night habits to ensure you get a good night’s sleep. Why not start tonight?
Usually an adult comes to me with one of two things: first, a major life event – stress at work, the birth of a child, the loss of a parent, the end of a relationship – that destabilizes their system. Sleep is always the first thing to remember. Secondly, they are chronic. There are people who really struggle with sleep since childhood, and then it becomes part of how they view themselves. They’ve tried everything and then they say, “I have insomnia.”
In both cases, they are exhausted. I always laugh because when I’m cornered at a party I think, “Oh, I just have a quick question. I haven’t slept all night in 19 years.”
I have been a sleep consultant for over 20 years. I started practicing sleep in children after obtaining my master’s degree in clinical psychology. I worked with many parents and really began to notice a common problem: their children’s sleep problems were literally pushing them to the brink of divorce.
Even after I managed to get their babies to sleep fabulously, parents still had problems due to long-standing habits that existed before their babies were born. Then I realized that I had to lend a hand adults too.
There are camps: trouble falling asleep or trouble waking up at night – or both. This is my mission: to discover the secret of what keeps someone up at night. The most grave cases include people who come focusing only on their nighttime habits and do not reveal what happens during the day.
One of my clients had been having trouble sleeping for years. We realized that they consumed most of their calories at night and none during the day. So they woke up to eat something, which completely upset their body.
Another client, a woman who exercised constantly and drank 200 ounces of water a day, never made the connection that she got up to pee literally every hour. We had to reduce the amount of water she drank and tell her to stop drinking at a certain time.
Sometimes people just stop functioning. I think of the mother who says, “I just forgot to put my child’s seat belt in the car.” “I put the keys in the fridge.”
I’m starting from scratch. Of course, we care about sleep hygiene, but that’s all you can find on Google: buy blackout blinds, provide shelter before sleep. Most people think they have a good setup, but their habits or environment are working against them. This is where coaching helps because I can see what they are missing.
People have stories they tell themselves, such as: “If I’m sleeping, it means I’m not working hard enough” or “I’m young and I don’t need that much sleep.” What fresh story can you tell yourself about sleep? Since then, I have been using many journaling techniques, cognitive-behavioral therapy, attitude work and breathwork.