The fourth step in learning to sleep well within an ACT framework, is build. My previous posts were: Discover and Accept and Welcome. In build, we’re beginning to build new practices. This is about learning how much sleep you need, and when you need to head to bed and wake up again. I know when […]
More on sleeping the ACT way. Step one was discover – all the things you’re doing to help yourself sleep, but in your attempts to control the uncontrollable (thoughts, feelings, memories, worries, sensations, the environment and so on). And hopefully you’ve seen that these things can be counter-productive. That flash new pillow and bed is […]
Last week I described the “conventional” CBT for insomnia approach (CBTi), but this week I want to introduce an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) approach which is superficially similar to CBTi but holds to some of the fundamental principles of ACT: mindfulness, and letting go of control. As is typical for ACT, there are no […]
I’ve recently completed two posts on assessing sleep problems in people experiencing persistent pain, and today I turn my attention to strategies for managing sleep problems – without medication. Why without medication? Because to date there are no medications for insomnia that don’t require a ‘weaning off’ period, during which time people often find their […]
Last week I wrote about my approach to assessing sleep problems in those with persistent pain. As an ex-insomniac I’ve spent a while learning about sleep so I can understand what’s going on, and why sleep can be such a problem. In this week’s post I want to dig a little deeper into what’s going […]
Problems with sleep affect most of us from time to time. We know we might find it difficult to get off to sleep because of a busy mind, a different bedroom, changes to our schedule – but for most of us, sleep returns to our normal fairly quickly. For some of us, though, sleep problems […]
Sleep. The “little death”, the “golden chain that binds health and our bodies together”, “sleep is a hint of lovely oblivion”. There’s no doubt that having pain and sleeping well just don’t go together – having trouble with sleep is a common problem for people living with pain. One study reports that over a period […]
The fear avoidance (or pain-related fear and avoidance) model has given the clinical pain management community much to think about. Based on the “phobia” paradigm, the model has helped clinicians think about ways to engage people with pain in activities that they’ve previously avoided by identifying exactly what it is the person is concerned about, […]
Sleep is so important for wellbeing (ask any young parent!), and yet many people with chronic pain have really poor and unrefreshing sleep, and very poor sleep habits. Some pain conditions show changes to the quality of the sleep stages (such as fibromyalgia for example), to the point where these changes can almost be diagnostic, […]
It’s 3.00 in the morning. You haven’t slept since you got into bed at 11.00, and the last time you had a full night’s sleep was some months ago. Every morning you wake up feeling as though you haven’t really slept yet – and every day is just the same. I can understand why people […]
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