Why practising Gratitude before bedtime may help you sleep better
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Getting a good night’s sleep is a must for your mental health, wellbeing and resilience but if you’re a problem sleeper, it’s not as easy as it seems. A recent review suggests sleep is more complex than we think. We all have different health factors, environmental stressors and personal circumstances that impact both the quality of our sleep and how long we sleep.
So what are the basic requirements for sleep?
good ventilation
darkness
regular bedtime
comfortable bedding
roughly 7-8 hours a night
And if you’ve ever woken up feeling like you haven’t slept a wink or you feel sleepy during the day it’s generally because your sleep quality is impaired. Check out this video from www.sleepfoundation.org
What about sleep and mental health?
Poor quality sleep can actually cause mental health problems and mental health problems can reduce the quality of your sleep. For many sufferers, it’s a never-ending cycle of one thing impacting the other. The Sleep Foundation reports;
75% of depressed people show symptoms of insomnia
Poor sleep can activate anxiety in people who are a high risk for it
Children and adolescents with ASD have a higher prevalence of sleep problems including insomnia and sleep-disordered breathing.
So how does gratitude improve our wellbeing?
Gratitude is one of the most well studied interventions for generating a sense of optimism, relieving depressive symptoms and reducing worry. It also helps us to be more pro-social, strengthening our bonds with other people. A new study of school children, in a program designed to address online bullying, showed that positive changes in bullying behaviour were more sustainable when combined with gratitude practice.
Another study conducted by sleep researchers looked at the effects of gratitude practice on sleep just before bedtime and discovered that people who practised gratitude each night over a ten week period found they were;
Happier and more optimistic about life
Kinder towards other people
Did more exercise
And experienced less illness
Less worried and the quality of their sleep improved
3 Good Things - OK, Let’s do this!
If you like writing, try a gratitude journal or notebook by the bed. If you’re more of a visual person, you might like to draw in the journal, rather than write, this works really well for children as well.
There’s lots of things you can appreciate and be thankful for when you really think about it, here’s a few prompts to get you started;
nature and places
specific people in your life
opportunities to work or study
resources like good food and housing
health and happiness
friends and family
someone you just met
Choose 3 good things from your day. Next, think about each one more specifically;
Why are you grateful for them/it?
How do they/it make your life better?
Write it down or do a drawing
Notice how it makes you feel
Practising gratitude just before you go to sleep can help you dial down the worry and ruminating thoughts and replace them with thoughts that raise your psychological wellbeing. And if you do this practice last thing at night you just might sleep more soundly too. Happy Snoozing!
Stay safe and well
Kim
References
Chamizo-Nieto, M. T., Wallace, A., & Rey, L. (2023). Anti-cyberbullying interventions at school: Comparing the effectiveness of gratitude and psychoeducational programmes. The Journal of Positive Psychology, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2023.2170821
Philippens, N., Janssen, E., Kremers, S., & Crutzen, R. (2022). Determinants of natural adult sleep: An umbrella review. PloS One, 17(11), e0277323–e0277323. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277323
Sleep Foundation (2023). How To Know If You Got A Good Night’s Sleep. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph3PqgF47rw
Sin, N. L., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2009). Enhancing well-being and alleviating depressive symptoms with positive psychology interventions: a practice-friendly meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 65(5), 467–487. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20593
Suni, E. (2023). Mental Health and Sleep, Sleep Foundation. https://www.sleepfoundation.org/mental-health
Wood, A. M., Joseph, S., Lloyd, J., & Atkins, S. (2009). Gratitude influences sleep through the mechanism of pre-sleep cognitions. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 66(1), 43–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2008.09.002
