Hockenbury Discovering Psychology 5th txtbk

178 CHAPTER 4 Consciousness and Its VariationsENHANCING WELL-BEING WITH PSYCHOLOGYStimulus Control Therapy for InsomniaIn this section, we’ll provide some simple tips to help you minimizesleep problems. If you frequently suffer from insomnia,we'll also describe a very effective treatment that you can implementon your own—stimulus control therapy.Preventing Sleep ProblemsYou may not realize the degree to which your daily habits cancontribute to or even create sleeping difficulties. The followingfour strategies can help you consistently get a good night’s sleep.1. Monitor your intake of stimulants.Many people don’t realize how much caffeine they’re ingesting.Coffee, tea, soft drinks, chocolate, and many over-the-countermedications contain significant amounts of caffeine (see Table 4.5).Monitor your caffeine intake, and avoid caffeine products for atleast 4 hours before going to bed. Some people are very sensitiveto caffeine’s stimulating effects and may need to avoid caffeine forup to 10 hours before bedtime. Beyond caffeine, some herbal teasand supplements contain ginseng, ephedrine, or other stimulantsthat can keep you awake.2. Establish a quiet bedtime routine.Avoid stimulating mental or physical activity for at least an hourbefore your bedtime. That means no suspenseful televisionshows, violent videos, exciting video games, or loud argumentsright before bedtime. Ditto for strenuous exercise. Althoughregular exercise is an excellent way to improve your sleep, exercisingwithin 3 hours of bedtime may keep you awake. Finally,soaking in a very warm bath shortly before bed promotes deepsleep by raising your core body temperature.3. Create the conditions for restful sleep.Your bedroom should be quiet, cool, and dark. If you live in anoisy environment, invest in a pair of earplugs or some sort of“white noise” source, such as a fan, for your bedroom. Turn offor mute all devices that can potentially disrupt your sleep, includingcell phones and computers.4. Establish a consistent sleep–wake schedule.While this is probably the single most effective strategy toachieve quality sleep, it’s also the most challenging for a lot ofcollege students. Try to go to bed at about the same time eachnight and get up at approximately the same time every morningso that your circadian rhythms stay in sync. Exposure to brightlights or sunlight shortly after awakening in the morning helpskeep your internal clock set.Many students try to “catch up” on their sleep by sleeping inon the weekends. Unfortunately, this strategy can work againstyou by producing a case of the “Monday morning blues,” whichis a self-induced case of jet lag caused by resetting your circadianrhythms to the later weekend schedule.If you’ve tried all these suggestions and are still troubled byfrequent insomnia, you may need to take a more systematicapproach, as outlined in the next section.Stimulus Control TherapyWithout realizing it, you can sabotage your ability to sleep by associatingmentally arousing activities and stimuli with your bedroom,such as watching TV, text messaging, reading, surfing the Internet,“It’s only insomnia if there’s nothing good on.”eating, listening to music, doing homework or paperwork, and soon. Over time, your bed and bedroom become stimuli that triggerarousal rather than drowsiness and the rapid onset of sleep. Inturn, this increases the amount of time that you’re lying in bedawake, thrashing around, and trying to force yourself to sleep.Stimulus control therapy is designed to help you (a) establish aconsistent sleep–wake schedule and (b) associate your bedroomand bedtime with falling asleep rather than other activities (Morin& others, 2006). To realize improved sleep, you must commit tothe following rules with no exceptions for at least two weeks:• Only sleep and sex are allowed in your bedroom. None of thesleep-incompatible activities mentioned above are allowed inyour bed or bedroom.• Only go to bed when you are sleepy, not tired or wiped out,but sleepy.• Once in bed, if you’re still awake after 15 minutes, don’t try toforce yourself to go to sleep. Instead, get out of bed and gosit in another room. Only go back to bed when you get sleepy.• Get up at the same time every morning, including weekends,regardless of how much sleep you got the night before.• No daytime napping. None. Zip. Nada. Zilch.Strictly adhering to these rules can be challenging given therealities of work, family, school, and other personal commitments.However, those situations are much easier to managewhen you are adequately rested.Keeping a sleep diary can help you track your sleep and sleeprelatedbehaviors. It will also increase your awareness of yoursleep habits and the factors that interfere with restorative sleep.The National Sleep Foundation has a diary available as a downloadablePDF. Other sleep diaries can easily be found with an Internetsearch. Sleep well!stimulus control therapyInsomnia treatment involving specific guidelines to create a strictassociation between the bedroom and rapid sleep onset.