Dougal Sutherland: Why sleep gets disrupted when people are busy or stressed from work

Many of us experience disruptions to our sleep when we are busy or stressed. This can be due to our brains being switched into “flight or fight” mode. When this mode is on our body and brains are alert and actively looking for danger, which makes sense if our danger is from a wild animal but doesn’t make quite as much sense if our “danger” is from a high workload. This sense of alertness is the polar opposite to that state your body needs to be in for sleeping. In these situations, you might find yourself having trouble getting to sleep or waking in the middle of the night with a racing mind. This can leave you feeling tired and exhausted the next day, which may make you less effective at work, which in turn contributes to more stress! 

  

Here's some tips for sleep during stressful times: 

- If you can’t get to sleep or wake up in the middle of the night, don’t lie in bed for more than about 15mins – if you haven’t fallen asleep by then you’re probably not going to anytime soon. Get up and out of bed and do something boring until you feel tired again. If you have a racing mind sit down with a piece of paper and simply write down everything in your head until your brain has dumped it all out. Then try sleeping again 

- Try to resist the urge to sleep in, at least during weekdays. Keep a consistent wake up time as this helps anchor your body clock and can help prevent sleep problems getting even worse 

- Avoid napping during the day, unless you can keep the nap to 20mins or less. Sleeping too much during the day will have a flow-on effect to nighttime sleeping 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks be Time to.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Get a job with our clinical psychologist, Google Sutherland from
Umbrella Well Being Killder.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Google Sorder Jack. It was interesting you were talking about Shakespeare.
I was out with out with a group of friends
on Thursday night at the pub and people started quoting
Shakespeare at one another. It was quite a surreal experience from.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
That's very sophisticated. Google, That's very no doubt you were
there just reeling off a few soliloquies yourself a few
hours about discontents, my gloriou summer by the Son.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
You're doing a couple of my friends who got PhDs
in English literature, and it was like, oh my god,
this is quite We got this. Then we got the
swapping brisket recipes. A very interesting, very interesting evening that
was very pleasurable.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Indeed, Yeah, you've got you've got multiple friends with PhDs
and English literature.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Yeah. Yeah. One used to lecture in the States and
has got one one of those high over achievers who
got a law degree and a PhD in English.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
List it wasn't a bill English, doesn't. I don't think
he is a PhD isn't a billing study. English literature
could be wrong on me.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Yeah, I think it's a wonderful thing, to be perfectly honest,
and I look at those people in some sort of
envy and going, gosh, I wish I had that knowledge
of literature and books that you did. But there, oh,
very good.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Hey, I was saying before eleven o'clock this morning, if
you are going through a stressful period, one off, and
I'm speaking from personal experience here, one of, if not
the very first things to suffer is sleep. Right that
that almost is like the perfect barometer of stress, I reckon,
because if you are stressed, and you're anything like me,

(01:47):
you cannot get a good night's sleep.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Yeah. Yeah, I absolutely agree, and I've had the same
I've had a stressful period of last few weeks and
my sleep has been disrupted. One of my colleagues talks
about how sleep is the canary and the cold for
when things aren't going particularly well, and you're absolutely right,
it's one of the first signs you know that that

(02:10):
period either well, it seems to fall into sort of
three categories. Either you can't get to sleep when you
go to bed, or you wake up in the middle
of the night, or you wake up much earlier than
you want to. You know, you do to get up
at six or something, and you're awake at four thirty
and can't get back to sleep. So and very often
it's a symptom of stress. So it's it's annoying, but
it's also a good thing for people to pay attention

(02:31):
to and go, oh, yeah, something might be going on
for me.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
So yeah, I mean, usually you can connect the dots right. Again,
speaking for a personal experience, if I'm stressed, I lie
in bed. Usually I can get to sleep, usually not always,
but then I wake up and I just can't. And
then I'm there, I cannot get back to sleep. I'm
sitting there tossing and turning, stealing over whatever it is
that I'm stressing about. So what are some really practical

(02:57):
tips on trying to manage that anxiety?

Speaker 3 (03:00):
Yeah, I'm the same. I sort of wake up. I've
been waking up at sort of three or three thirty
and trying to get back to sleep. Look, I think
particularly when that happens for somebody when they wake up
in the middle of the night like that, if you
haven't got back to sleep after about fifteen minutes. Then
you're not really falling anybody. You're probably not going back

(03:23):
to sleep. You're in a state of state of alertness.
So your brain's quite alert, and that's really not a
type your brain's not really able to go to sleep. So,
particularly for those people that wake up in the middle
of the night, a really good thing, a very useful thing,
if you can do it, is actually to get out
of bed. So get out of bed, keep warm, and

(03:45):
then go and do something. Two choices. You can don't
do something really boring, like I remember somebody saying, oh,
I go and do the ironing, and I was thinking, well,
that could have some dangerous consequences if you leave the
iron one, so do that. Or if you've got something
rushing around and around in your head, like I often do,
then get a pen and a piece of paper. Just

(04:07):
just don't worry about punctuational grammar or spelling anything like that.
Just write and write and write and write and write,
and basically trying. You're trying to write out what is
in your brain. And eventually, after twenty minutes or so,
you'll probably you'll probably get a bit you're writing will
slow down, and you'll be a bit tired and your
brain will be a bit exhausted, and then when you're
feeling tired, go back to sleep or try to go

(04:28):
back to sleep again. Right.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
That's a good tip and really important to distinguish it there,
you say, with a pen and pad, a pen piece
of paper, as opposed to getting the laptop open and
having that the digital device open, right, because then you're
getting stimulated, then you're going on to trade me, then
you're doing all sorts of other things.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
Yeah, that's right. You're really trying to the method behind
the madness is you're trying to essentially kind of exhaust
your brain and externalize what is in your heads because
some of the reason that your brain is keeping you
awake is it's saying to you, Hey, this thing that
you're worried about is really important. Don't forget it. Don't

(05:06):
forget it, don't try and work it out. Try and
work it out. And if you've written it down on
a piece of paper, you can you can sort of
reassure your brain and say that it's all right, brain,
I've got that, we've written it down. I'll come back
to this in the morning, and you can sort of
mentally tell your brain that that's the case, and just
give it a little bit of peace. But you don't.
Don't go into your laptop. You'll get distracted or it'll

(05:26):
make you think more about work, which is possibly the
thing that's stressing you out in the first place.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
Right, Yeah, cool, that makes sense. Try to resist the
urge to sleep in.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
Yeah, putting aside weekends because you know, I think we
all like to have a bit of a sleep in
the weekends. But sleep is really looking to sleep will
do anything it can to get into a routine, and
it doesn't necessarily distinguish what's a good routine or a
bad routine. So you need to have some control over that.

(05:55):
So if your regular wake up time is whatever it is,
six thirty in the morning, even if you've had a
terrible night's sleep, try and stick to getting up at
six thirty in the morning or whatever you're talking rather
than sleeping in to try and catch up, because there's
sort of a knock on effect. If you then sleep
in for another hour, then when you come to go
to bed at night, you won't be tired for another hour,

(06:18):
and your whole cycle starts to get out of whack.
And it's really I know this is really tough because
it's you know, you've just perhaps got to sleep and
you're rousing yourself. But do try and keep into that
routine if it's all possible. It's way better for you
in the longer term.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Exactly the same thing applies for napping the afternoon, right,
you don't want to go too crazy even if you've
missed out on sleep the night before.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
Yeah, exactly the same thing. It's routine. I'm lucky enough
in the last probably three or four years, I've somehow
mastered the art of having a twenty minute nap in
the not at work works clear but during the weekend,
and honestly it's amazing. It's just sort of immediate refresh.

(07:02):
But if you it has to be about twenty minutes
or less. If it's longer, you'll get into your big
sleep side. Yeah, and rarely start to disrupt things so
that you can nap for twenty twenty minutes or let's
sit sit an alarm. But but don't do it for
any longer than that, even if your dog tired. Try
and keep your tiredness and your sleep for the for

(07:22):
the for the nighttime. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
So I have the problem with because I love a nap,
oh y goodness me, like the heaven knows no pleasing
like an afternoon nap. But my problem is that I
either can't get to sleep, or if I do, I
get into that long, you know, like I sleep for
a solid hour and then I wake up. And you know,
there's something about waking up from an afternoon nap that
is just so much ruder than waking up in the morning.

(07:46):
You always look, you always wake up, You got to
dry mouth, and you look terrible. It takes a bout
an hour just to get back into, you know, back
into the rhythm of your day. It's just I don't
know what it is.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
Yeah, it's and it's that terrible groggy feeling. And you've
probably interrupted that sleep cycle, so you've possibly come out
of sleep when you're in a sleep rather than in
your light like the stages of sleep. And that's and
so yeah, look, even if you just lie and have
a rest and set your alarm for twenty minutes or

(08:16):
twenty five minutes or so, that's probably okay. Even if
you don't sleep, but do try to resist the urge
to sleep on and on even though you want to.
And oh gosh, I really need to just try and
bank up your sleep for nighttime because that's where you
really want to do it.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Yeah, you'll appreciate it later on. Thank you so much,
Doogle great practical tips. As always, Googles I learned from
Umbrella Wellbeing.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to news talks i'd be from nine am Saturday, or
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