How much sleep did you get ?
Once these lifestyle factors are corrected , sleep will often fall into line . When it comes to improving your clients ' sleep , start by improving their state of mind . When you lift post-traumatic stress disorder , depression , or whatever other mental health issues your client might be battling , you also lift the chronic cortisol-inducing worry that goes with it and it ' s amazing how quickly sleep reflects that .
So if you ' re serious about helping your clients sleep better , you should familiarise yourself with the basics first . By this I mean asking clients about their sleep patterns , helping them with their wind-down routines , ensuring their sleep ' hygiene ' is healthy and their sleeping environment is optimal to allow sleep in , and addressing that most potent of stimulants : worry .
Sleeplessness can be caused by all kinds of conditions and life complications , and trying to treat it without looking at what lies behind it , is an uphill battle to say the least .
But it ' s a two-way street : by treating our clients ' insomnia directly , we can also help improve other conditions . But before we can do that , we need to work out what ' s going wrong with their sleep patterns in the first place . And of course , that ' s easier said than done ...
How much sleep did you get ?
It ' s a notoriously difficult question . It ' s impossible to tell exactly what time we get to sleep . At one of my hypnosis workshops I met a sleep lab technician who told me that in his experience most people actually sleep longer than they think .
That ' s not to say you shouldn ' t believe someone when they tell you they " barely slept a wink last night !" But also bear in mind that it ' s really hard for your client to objectively tell how much sleep they ' ve had .
Fascinatingly , there is also a placebo element : it not only matters how much sleep you ' ve had , but also how much sleep you think you ' ve had . A study revealed that people who believed they ' d had more sleep performed better at cognitive tests than those who believed they ' d had less , regardless of how much sleep they ' d actually had ( 3 ).