Even when the world is not dealing with a pandemic, sleep can be a hard thing to come. As the world figures out its next steps, it’s easy for stress to take hold, and that stress can be stopping us from getting a good night’s rest.
Going to bed stressed can, unfortunately, become a cycle. When you lay your head down at night and can’t stop overthinking or feel as though your heart is hammering outside of your chest, your body can’t get into a relaxed state. Instead, as you continue to not sleep, enough your body boosts stress hormones.
According to sleep.org, the brain chemicals connected to deep sleep are also the ones that tell the body to stop the production of stress hormones. The boost of stress hormones that comes with not sleeping only leads to you becoming more stressed, creating a cycle that makes it continually difficult to sleep.
The stress you feel in your day-to-day life can also manifest itself in dreams. During the pandemic, it has become common to hear how people’s dreams are becoming more vivid and strange. They have even been officially dubbed “quarandreams.” This is due to the fact that we’re all stuck at home. Instead of your brain pulling from the things you did and saw that day, it is acclimating to being in the same environment day in and day out. Quarantine is forcing our subconscious to dig into past experiences and other things we might be looking at while home to stitch together a dream with little inspiration.
Additionally, not getting enough sleep due to stress can cause bad moods and a lack of focus. Since most people are currently working from home or attempting to be productive during this time, not being able to focus is less than ideal. How can one effectively participate in conference calls and meetings when their energy is low, and all they want to do is get back into their beds? While at the same time knowing that sleep is elusive. Stress and sleep can create a catch-22.
So here is what can be done to get better sleep:
Aromatherapy
Meditation
Journal
Living through a pandemic is no easy task. There isn’t a book that can walk all of us through how we “should” be feeling. One thing that we do know is that sleep is a vital part of our daily routines, and we should treat it as such.
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