Friday, June 21, 2013

Cannot Sleep? Association Rule Can Help You

Stimulus Control Therapy

  1. Lie down to go to sleep only when you are sleepy.
  2. Do not use your bed for anything except sleep; that is, do not read, watch television, eat, or worry in bed. Sexual activity is the only exception to this rule. On such occasions, the instructions are to be followed afterwards, when you intend to go to sleep.
  3. If you find yourself unable to fall asleep, get up and go into another room. Stay up as long as you wish and then return to the  bedroom to sleep. Although we do not want you to watch the clock, we want you to get out of bed if you do not fall asleep immediately. Remember the goal is to associate your bed with falling asleep quickly! If you are in bed more than about 10 minutes without falling asleep and have not gotten up, you are not following this instruction.
  4. If you still cannot fall asleep, repeat step 3. Do this as often as is necessary throughout the night.
  5. Set your alarm and get up at the same time every morning irrespective of how much sleep you got during the night. This will help your body acquire a consistent sleep rhythm.
  6. Do not nap during the day.

Why it works

This method is based on the idea that we are like Pavlov's drooling dog. We attach certain stimuli in the environment to certain thoughts and behaviours. Famously Pavlov's dogs would start drooling when a bell rang, because they associated hearing the bell with getting food. Eventually the dogs would drool at the sound of the bell even when they didn't get any food. Replace the bell with abed and food with sleep and conceptually you're there.
If we learn to do all kinds of things in bed that aren't sleep, then when we do want to use it for sleep, it's harder because of those other associations.

source: http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/05/6-easy-steps-to-falling-asleep-fast.php

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