Dr. David Rosen
Dr. David is a board-certified sleep medicine physician dedicated to advancing accessible, effective care for sleep disorders. In this session he guides you through the first steps...
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What kind of support is helpful for treating insomnia?
There are of course, many other aspects to insomnia, diagnosis and treatment. Getting to the bottom of it often takes sitting down with a well-trained healthcare provider with experience treating sleep disorders beyond just prescribing sleeping pills. However, building that first step is the necessary way to go.
What role does mindfulness play in this process?
This concept of it's okay is essentially an application of the idea of mindfulness, which has become a more widely accepted strategy for reducing stress and improving health. Mindfulness is a way of training your brain to stop judging and pushing against your experiences and learning to accept them as they are, even if that present moment is unpleasant. It has been studied with promising results for helping depression, anxiety, and chronic pain. Although the evidence supporting mindfulness as a strategy for improving insomnia particularly is not yet definitive, I do believe that it can help when framed in the right way.
What's the first step to overcoming insomnia?
When faced with a problem, many of us frame it as something we need to beat or tackle or conquer, but true insomnia, what US doctors call psychophysiologic insomnia, which means insomnia not due to another medical condition like sleep apnea or a thyroid issue. True insomnia is one of those problems that doesn't respond to that approach. The more you focus on overcoming insomnia by telling yourself, I'm going to get in bed early and have a good night's sleep tonight, the more the insomnia can stubbornly persist. This can even make the insomnia worse as you develop a performance anxiety in which you actually dread having to go to bed as nighttime approaches.