To help achieve such consistency, she suggests sticking to a regular wake-up time – weekends included; exposing yourself to daylight as soon as possible (this tells your brain it’s time to be awake); and resisting the urge to make up for lost sleep, as extra time in bed can weaken sleep pressure, making the next night harder.
Darwall-Smith, whose new book How To Be Awake is about to be published, explains that sleep involves two processes – firstly, your circadian rhythm, the internal body clock that tells you when to feel awake and sleepy based on light, movement and routine, and secondly your homeostatic sleep pressure.
How you wake up shapes how you sleep, so if you wake to a blaring alarm and then scroll through your phone before getting up, the first thing your body experiences each morning is a stress response, and you’re setting yourself up for a day of stress and a night of restless sleep, warns Darwall-Smith.
“We often think of sleep problems as something that starts when we get into bed, but in reality, how we live during the day plays a huge role in how well we sleep at night,” she says.
What you do – or don’t do – during the day can have a profound effect on your sleep at night, explains psychotherapist and sleep expert Heather Darwall-Smith.
