Overcome Insomnia NOW: Benefit #1: Better Mood
Today I’m starting a new series where I highlight all the amazing benefits of overcoming insomnia and restoring healthy sleep. In each video I’ll highlight one amazing benefit in more depth.
Benefit #1 of overcoming insomnia: a BETTER MOOD. When you get good sleep, you feel more positive, can handle life’s challenges better, and overall enjoy your life more.
Good sleep also combats anxiety, depression and irritability. In one study, overcoming insomnia using Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (the gold-standard treatment for insomnia) improved depression by 50%!
When you get good sleep, your brain has time to PROCESS your emotions and help you to react in the right way.
I hope you find this series featuring the benefits of overcoming insomnia helpful.
If you’re interested in getting rid of your insomnia now, check out the CBT-I playlist below and learn about the first-line treatment for insomnia and how you can get it.
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https://www.drorma.com/insomnia-services
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Put Insomnia to Bed channel https://www.youtube.com/c/PutInsomniaToBed
WHAT I DO:
I help people overcome insomnia and get good sleep (without medication, drugs or supplements).
To Your Sleeping Better!
- Steve
RESOURCES
CBT-I Playlist
00:00 Introduction to Overcoming Insomnia
00:56 The Emotional Benefits of Good Sleep
02:55 How Sleep Processes Emotions
04:11 Combating Anxiety and Depression with Sleep
04:49 Conclusion and Resources
TRANSCRIPT
Introduction to Overcoming Insomnia
Today, I'm starting a new series on the benefits of overcoming insomnia now.
Quite often when we develop insomnia, especially if you've had it for a long time, we forget how wonderful and amazing it feels to be able to sleep and sleep well and then all the incredible benefits.
Everybody knows sleep is fundamentally important for our health. But, sometimes people don't know all the amazing benefits on so many different levels that really good sleep offers.
And when you overcome insomnia, there are so many different benefits that you get on so many different levels.
And I thought it would be helpful to highlight this in a series in each video I'm going to go over one benefit and kind of go into it in a little more depth.
And what I hope is that this gives you some motivation and inspiration to solve this problem for good and get over the insomnia so you can move on.
My name is Dr. Steve Orma. I'm a clinical psychologist and a specialist in helping people overcome insomnia and get their sleep back to a normal, healthy pattern of sleep.
The Emotional Benefits of Good Sleep
So, benefit number one of overcoming insomnia [00:01:00] now is a better mood. You are simply emotionally going to feel better on every level when you're getting good night's sleep and you're getting that consistently.
When you're not getting good sleep, when you're tired or you're sleep deprived, you're more irritable, you're more short tempered, you are less resilient and able to handle challenges just simply because you don't have the energy and because your mood is more depressed. You're just not feeling good.
And, in fact, Not getting enough sleep can lead to or increase the intensity of depression or anxiety or other mental health issues.
So when you overcome insomnia and you get your sleep back, it combats that. You feel more positive. You feel more resilient because you're coming at life with a more positive frame of mind, you can handle the challenges of life better. Those challenges could be work challenges. They could be raising your kids. It could be, you know, anything that comes up in your life. You just handle them better and with a much better attitude when you're getting good sleep.
Overcoming insomnia also combats anxiety and depression. So for just one [00:02:00] example with depression, when they've studied people with depression and insomnia and they go through the treatment for insomnia, which is CBTI or cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia and they eliminate the insomnia, their depression improves by 50%.
So there's a doubling in their recovery from depression. So the improvement rates of depression compared to just taking an antidepressant go up 50 percent when a person gets rid of the insomnia.
And I'm sure you've noticed this. If you're dealing with depression or you just have a low mood, occasionally when you have insomnia, you still will have a good night of sleep or at least a decent night of sleep.
And it's amazing how much better you feel. , on those days after you have like a better night of sleep, like it's so profoundly different and you just feel so much better emotionally.
And so you can see that, if you improve your sleep consistently and you get your sleep back to a normal, healthy pattern of sleep, overall, it's going to boost your mood tremendously.
How Sleep Processes Emotions
Now, why does this happen? Well, while we sleep, our body and our brain are [00:03:00] going through different processes, repairing us, restoring us. And one of those things that happens is our emotions get processed, meaning the things that are going on in our life, particularly things that we're upset about, we're anxious about, we're depressed about, we're angry about, get processed, because those things that happen, you get a chance to sort of have time for the brain to make sense of them, to get perspective on them.
And maybe you've noticed this when, you know, if you go to bed and you're angry or you're, or you're depressed or you're anxious, or you're upset about something, and then you have a decent night of sleep or a good night of sleep and you wake up the next day and suddenly you feel much better.
Either you're not upset at all about the thing you were upset when you went to sleep or you just feel so much better about it and you have a better perspective.
You didn't do anything, right? You just went to sleep. Well, what happened there is your brain was processing those emotions, those events, those things that happened, and that allowed you to be able to, you know, move through those emotions and get perspective on them without even doing it consciously because our subconscious mind is still going as you [00:04:00] sleep.
So that's why there's great benefits just from getting good sleep of improving your emotions and things that are going on in your life that might be upsetting you.
Combating Anxiety and Depression with Sleep
So this is benefit number one, and it's an extremely important one because how we feel emotionally kind of determines the quality of our life overall because we experience our life through our emotions.
If we feel really good and happy and positive. We're going to obviously experience our days much more pleasantly, much more enjoyably. We're going to handle life better.
When our mood is lower or we're feeling more anxious or depressed. It makes life kind of more miserable.
And so being able to get good sleep and getting rid of that insomnia is going to allow you to be able to just feel emotionally way better in your life and also combat any other anxiety or depression or other mental health issues that you might be dealing with.
Conclusion and Resources
Okay, and how do you do that? Well, you do the gold standard treatment, which I talk about all the time on this channel, which is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia or CBT-I.
I have a [00:05:00] link to a playlist about CBT-I and the show notes where I go over what CBT-I is, what's involved in it and different aspects of it. So you can check that out and even where to find really good CBT-I.
And if you found this video helpful, then just press the like button. And you can also subscribe to the channel. I do two videos like this every single week and I hope you have a good rest of your week and I will see you next time.