Welcome to she persisted I'm your host Sadie Saxton a 19 year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She persisted is the Teen Mental Health podcast made for teenagers by a team in each episode. I'll bring you authentic accessible and relatable conversations about every aspect of mental Wellness. You can expect evidence-based, Tina, proof resources, coping skills, including lots of DBT,
insights and education. In each piece of content, you consume, she persisted It offers you a safe space to feel validated and understood in your struggle. While encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and build your life worth living. So, let's dive in this week on, she persisted when we sleep, it's like a dishwasher for our brain, it clears it out, it gets the gunk out. It allows us to think clearly, and if we're not sleeping well then that's going to perpetuate into our days.
We might make more mistakes. Might be more hard on herself. It's easier to be harder now. When you're not sleeping because you can't use those tools that you've been able to build. Hello, hello. And welcome back to. She persisted. If you're new here, I'm Sadie. I am a 20 year old sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania. We actually just had our last day of classes on Wednesday. So now, I'm like almost Junior basically still at finals but
crazy, busy stressed. This week's episode is fashionably late, let's say, and as we are in final season, you guys know, one of the most important things to stay on top of is your sleep schedule. One of the first things for me, at least that falls back and starts to struggle. When my mental health is in the balance, is my sleep schedule and it has such a significant impact on my ability to be emotionally resilient and cope with things.
And literally, every single aspect of mental health, I've done quite a few episodes talking about sleep, and it's because it just has such a significant impact on my well-being. When I was struggling, Not only was it one of the biggest things that we were addressing. Sing before I went to, in terms of treatment, like every single sleep aid, you can imagine when I was in the hospital that was what we were focusing on, so many different ways that it
presented. I remember it's such an emotional resistance to wanting to fall asleep because I connected it with waking up in the morning and feeling depressed and anxious and just that extreme avoidance but having to lay in bed and be alone with my thoughts. And so sleep is always been something that struggles when I'm struggling with my mental health.
And I learned so much about sleep, hygiene, and improving, My sleep at McClain and and during my time in treatment and still continue to maintain all those practices today. But of course, it's one of those do. As I say, not as I do, because my sleep schedule, still gets messed up. My friends, their family are listening to this or like, what are you talking about? Your nothing all the time. So disclaimer, still, we're a work in progress with slate because it's so easy to get off
track. And it's something that I'm super sensitive to. So, unless I'm like following my sleep regimen 100%. I am very prone. To being an insomniac and sleeping in and that bang, I love sleep and I can never get enough of it. So, with that context, I'm so excited for this week's episode because we are diving into all things sleep and talking about it from a really holistic perspective.
So I've done up assets before where I get into the nitty-gritty of like, this is exactly what you're going to do. This is the meditation you're using before bed. This is when you stop drinking tea. This is why teenagers are more prone to struggling with our sleep Etc. And so this episode we're talking about it from more holistic perspective which I loved and it really was helpful for me as I'm always in the process of getting my sleep on track.
So Nicole run up some really great things about how you're structuring your day and having things to look forward to and understanding how different lifestyle choices, impact your sleep. And really looking at things from the bigger picture and not just necessarily the micro of like, what exact time. Are you going to sleep? What exact time? Are you waking up but really coming out of The lifestyle perspective, which is how you are experiencing sleep. So this is so important.
So relevant, I love this conversation. Our Guest is Nicole shallow, she's a board certified behavior analyst, and an expert in sleep habit, building and behavior. So we talked about everything from warning signs that you might not be in an optimal place with your sleep. We talk about Why teens struggle so much with getting good sleep because it is a common theme. In this age, demographic me included, calling myself out. We talked about ideal schedule.
Jewels and how you can try and work towards his schedule. And of course, we talked about the connection to mental health and a ton of myths to be debunked around. Getting a good night's sleep. I love this conversation. I hope you do it as well. And as always if you enjoyed this week's episode, make sure to share it with a friend or family member and if you share it on social tag me and I'll give you a little repost shout out. Thank you guys for listening. I hope you have a good final
season and get enough rest. If not we're recharging, we're recovering the summer, prioritize your I hope you have a great rest of your week. Well, thank you so much for joining me today on to persistent Nicole. I'm so excited to have you on the show and talk about probably the biggest determinant of my mental health initially, and today, which is sleep. So, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me.
I'm excited to chat. So I'd love to start with your background and how you started specializing in sleep. It's something that is relevant to everyone's health and wellness, physically, mentally. And it's also challenging to find a provider that Eliza's in sleep and it's really difficult to know where to start. What to address. It's great when it comes naturally. And then when it doesn't and you're like, I don't even know what to do. So, talk to me about how you
started specializing in sleep. All right. So professionally it all happened in my master's class. I was taking my Master's. I have a master's in special education, specialize in autism, and developmental disabilities. And my certification is board certified Behavior.
So I was in that class. My professor was like we have toileting, we have feeding, but no one's doing sleep and there's a lot of research in our field of behavior analysis around sleep because a lot of what like resulting from Behavior change or, you know, not engaging the right behaviors and things like that. Actually impact our ability to fall asleep and framing sleep in a way as a behavior.
So learning to fall asleep is something we're supposed to learn when we were little No, I don't think I ever learned that because my parents didn't know how to teach me properly without adding a bunch of extra things into the mix. So that intrigued me and I love a challenge. So I do right into it. I did my Master's presentation on that and I did mentorship around it and just continue to educate myself around sleep and how it works.
I think I've got I've got a lot of tools in my tool belt and I just love to share that. With everyone else. I love it and completely relate. I think that that's one of the reasons why I'm holding it on sleep so much on the podcast his that for me as well. That has been such a big determinant of So Many Factors, it's absolutely foundational.
And if you struggle with your sleep, it becomes very apparent, how important it is to get good at mastering those skills because they don't come naturally to everyone and there are ways that you can improve your sleep. So I'd love to start with With even, before we get into the impact of sleep, on Mental Health, kind of depicting what bad sleep is because there are so many different ways that you can struggle asleep. Maybe it's falling asleep. I would like avoid sleeping at times.
Some people wake up really early and just can't go back to sleep. I've never had that problem. I'm or someone who like, can't wake up in the morning. So there's this whole spectrum of struggling with your sleep and so what are those different markers that you see in patients and clients? And do they all have the same underlying factors or do they kind of correlate to different challenges with our stress or how much movement you're getting?
All these other different things that can impact our sleep? Yeah, so sleep problems, I kind of like to categorize them into a few different areas. So difficulty falling asleep, that's pretty common. And when we're looking at that we look at what's leading up to it. Why is the body's natural ability to do this? So increase in melatonin decrease in cortisol, is there
anything that? That could be impacting, the ability to fall asleep, waking up in the middle of the night ruling out medical conditions, that might be impacting, that understanding them, and how they can correlate. So sometimes if there is anxiety or depression or any sort of other conditions that we could look at, so sleep apnea, you could maybe have a sleep disorder and that's when sleep studies come into play. That's why talking to someone. So like myself, I don't specialize in sleep.
Disorders, like narcolepsy or other sleep issues. But that is where like a doctor would be really helpful because there is some physiological pieces going on there, but when it comes to behavioral, I look at those pieces and early wakings inconsistent sleep. So, sometimes people will sleep really long for a few nights and then they have a really big dip, and they can only sleep for four hours.
So when it comes to sleep support, we really look at the data we talked about like, what is the sleep? Like for me if someone says Neither sleep data. I'm like, awesome. Got it. I see the picture. I know what's going on and then we take a deeper dive into what's happening during their day. What's happening at night? And for teenagers, like I am super passionate about teenagers and getting good sleep but the societal expectations around
getting up for school. Extremely early is not conducive to a teenager's circadian rhythm. Hmm. Because it actually shifts during teenagehood When you're a teenager because you are at your program to fall asleep. Later, this is biologically the way you're programmed, but we're still expecting them to be at school. I mean, I saw some like standing numbers like 7:30, yeah. Yes, 0.
It's insanely early. Like, I never had one of those think God, I've always been someone, who's like, I cannot wake up. Early people are leaving for school, like 6:00 in the morning, especially if you have a commute, it's the most insane thing and when we're cutting off their. So, what When you look at a typical sleep, like sleep architecture, the cycles of sleep that we go through teenagers are meant to have 9 to 11 hours of sleep. It's a lot of sleep.
Yeah, if you ask a teenager to go to bed at nine ten, like they're not going to be able to not because they don't want to but it's going to be extremely hard because you're working against that circadian rhythm. But when you cut that sleep, you're actually missing a lot of your REM sleep because a large portion of our REM sleeps at the end of the night.
Yeah, and what was so important for like emotional restoration processing and so you're like why are teenager so hot-headed and emotionally overwhelmed all the time? It's like well maybe they're not getting enough sleep. They really don't have the regulation tools because their brains are not resting because they're not able to hundred
percent for teenagers. If they could have like a perfect schedule for whatever reason, they have more control over what time they get to go to bed and wake up. What would be your perfect situation to get enough? If sleep and also based on the data on how adolescents circadian rhythms function, what would be like the perfect
schedule? Well, I think it's looking at, so there's going to be some I think probably some adolescents who naturally will go to bed at like a typical time, but it's almost seemed like how does your circadian rhythm run when you don't have any thing to do in the morning? And you literally can just run your day, naturally, which is hard to find those blocks of time. Sometimes vacations are a great time to see when. Do you naturally feel hungry? When do you naturally start
feeling tired? - all the things that may be keeping you awake. So if you were to, like, take yourself out of your world and just start to see, how does your clock really run? That would probably give you a good time. But I say on the average, like if they could, you just want to give yourself a 10:51, our Bowl probably 10 to 11 or 12 hour window for sleeping and having
that consistent. So if you if you do find yourself sleep, Being an extremely long on the weekends, which I would say a lot of teenagers probably do if they don't have anywhere to go in the morning. Yeah. That means they're in a huge sleep debt from the week. Yeah, so interesting, one thing that I want to touch on that you mentioned is trouble falling asleep. What qualifies trouble falling asleep? I feel like, in my experience, I've never been like, oh, I just lay down in my eyes shut like
what period of time? It's like. Okay, this is not as As we would like it to be. So it depends again, there's so much pressure to be like oh if I don't fall asleep within 15 minutes, something must be wrong with me. I wish that would be like a perfect. Like what? Like their brains work like. Yeah. But I think like from my personal experience and working with people giving yourself like a 30 to 40 minute window because melatonin is what is going to take over and it's going to help
you get to sleep. And so it actually needs to Two hours to build. So, if you think about candy to be in bed, by 10:00 well at 8:00, it should be starting to rise and there's a lot of things that we can do to cause that rise to be disrupted. So, watching a lot of blue light being out exposed to a lot of light, sometimes physical exercise, too late might delay your sleep onset. So, your body will need more time to unwind if there's a
stressful event that happens. A couple hours before bed, that's going to delay your sleep, so trouble falling asleep when you define it. I think you'll know it because you'll be stressed out about it. Yeah, yeah, okay, so looping back to the link between mental health and sleep. Before we dive into a problem, solving these issues we mentioned and really giving a lot of tips. People can implement. But why is it so important to
get sleep? Like what is that link between specifically mental And say, Obviously, you know, the physical effects like you can't stay awake, you have your brain fog. Like it's miserable when you haven't slept well, but I think a lot of the times we almost minimize or really gets fine, like, mental health wise, it's not a big deal, it'll be okay. So shedding some light on the, the impact on our mental health, when we aren't sleeping.
Well, especially over an extended period of time, like you were talking about if you're a school schedule isn't conducive to getting enough sleep, what happens to our mental health especially for teens when we aren't sleeping, Enough. Well I think our ability like what happens when you're not sleeping enough, is your emotional regulation, your ability to manage stressful events your ability to problem-solve and critically think and just be more aware starts to be inhibited,
especially, for individuals with autism, or ADHD, or anxiety. And so, there's a lot things. I don't necessarily know, specifically around like this physiological pieces. But from what I've read is that when we're not sleeping, were more susceptible to all of these things, which then can make it harder. So dealing, with stressful events, we might experience more anxiety. Our ability to kind of bring ourselves back into the present moment. It's not there.
When we sleep, it's like a dishwasher for our brain, it clears it out, it gets the gunk out. It allows us to think clearly, and if we're not sleeping well then that's going to perpetuate into our days. We might make more mistakes, might be more hard on herself. It's easier to be hard on yourself when you're not sleeping because you can't use those tools that you've been able to build. And then it goes the opposite.
So if you struggle with anxiety or if you have ADHD, or actually more susceptible just to cortisol spikes in general and cortisol has a huge impact on our Sleep Quality. So ability to fall asleep and the quality that we're getting while we're sleeping. So just getting support around that piece too. It's hard to know what came first. First.
Yeah, and you just can gets caught in a spiral so that's why it's really helpful to reach out to someone who can help you understand what might be going on and it's not your fault 100%. Yeah. So giving listeners the tools to navigate challenges with sleep starting even before your
bedtime routine. Your daily routine and then we'll go through like nighttime routine during the night and then waking up. But are there things that you can and should Doing within your daily routine that are conducive to good sleep, whether it's getting a certain amount of movement being outside, leaving your room, not spending time in your bed like what are the things that are helpful during the day to just set yourself up for Success?
Especially if You Know You're vulnerable to not sleeping. Well so starting in like the date, your daily routine. What are your recommendations? Yeah, so I always love to start off with some bigger picture things, which is really figuring out how to build and things that are important to you into your day. Because sometimes with teenagers, you can get. So tasked with like all the homework, the work that you have to do. The responsibility starts to become more and there's not a
lot of room for fun. So building and fun and connection like IRL like in real life connection with people to just set yourself up just generally because that will really support. Mental health and just stress in general just by having more fun and connecting with people. But in general sleep hygiene kind of suggestions or basic sleep. Things is to really get outside in the morning if you can to get daylight right away pretty
quickly. After you wake up, it's a great way to just anchor your circadian rhythm. And that's something that's pretty easy to do. It can be while you're doing a chore. If you have that or if you need to take the dog out for a walk, do that. I'm so grateful for my dog because Is that is what we do now. And without I don't have a choice to not to go out. Okay. This is like going in my Pros column because I like kind of talk myself out of getting a
dog. And like a college student, this is the worst idea, but then, I'm like gay, but it's good for my sleep. So that's exactly when you mention getting light first thing in the morning, just count to have your window open and look outside or is it actually different if you're going outside and like, actually being out fresh air, old things being outside.
Side in it, because it comes through your eyes, it absorbs Through Your Skin. It's something that like, if you can get outside in the fresh air and move your body right away, it's a great way to just wake yourself up. Even if you're tired, you will feel better afterwards.
And so also avoiding the caffeine right away in the morning, give yourself that distance between if you're going to have caffeine or not and also understanding the use of caffeine and how that can impact sleep, it's not going. Don't say cut caffeine. It's just understand how your body processes it and how much time you need is that can be a real important factor. When you're looking at quality of sleep, today's episode is brought to you by teen
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As she persisted again, teen counseling.com says, she persisted to find a therapist that meets your needs today. What's your optimal length between waking up and drinking caffeine? And then also recommendations Like especially for teens you're so sensitive, you have no tolerance. So what are your two recommendations there? I mean if you don't have to have it don't have it. But I have tea in the morning tea is very different. It's not as much as coffee.
I had to quit coffee for years ago, like five years ago, I think now I was just so anxious on it. I love that happened to me right before I went to residential and actually in treatment I like couldn't do coffee. It took a long time and then, after I dealt with anxiety and I learned the coping skills. All's then I could reintroduce it. And now in college I like crave the taste, like I love of vanilla latte, it's not Universal caffeine, like the idea of an energy.
Come like, no, thank you. That sounds like the worst thing ever, hahahah. I remember when I was a teenager, oh my gosh, we could go to the store and get energy drinks and drink it, in the middle of the night. I was like crazy. What are we thinking, crazy? So there's a lot of things, being a teenager. There's a lot of exploration across a lot of different things
substance use alcohol again. I wish someone told me like I don't know if it would have changed my behavior or not but alcohol is you're making an educated decision so you know exactly you're in Choice. You're like I know I am making this call. So alcohol actually Cuts your REM sleep. It really decreases. It it decreases the deep sleep. You're getting it will help you fall asleep because it's a sedative but it's going to drastically impact your sleep. Plus, of course, long-term use.
We all know that's not ideal. Yeah, substance use as well. So cannabis any other drugs, like that's significantly gun impact, your sleep, and of course, mental health, in general, just with the chemical changes that go on. So understanding that making a choice around it. If you are going to drink alcohol, makes you drink water with it so that you're not falling asleep with too much
alcohol in your system and food. Yeah, it's funny because you actually want to have an empty stomach when you fall asleep. Yeah. Yeah, which is but then also, when you're drinking at least, if you're drinking, you have food. And water and allow liar bodies just process through it. Binge drinking is not ideal. But again, I lived through my teens and I'm not things happen. Yeah. Especially like we forget that
teens. You're still a teen when you're going to college and so as you actually people that are listening, you like still or not in adult, brain development stage. And so it's making sure, you know, the skills, you know, what you can do to make informed decisions and Not over correct, but do things to help your body recover and so get the best sleep. You can even when maybe there are other vulnerability factors. Yeah, and I think that's like just such a huge.
I wish that I could have been more aware of how much sleep was impacted by. A lot of the choices that I made, because I struggled in my early 20s and I know my sister struggled when she was in high school, like she definitely thought there was something going on and it's just I think, when we look back at it, like I swam and our practices would at 5:45 in the water in the morning. I was like, we're like the OG cold plunge, a and cancer.
Then we had to go to school. And then I had to work after and it was just or we had some practice again, and it was just, I was like, okay, that would make sense a cumulatively over time that adds up. So yeah, it's just being aware and sometimes through awareness that's where we can make different. Isis. Okay. So going back to other things people can do during the day. What are your recommendations with regard to like movement and exercise movement?
Do what fills you up? Like figure out what kind of exercise? What kind of movement you really like? And do that sometimes. Strength training can be really helpful for managing stress. Like I know for me, it's both regulating because I'm lifting heavy and so I work with a lot of autistic children, and we work with OTS and they talk about regulation and heavy. Lifting. And I was like, oh yeah, that's me. I feel so much better.
If I've lifted something versus just doing cardio so mixing it up and whatever brings you Joy. Again, that's the key piece, not because you have to, but because you want to, hmm. And sometimes if you don't want to talk yourself into it and still do it anyway, just show up the hardest part is showing up. Yeah, and then it can be any time of day. Really, for me, when I was younger, I am now 32, so just over Listening, they're like, hey, what is she talking about?
But when I was like younger 20s early 20s, I could get up and work out really early in the morning, my cortisol would get up high. I would have a lot of energy would be no problem. Now, I'm very much like later in the morning. I like to have a slow morning and then I find that I have more energy to work out and that just is what works for my body and my rhythm.
And it's really kind of becoming in tune with that what works best for you going into the night routine, which It is huge, especially if you can kind of get into that cycle of rinsing and repeating and really like you were talking about solidifying, those behaviors. What are your recommendations with night routine? We talked about starting to wind down at 8 p.m. what are some things people can do to again increase the likelihood of falling asleep?
More easily staying asleep? Whether it's we talked about appetite talked about movement, whether it's like reading versus watching a TV show. And supplements, all these different things that are thrown out there. What are your favorite tips that you recommend to patients and clients? So it's really finding a routine again that works for you so there's ever a one-size-fits-all when I talk with clients I ask them what do you enjoy?
Like what are activities that are really coming for you that also you enjoy doing? That wouldn't be hard to introduce to your routine? Like, if someone has a hard time reading, I'm not going to settle be of the more stressed. Yeah. Definitely absolutely. But like what if they love listening to music? Then maybe we find music when it comes to the evening routine. You look at when you naturally fall asleep, / want to go to sleep and you plan kind of two hours before that.
So you look at it from, okay, two hours before my melatonin needs about two hours to kind of start rising. And then it has like a steep incline near the end. So things like dimming the lights, so just changing your lighting, turn the overhead lights on. Keep the like sidelights. And Low light in general, Candlelight your best bet. But if you're in a dorm room, please don't light your dorm room. I am not making this up. Literally this morning / last night. Someone's lit.
Their bet on fire in one of the dorms at pet, like, on purpose, I don't know. There was smoke coming out. The fire department was there and then they put, like, and burned singed mattress, and the middle of the Quad. I don't know show you a picture because like, this is just the most Insane thing I've ever seen. So here we have them looking at the smoke. Oh no. And then here is the mattress. Oh maybe someone wanted a new mattress. They wanted a new mattress or they were like pâté.
Listen to this podcast in advance there like I heard use candles are flammable material percent but really what you want to do is just dim the lights, create an environment, that's really chill. And then like your last meal is around 2 hours. As before you fall asleep. Okay, so that way your stomach is somewhat empty, when you fall asleep, it's just important to be empty so that when you're sleeping, your gut has time to heal because we know a lot of issues. Also rise from gut issues,
right? Like it's all interconnected. So allowing that time and it just helps, it's just a great way to set your. What are your thoughts on like tea and water? Before? Bad water is okay. But I mean I'm so guilty of this because if you give me a water bottle with Straw, I'll drink the whole thing 100%. Yeah, and so I have to be mindful like cake. You have a cup Nicole, you can sip on it, but if just knowing again, it's a choice.
If I'm gonna drink that much water, I know I'll probably wake up and have to pee in the middle of the night. That's okay. T, I tried different teas, I always say caffeine free. Yeah no caffeine. There's some that will have valerian root or whatever your lavender. Yeah lavender chamomile again. This is how it impacts you. So for me, when I was drinking, those too close to bed, I definitely wake up to P because I feel like there's just something in it that my kidneys
are obviously trying to process. Like he's like a diuretic. It's going to make things. Move faster. Yeah, so it's just noticing like how's my body responding, do I. It's all about Nest, not necessarily what but when 100%. So you can just suggest that, that's pretty easy. Limiting your water. So try not to chug too much water before bed, but it's also not great to go to bed. Super thirsty. And keeping water next to your bed because it's normal to wake up thirsty.
And then when you wake up, drink a ton of water because you're pretty dehydrated after asleep on that. And then what else do you see around an hour? I suggest. Letting the scrolling stop and the phone an hour before you want to be asleep. So let's say you want to be asleep at 11:30. Okay, I'm gonna put my phone away at around 10:30 and then slowly build some distance around it again. I'm 32, I don't know what I would have done. I didn't we didn't have phones like this.
When I was a teenager, when your teen, your brain is really susceptible to all of these pieces and all the things that dopamine that comes through all the fun things that are happening. I mean online Tick-Tock I have never been on a more addictive app, I could not keep it. Yeah because I found myself in it for two hours and I didn't even know it's crazy. I was like, this is wild Instagram. I'm not as addicted.
I feel it because it's mostly work related, but I could, if I went on a real scrolling, I would get there. But the thing about scrolling and more active screen use. So, video games and all of that, it can really increase just the activation of your brain and So really, just doing more passive TV, like passive screen use is better. So watching Netflix on low blue light, something like that, to just chill out. Yeah, best-case scenario.
Grab something like a book, grab something you can listen to maybe your drawing and maybe like to draw maybe like to do a crossword. Maybe like to do just something else that's not screen related. When I work with teens, there's a huge component around. Use and the motivation to be connected. Yeah. Socially with others and well, we just got home. I don't know. We're not really throw it.
I still feel like there's things going on, but through the pandemic like we really were connected all through online we had to be. Yeah. But I think for teens like that's just extra because peers are so much more important at that time. So being mindful of that like I'm always mindful when working with teenagers around, how can we build? Build more connection during the day during different hours, so that the motivation to stay connected online really late
into the evening. Early mornings goes down, I love that and I think that when I was in middle school, high school, that really was a huge factor. And what was keeping me up was talking to friends FaceTiming. And so I think that exactly what you said, what did you say? Yeah. It's not about what it's about when. Yes, that was that, I love that. And I think that's so true and especially if you're like, oh my gosh, I'm scrolling on ticked.
Octo late at night like I I still want to use tick tock, okay, do it earlier in the day or I'm catching up on all my favorite TV shows at night. Okay. Let's move this earlier and maybe you take a homework break and do that so I love those types. I think that's so helpful. Talking about the morning routine. What are your best practices recommendations? We talked about coffee and once you're actually awake but with regard to like alarms and snoozing and And all of those kinds of things.
How do you recommend that? People wake up for the day especially if that's what they're struggling with, which I think is a huge thing with depression and anxiety is like not wanting to get out of bed and struggling with that motivation and even physically having the energy so advice there. Yeah, so when I look at that, I'm going to use like a personal example because I'm guilty of this too and so I evaluate myself as well for waking up in the morning. Snoozing can be a couple things.
So like what is it about today that I'm not excited about what about today is causing me a little bit like I'm not ready to jump out of bed and get my day started. Like if you asked me to get up at 4 a.m. to go on a vacation, I'm up. And I am a morning person. Yeah. But or if sometimes on the weekends, I will get up early on the weekends because I just love having days where I have no responsibilities. And so it's looking at that sometimes for teenagers.
I look at that if we've tried everything else or adults, it's looking at it from a different lens. So, like I talked about the beginning connection fun, purpose in our days that really lifts us up. However, we're all guilty of a snooze button and it starts like I am too. And so that's why I try to teach myself. Like I get myself sometimes a new clock and I just don't teach myself how to snooze it.
I love that because sometimes, if I learn how to snooze, And I'm like, I will hit it. It's just an automatic. It's a conditioned response. Yeah, so some suggestions that I've used on my own is I have the light clock. So the sunlight one. I don't know if you have one, I don't but I've seen all over Tick-Tock. It's on my Amazon. I'm like doing anything this. I just got the cheaper one like the 45 dollar can. Yeah one not the 250 Phillips, want him back great.
Yeah but I just got the Cheapo one and it does seem to You like it. The light will help bring you out of the deep deep sleep. Okay which is this sleep. That's really hard to wake up from like you're so groggy. You actually probably don't even hear your alarm sometimes so the light is helpful. I usually set it for 20-30 minutes, it goes from red to like bright and at least now I'm
a bit more consciously snoozing. So what I've accidentally condition myself and this is where like the behavior analysis portion nerding out comes in is that I hear the sound. I click the snooze. News. Hmm. And I go back to sleep. So now I have like reinforced that entire Behavior pattern. So I need to just change the sound. Yeah, and reteach myself. Don't sneeze it. Sometimes I have to pep talk before the night before as well. Don't be like that. I'm gonna do that.
I'm a big snoozer. So I'm going to change my ringtone. Yeah, because it's a very conditioned response. I'm reading something like seven times a day. Thanks, please? Yeah, yes. I know when it gets that bad, my husband. He's just like, I don't understand. Yeah. Why am I dog? Also he's like what are we doing? You're supposed to get up. I think. Yeah. Yeah. Pass on that one. Yeah, exactly. Oh my goodness.
Okay. If there are any sleep myths that you feel are important to debunk that you hear from clients, or you see floating around online that you're like, this is so inaccurate. And if this was corrected, people have such a better understanding of their sleep. Oh my gosh, sleep Miss, I think the hours of sleep everyone. So focused on the hours, but it's really about the quality that you're getting. So if you could get 10 hours of sleep, but that could be over 14 hours.
Yeah, and you've had brakes and so it's just not the same, I think. Also the people who say they can survive on four hours of sleep. Yeah, I'll tell you that right now. I don't even think there's a percentage. Who could it's really five hours plus around that? I've already missed that, you've heard that you're coming. Top of mind for you. I mean, there's that whole strange schedule where you do like the Ro bursts of sleep throughout the day.
There's so many different ones like caffeine would impact your sleep at all. You know, that's not true. I've heard of some people talk about like biphasic sleep. So like we're supposed to, you know, have shorter sleeps at night and naps during the day. I mean there's some interesting research from like I think it's Italy and Spain like they do
siestas right? So they always closed down in the afternoon for a nap and then they work later into the evening and and eat later and eat differently. And they are one of the most healthiest, like some of them are quite healthy. And there's, I think a city and they are trying to remember Italy, they live really long because they are prioritizing sleep, they prioritize their days around their sleep. I love that.
I should move there. That feels like a good fit for me. I know, I feel like and yeah, there is own app. So I've naps getting some people say naps aren't great, but naps for teenagers. Naps for students, it's a great hack for studying. Yeah, I love napping in college. Yeah, it's like a problem because in college it's so easy to nap and I know as soon as you start working or in about what happened in Minot period between my classes that I only have like two a day.
Yeah exactly. For the nap sometimes. It's because you're learning so much and when you go and you learn, sometimes you just need a nap to process it all. I don't know about you but when I studied, I would have a nap after and I would actually get the material so much better 100%, 100% tip. Hot tip for the students. Yes, I love it. If there was one thing people could do to start almost healing their sleep if they're like, this is a disaster and falling asleep.
So late there in that vicious cycle. They're like napping. And then it's just more challenging to fall asleep. Where do they start? What is the best place to begin to address that? Because we put so many suggestions out there. And obviously if you try and do all of them at once, you're going to get overwhelmed, you're going to go back to what you were already doing them. Solidified pattern.
So, what's the best way to start healing your sleep, that will have a significant impact and kind of like Chain Reaction, everything else I think. And from what I've learned is that sleep is not something we can control. Yeah? Right. It's something that our body naturally does learning how to rest, and relax outside of sleep time where there's no pressure to actually get to sleep. Could be a great first step.
So, engaging in mindfulness, and we didn't really touch on that too much, but it's a great for a strategy to just teach yourself how to close your eyes, how to be present, and how to just allow your thoughts, and just notice your body and be and you
actually might drift off. Yeah, if you do that long enough, because that's the action, that's the behavior of falling asleep, when we can practice that outside of the pressure of nighttime, then when we get to bed, We've kind of set ourselves up maybe your evening routine. Maybe put your phone away a little bit earlier that won't be so scary. Won't be so hard and it just has great benefits all around a hundred percent.
Yeah, I love that. Well, if people want to continue to follow along with you consume your content. Keep getting all the sleep tips or work with you. Where can they find you? Yeah, I'm on Instagram at your behavior gal and behavior is spelled with a u because I'm Canadian and And yeah, I have the website. Same thing w. We got your behavior goal.com and I'm sure you'll link that below.
Yeah, and I offer Discovery calls so if you're just not sure where to start and you want someone to Just Bounce Off where your sleeps at and just hear some suggestions. Yeah. They can book directly with me. 15 minutes. We'll get right to it. I love it. Maybe I'll do that after the meal in my sleep. Yeah, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so glad we got to do this. This was so helpful for me. I know it'll be so helpful for so many listeners. Thank you so much Sadie.
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