Simple Indulgences You Mostly Ignore That May Be Ruining Your Sleep
Jane liked to wind down at the end of the day by going through her social media feed.
She would get into her jammies, grab a few tasty snacks (her favorite was a slice of carrot cake), sometimes include a glass of wine, and sit on the couch with the TV on in the background for company.
Hours later, she would realize that it was way past “bedtime” - whatever that meant! She knew that she was going to feel tired in the morning when she got up for work.
But when else could she just unwind and enjoy a few simple pleasures? Jane was a busy entrepreneur, the day was filled with things to get done, people to meet, and little emergencies to deal with. Her workday stretched from morning to night. Often late at night.
Eventually, she came to me because her sleep cycle was totally erratic.
She would go to bed in the early morning many nights and still not be able to fall asleep, feeling wired. Finally, she would drift off only to be awakened all too soon by the alarm clock.
Some nights she was so exhausted, she would get to bed early and sleep for about 12 hours. And she would still feel groggy when she got up.
This erratic sleep pattern had become so extreme it was ruining her life.
This pattern of erratic sleep has a name. It’s called Irregular Sleep-Wake Syndrome, or Irregular Sleep-Wake Rhythm Disorder (somehow this one sounds worse).
Once an erratic pattern of sleep is affecting your life to the extent that you are chronically sleep deprived and it is interfering with your quality of life, it is considered to be a disorder.
Irregular Sleep-Wake Rhythm Disorder is a circadian rhythm disorder.
The body is unable to synchronize its own sleep-wake cycle to that of the night-day pattern of the earth.
An erratic sleep pattern can be quite difficult for a person to change, as so many aspects of life are impacted.
Sleep deprivation makes it more difficult for a person to take charge of her life.
So much energy is required to just get through the day, there is little left over to deal with the poor sleep, the erratic sleep schedule, and the various behaviors keeping this erratic sleep pattern in place.
Many habits in our lives seem like innocuous indulgences until you try to stop them.
Then you realize the powerful hold they have over you. You may even feel helpless to make the changes you want.
But what is wrong with these little indulgences?
Well, for one, they may mess with your health and your sleep.
When she came to me, Jane was all too aware that she was doing something wrong. Her sleep was not what it should be and she was absolutely exhausted.
On top of that, she felt out of step with the world because when others were sleeping, she was wide awake.
And when others were awake, she was either in bed trying to rest, or out of bed trying desperately to function.
To the outside world, she was a competent businesswoman. But inside, she was a mess.
We may not always be fully aware of the long-term negative consequences of our actions.
Jane learned that her social media screen time had become an addiction, an attempt to replace an emptiness she felt as she became more and more isolated in her own little world in the middle of the night.
It also kept her awake longer because the blue light of the screen told her brain that it was daytime, and she should be awake and ready for action.
The carrot cake and cookies she enjoyed in the evening were causing sugar spikes in the early hours of the morning, disturbing her sleep.
The glass of wine was interfering with her REM cycle and ability to dream.
On top of that, she was quite unhappy about her weight, and all those snacks taken in the late evening and at night were multiplying the impact they would have had if taken earlier in the day.
These indulgences had taken over and were messing with her sleep
Jane realized that she was no longer in control of her life and that she had to do something.
What had seemed like simple indulgences had taken over and they no longer felt so enjoyable. But she couldn’t seem to take charge and stop what she knew was ruining her life and her health.
What bothered her the most, (apart from the exhaustion, the extra weight, and her loneliness) was that she, an independent-minded, take-charge entrepreneur, was actually no longer a self-determining person.
The cake, wine, and phone had a greater hold on her than she had realized.
And that was scary.
She had become less of who she thought she was and wanted to be.
How had all this started?
We tend to use the word "addiction" for powerful chemicals like alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. However, any compulsive behavior with negative consequences that we find difficult to change is an addiction.
I call these indulgences that can harm us over the long term “everyday addictions”. They don’t seem like much to bother about until they have anchored themselves in our lives and become habits.
Over time these habits can become addictive – I’ll describe why further down.
I am well familiar with these “everyday addictions”. Although I’ve never been a cake person, I used to enjoy a glass of red wine at night, which led to a hunger attack, followed by a snack. (Mmm smoked oysters!)
I’d inevitably go to bed late, get woken by acid reflux, and get poor sleep.
You never want to admit it’s the indulgence that is the problem. That’s because you have come to associate it with the reward that you are seeking. In my case, the glass of wine had become a signal to myself to say “Now I am relaxing and enjoying myself”.
There is an element of instant gratification to all addictions.
This is the desire to feel better NOW.
At that moment, your current state of being is a feeling of wanting something else. There is a craving for a change of state.
You can feel trapped in a negative experience and just want to escape it. It may be a feeling of mild depression or flatness, a sense of boredom, or anxiety.
So, you reach for the quickest way to achieve that change of state. You want it NOW.
We are shockingly controlled by the desire to feel better at any given point in time.
We choose the quickest shortcut to achieving that.
Therein lies the trap.
Understanding what is happening can be helpful in releasing the huge power of “everyday addictions”.
Why it is so hard to overcome an “everyday addiction”
What is going on in your brain and exactly why it is so difficult to overcome “everyday addictions”?
The power behind addictions is chemical, behavioral, emotional, and social forces, all reinforcing each other.
Ultimately it's all to do with the chemistry of the brain.
The brain is equipped with hormones called "neurotransmitters", some of which trigger pleasure, while others stimulate motivation for more pleasure.
Over time, the brain becomes accustomed to these higher levels of hormones, requiring more in order to maintain the state of excitement to which it has become accustomed.
What you feel is a craving, and that is difficult to overcome.
The more frequently you succumb to the craving, the more powerful becomes the addiction.
Rewiring
In addition, in order to increase the hormonal threshold required to maintain the same state of stimulation, the brain "rewires", meaning it creates neural pathways that reinforce the stimulus and the behavior.
To provide an analogy, let's say you are starting a new job requiring a drive to an unfamiliar part of the city. On the first day, you leave lots of time to find your way and figure out the best route, where to park, and how long the trip will take.
After you have gone that route a few more times, it starts to become familiar.
You no longer have to pay attention to getting to work, you can just drive along listening to the radio or thinking about how you are going to tackle a problem looming ahead that day.
The route is now anchored in your memory and has become a simple pattern your brain can follow without support from your conscious attention.
Think of the brain's neural networks as routes in a city.
There are almost an infinite number of ways to get from A to B. But you find the route you like best and the more often you perform it, the easier it is. Eventually, that route is effortless, it is just part of how you operate.
In this analogy, the streets of a city are like linked neurons that impulses can follow.
As you do something, or think something over and over, the neural network gets stronger, like highways of the impulse paths of your brain.
Changing the route of any impulse along the neural network takes a certain amount of effort. The more anchored the behavior, the more difficult it is to change the neural pathway.
Rewards
Other factors referred to as "rewards" contribute to keeping the addiction in place.
These may be small triggers that make you feel good. It could be seeing your friends at the coffee shop or taking a walk down to the cafeteria to get a snack you don't need in order to relieve yourself of the boredom you are feeling at work.
Social media is full of tiny rewards that have been socially engineered to keep you glued to the screen. Every "like" that you get, for example, stimulates a little shot of a feel-good neurotransmitter.
All addictions are kept in place by these feel-good hormones and when they are lacking, you feel bad.
So how can this knowledge help you escape the clutches of these powerful drivers of behavior?
What do you do if you want to stop?
Even though "everyday addictions" are not nearly as difficult to overcome as the Big Three (Drugs, Alcohol, and Cigarettes), it is no trivial matter to get over them and achieve your goals and live the life you intend.
Anything that involves a certain compulsive behavior that may accumulate towards a negative outcome, I call an “everyday addiction.”
Here are a few examples of "everyday addictions"
Drinking too much coffee interferes with your sleep and overall energy
Consuming sugar. This is an unacknowledged powerful drug and causes innumerable deleterious health effects. Some of these include weight gain, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and poor health outcomes.
Media addictions such as social media, TV, and video games pollute the mind, waste time, and interfere with sleep.
Compulsive shopping can cause stress and worry as well as financial chaos.
Emotional addictions may be maintaining certain negative dynamics with people in your life, cultivating worry, and generating fear and anxiety, shame, etc.
I myself am no stranger to these “everyday addictions”! I have succumbed to each in the list above.
The steps to overcoming "everyday addictions"
So, what are the steps to overcoming these "everyday addictions"?
First, recognize that part of the addiction is embedded in the chemistry of your brain
That means that the desire is a chemical one – it’s not "you" wanting it.
Once you avoid the stimulation the brain is craving, your brain will adapt to being without it. The main thing to realize is that you do have to go through a period of not feeling top-notch before your brain rebalances.
Once you have passed through this phase the other things that keep the addiction in place are easier to deal with.
The brain "rewires" according to the addiction.
That means that whatever behavior you indulge in to support the addiction feels "normal" to you. It feels normal because it is effortless. When you try a new behavior there is a certain resistance involved.
Don't worry, your brain will "rewire" again to accommodate your new behavior.
Thirdly certain rewards keep your behavior in place.
These could be positive experiences (enjoyment of the warmth of your coffee mug and the hot drink warming your body in the morning), social rewards (feeling "part of the club" of Donut Eaters at work), temporary self-esteem rewards (seeing how many "likes" you got on a certain post and feeling motivated to keep connecting with people well past the time you know you should stop and go to bed).
The list is endless
In overcoming an everyday addiction, you can take each of these factors, and design a way to minimize the impact.
1 Start with rewards.
Consider the habit (addiction) you want to change. What "rewards" support this addiction? Remember, rewards are positive experiences that surround the behavior.
Design and plan other ways to achieve the same reward.
For example, when I quit my coffee habit, I loved the experience of starting the day with a hot drink. That itself felt good. So, I replaced coffee with another type of hot drink.
2 Rewiring the brain:
What can you do that is similar, so you don't have to change every aspect of your routine?
Replace the stimulus with a new but similar behavior. For example, if you love having a sweet snack, prepare some fruit that you can eat instead.
3 Chemical-induced experiences.
This one may be the hardest to deal with, as you simply need to accept that at first, you won't feel that same "high" that your brain has gotten used to.
Know that the craving will soon pass.
Once you have been without it for a period of time, you will feel good again.
How long? That depends on several factors including what it is you are dealing with and your own unique brain chemistry.
4 Create new associations
Become aware of how the "everyday addiction" is controlling your behaviors and the unwanted outcome.
Start to consciously associate the “indulgence” with the outcome you don’t want, rather than the immediate reward you are craving at the moment
5 Develop motivational goals
Consider why you want to change.
What different outcomes will you experience when you do so?
Allow these new intentions to guide you toward the rewards that you deserve in life.
6 Don’t try to change everything at once
Working with Jane, we identified the things she was doing that were creating havoc in her life.
We determined which she felt she could tackle first, what replacement rewards she was going to enjoy, and for how long.
Bit by bit, she was able to change her life around. This is huge!
Now she has a sleep-wake-eat schedule she is happy with and she gets a great sleep every night.
Feeling happier and more rewarded in life, she is less interested in spending time on social media – that habit just dropped away when it was no longer relevant.
Inspired by her success, she then moved on to improve her general health and is now eating healthy food, getting enjoyable movement and outdoor time in her day, and feeling much, much better about herself.
And she has a lot to be proud of!