Hypnotherapy using what can be described as ‘sleep hypnosis’ can be used to address sleeping problems and to help someone sleep better.
Common symptoms of sleep disorders can include:
- Difficulty falling asleep,
- Trouble staying asleep,
- Regular nightmares or night terrors,
- Excessive daytime sleepiness, and difficulty staying awake during the day,
- Increased movement during sleep,
- Unusual behaviours during sleep.
There could be many reasons why a person isn’t getting consistent, quality sleep, and the consequences of reduced sleep can vary. Various physical and mental health issues can contribute to disordered sleep, such as different pain syndromes or neurological conditions. Sometimes it’s just life aggravating sleep, rather than a diagnosed health condition, such as experiencing stress, having a poor work-life balance, being a shift worker, or going through difficult relationship problems.
Environmental settings and behavior, especially before bedtime, can have a major impact on sleep. ‘Sleep hygiene‘ is a term used to describe a sleep environment, behaviour with routines and habits being optimised for better sleep. Good sleep hygiene is all about someone putting themself in the best position to sleep well each and every night.
Establishing and practicing good sleep hygiene throughout the day can impact both the quality and quantity of sleep a person gets each day. It also plays a significant role with physical and mental health and overall quality of life.
Hypnotherapy can be used in conjunction with promoting sleep hygiene improvements to develop a healthier sleep-related environment and behaviour with routines and habits by using behavoural interventions to promote good sleeping. This can be undertaken through an assessment discussing and finding out about current sleep hygiene problems and issues, as well as contributing / affected health problems and issues and any other factors e.g. trauma’s bed wetting childhood memories, etc… and developing sleep strategies and then using hypnotherapy to reinforce them.
Hypnotherapy can then be used to encourage relaxation and calmness and creating an opportunity to reorient thoughts and emotions by changing negative thoughts or habits related to sleep so that a person can sleep better.