What it means to be a good sleeper?

I think all of our goals when we have a chronic sleep problem is to be a good sleeper.

A good sleeper is not somebody who sleeps well all the time. The ratio is they have good sleep most of the time but about 15-20% of the time they probably don’t sleep that well. The difference is they’re probably not worried about it as much.

After a bad night they aren’t worrying that something bad’s gonna happen, or that they need to worry about what they’re going to be like at work tomorrow.

So, they don’t change their behaviour by lying in, or going to bed early, resting a lot during the day, or just partaking in too many passive activities and counselling all the things that made them them.

A good sleeper for me is somebody who’s having a good time during the day. They are fulfilling their days. They’re having good quality days, plenty of light exposure, exercise, social time, and doing all the things that they love.

At night time they have a fairly consistent schedule. Not that they’re focusing on it too much, but it’s fairly consistent…

They don’t use any behaviours to compensate for lack of sleep and when they have the odd bad night, or a few days of poor sleep, they don’t worry about it, they’re not too bothered.

Because at the end of the day, people who sleep well are not doing all the right things all the time, and they’re still sleeping well.

Do I need perfect behaviour to sleep well?

You don’t have to be perfect all the time to sleep well. You can still get away with the cheeky espresso after dinner, and going out with friends. It’s just that the ratio is different from insomnia, so they have better sleep more often and they have a different attitude towards sleep.

They are happy with sleep in that it keeps them well, but they’re not thinking about it all the time.

Hopefully that helps you understand where we want you to be. We want you to get to that point.

Obviously, we want to fix the actual physical sleep problem. But we want to get you to that point where you look back and you don’t know why you ever cared so much about sleep.

Having done this for so long now, I know that when you get to that point, I’ve treated you.