Secret #83: Sleep Myths with Dr. Sue McCurry
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Why do we put so much pressure on ourselves to sleep?
From sleep trackers and wellness trends to headlines warning us about the dangers of poor sleep, many of us have come to believe that sleep is something we should be able to control. But according to behavioral sleep medicine expert Dr. Sue McCurry, that's one of the biggest myths about sleep.
Chris and Emma sit down with Dr. McCurry to explore what actually drives healthy sleep, why waking up during the night isn't always a problem, and how anxiety about sleep often becomes the very thing that keeps us awake. They discuss the history of human sleep, common misconceptions about insomnia, the science behind Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I), and practical ways to create the conditions for better rest without trying to force it.
Whether you're struggling with insomnia, navigating menopause, parenting young children, or simply wondering if you're getting enough sleep, this episode offers a reassuring and evidence-based perspective that may completely change the way you think about sleep.
Key Takeaways
Sleep cannot be forced, only supported.
Waking during the night is more common than many people realize.
Anxiety about sleep often becomes the biggest barrier to sleeping well.
Consistency is more important than chasing a perfect number of hours.
Sleep trackers can sometimes increase stress rather than improve sleep.
Good sleepers still have occasional bad nights.
CBT-I focuses on changing habits, thoughts, and behaviors rather than forcing sleep.
ORDER Max Cross Gets Unstuck from Anger: An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Workbook for Ages 8-12 (ACT Workbook series for kids)
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Meet Dr. Sue McCurry
01:51 Why sleep has become a wellness obsession
03:58 The surprising history of "first sleep" and "second sleep"
09:17 The rise of modern sleep science
11:43 Why you cannot force yourself to sleep
14:19 How much sleep do we actually need?
17:19 The stories we tell ourselves about sleep
21:59 Practical advice for people struggling with insomnia
22:00 The Three P Model of insomnia
25:10 Habits that unintentionally worsen sleep
28:58 Can you catch up on sleep during the weekend?
32:15 Why everyone sleeps differently
35:32 How sleep changes as we age
40:10 The truth about melatonin
47:10 Sleep medications and dependency
50:42 Mindfulness, rest, and waiting for sleep
55:14 Why obsessing over sleep makes it worse
More about Dr. Sue McCurry:
The Modernization of Western Sleep: Or, Does Insomnia have a History?
Why Sleep Matters: Historical and Cultural Perspectives of Sleep | Sleep Medicine
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I): A Primer.
Revenge Bedtime Procrastination: Why You Self-Sabotage at Night
What doctors want patients to know about insomnia | American Medical Association
Dr. Susan McCurry is a practicing clinical psychologist and Research Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington School of Nursing. Her clinical practice, consulting, and ongoing research includes a focus on assessment and treatment of sleep disturbances in aging adults, including people with co-morbid medical conditions chronic musculoskeletal pain, kidney disease, dementia and caregiving, and midlife menopausal vasomotor symptoms.
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Reach out and let us know you are listening and what you would like to hear on the show - email:lifesdirtylittlesecretspodcast@gmail.com
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[00:00:00] Meet the Sleep Expert
[00:00:00] Emma Waddington: Welcome to Life's Dirty Little Secrets. I'm Emma Waddington
[00:00:04] Chris McCurry: And I'm Chris McCurry. And today we are very pleased to be welcoming as our esteemed guest, my wife of almost 37 years, Dr. Sue McCurry. Sue is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in behavioral sleep medicine and cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, or CBTI. She is research professor emeritus at the University of Washington School of Nursing, works in private practice here in Seattle. Her clinical work draws on behavioral gerontology and acceptance and commitment therapy. She has published two books and over 180 peer-reviewed articles in 30-plus years of research covering insomnia in older adults, sleep disturbance alongside chronic pain such as osteoarthritis, menopausal sleep, and sleep problems in people with Alzheimer's disease and their [00:01:00] caregivers.
[00:01:00] Chris McCurry: Welcome Life's Stirring Little Secrets, Sue McCurry
[00:01:04] Sue McCurry: Thank you so very much, Chris and Emma. I'm surprised and delighted to be here
[00:01:10] Why Sleep Feels Trendy
[00:01:10] Chris McCurry: Well, it seems like sleep is big these days. It's big in the news. It seems every week or so I see another article, York Times, Washington Post or whatever, saying sleep hacks, how to optimize your sleep. It seems like it's becoming another big wellness trend. We have devices that will track our sleep, and we're under surveillance even, even when we're trying to sleep. and, and yet there's, there's a lot of misunderstanding, or what I think of as myth understanding about sleep that we'll unpack today. Where should we begin with our understanding of sleep so that we can all get the sleep that we need and not stress quite so much about it?
[00:01:55] Sue McCurry: Well, in thinking about that, I, I suppose [00:02:00] the, the one message I would give to our listeners is that the big mistake people make about sleep is they expect sleep is something that I should be able to do and wherever I want and for as long as I want it's under my control And the reality is it is not under your control and we need to shift people to the perspective there are things that I can do to promote and support good quality sleep, and those are the practices that we want people to establish
[00:02:35] Chris McCurry: So how did we get to this point where people are so crazed about sleep? I mean, give us something of the history of, of sleep in our culture
[00:02:46] Sue McCurry: Well, it's pretty interesting. I, I sent ahead to you all a very fun interactive link from Harvard goes through the history of human sleep all the way back to 800 [00:03:00] BC in Homer's Odyssey. but it takes us up through 2020, and it's a, it's a fascinating, fun thing if, if you're interested in the history of sleep to look at.
[00:03:11] Sue McCurry: But
[00:03:12] Chris McCurry: We'll, we'll have that in the show notes for the, this episode
[00:03:15] Sue McCurry: That would be great.
[00:03:16] Two Sleeps History
[00:03:17] Sue McCurry: But what's, what's interesting about sleep in the modern era is up until the 1800s, really until the Industrial Revolution At least in Western cultures, the tendency was for people to sleep in two chunks. It was called the first sleep and the second sleep. So people were often going to bed at, say, 9:00, 10:00 o'clock, and they were sleeping till midnight, 1:00, and then they'd be up for an hour or two, and then they'd go back and they'd get their second sleep. The two sleeps were about the same size in length, and in between, people did all sorts of things. They read, they laid in bed and meditated or prayed. They got up and [00:04:00] chatted with their neighbors. They had sex. They, th- that this was a time that everybody did this. And in the 1800s, things started changing, and I think there's a variety of reasons for that.
[00:04:15] Sue McCurry: One is in the early 1800s, we got gas lighting, and the end of the 1800s, we got the electric light bulb, so the availability of light at night changed a whole lot of things. First, it changed it in the communities, right? So, or towns could light up the marketplaces, and so people could go out stay out later eating and drinking or, or shopping or doing things.
[00:04:42] Sue McCurry: So it particularly for the more wealthy class and the, and the city, urban folks, started to be a shift in how late people would stay up. And when that happened, people are now staying up. Instead of going to bed at 9:00 or 10:00, they're going to bed at maybe [00:05:00] 10:00 or 11:00 or a little later. And so, their sleep drive, which is one of the two biological processes that influence sleep, is homeostatic sleep drive, the, the need to sleep. By the time they're going to bed now, they're going to bed later, so the need to sleep is higher. So perhaps what's happening is when they go to sleep, they sleep longer before this natural middle of the night awakening happens. And so the m- first sleep starts getting longer, and the second sleep starts getting shorter. And then there's some cultural changes that start happening. In the 1800s, late 1800s, the, the, the writers and thinkers were also becoming very big on health nutrition and exercise, and they started emphasizing that if you-- that you should sleep that first sleep, and it should be longer, and then you get up, and i- if you go back and you do a second sleep, that it's actually kinda lazy, [00:06:00] should be up and getting to work or doing something productive. So again, not so much in the rural communities, but in the cities, I think, there started to be this push towards a longer first sleep longer, and then, oh, let's not do the second sleep at all. And that seems to me to be the, starting point for why we have the kind of sleep recommendations we have now.
[00:06:23] Sue McCurry: Everybody should sleep, know, seven to nine hours in one chunk at night. It was right around this era too with the Industrial Revolution too that we start having shift work happening and be- again, because the availability of light at night and people are, are relying more on their timepieces, so they're more conscious of how much time they're, they're doing things and, and what times they're doing things.
[00:06:45] Sue McCurry: a confluence of many effects, I think, set us up for the kinds of sleep patterns that we have now. But it's interesting because people who have what would be called sleep maintenance insomnia, they fall asleep fine, but they wake up in the middle of the night, [00:07:00] often around like 1:00, 2:00 in the morning. they-- that is identified as a problem, a kind of insomnia, when in fact it might be that some of these people, maybe many of them for all we know, are people who are naturally reverting back to the chronorhythms that we had for thousands of years, until not that long ago
[00:07:23] Emma Waddington: My goodness, I'm fascinated by this, these two sleeps. So not necessarily that relevant for our conversation, but so people would get up in the middle of the night in the dark and chat to neighbors? I mean, how would that work in the 1700s? It's...
[00:07:38] Sue McCurry: everybody else was doing it too.
[00:07:39] Emma Waddington: Oh, I guess
[00:07:41] Sue McCurry: had starlight and moonlight
[00:07:43] Emma Waddington: Right. Wow
[00:07:44] Sue McCurry: and of course in, in the new moon when it was super dark and they perhaps they, they didn't go outside so much. But,
[00:07:51] Emma Waddington: Yeah.
[00:07:52] Emma Waddington: That is wild. I love that
[00:07:55] Chris McCurry: I mean, people had lanterns they could carry with
[00:07:57] Emma Waddington: Maybe, yeah
[00:07:58] Sue McCurry: That's right. Before they
[00:07:59] Chris McCurry: it's [00:08:00] possible
[00:08:00] Sue McCurry: or there were other ways. light just wasn't as bright
[00:08:03] Emma Waddington: That
[00:08:04] Emma Waddington: That is fascinating. I had no idea. It's a bit like babies
[00:08:07] Sue McCurry: kind of.
[00:08:09] Emma Waddington: Yeah. Like they'll be up, in the night and decide that actually it's the time to be awake, and parents are like, "No, it's not.
[00:08:16] Sue McCurry: Mmhmm
[00:08:17] Emma Waddington: sleep. Please sleep."
[00:08:18] Sue McCurry: y-you know, if you think about the history of sleep, it's-- So that sort of in my mind sets the stage for how we wound up with this one chunk of sleep at night and, it's interesting that it's considered so bad if you wake up in the middle of the night when forever it was normal.
[00:08:36] Modern Sleep Science Boom
[00:08:42] Sue McCurry: But then you add to that, it's only really been since the start of the 20th century that, that we had anything that resembled sleep medicine or sleep research. So, rapid eye movement sleep wasn't discovered until 1953 And the stages of sleep that we know people go through, s- the non-REM sleep stages one, two, [00:09:00] three, four, light to deep sleep, then cycle through a REM dream period that was, like, in the late '50s. And all these things, melatonin was discovered in the late '50s, and the first the first sleep labs, I don't think appeared until the, oh, I don't know, '60s, '70s maybe. So we're talking about a relatively new field of science which has been exploding in information, both about what sleep is and how to measure it, and gathering scientific communities together to study it with, flagship journals and symposias conferences, and, and, and then discovering the links between poor sleep and various health consequences. So, it's, it seems like it's kinda new because it is. I mean, there's, there's just a lot that is feeding [00:10:00] in... And, and we have a preoccupation with health and wellness and youth in our Western society anyway, certainly in the United States, and this just becomes one more piece, I think, that's, that's laid upon it.
[00:10:13] Sue McCurry: And, and we can certainly point to lots of things in the popular press and, and in the scientific literature and in books and in podcasts that are, that are telling people you must sleep more.
[00:10:29] You Cannot Force Sleep
[00:10:30] Sue McCurry: But the problem with that is what I said at the start. You, you can't make yourself sleep. Sleep is not like a light switch that you can turn off when you want and back on when you want. I joke with many of my clients that come in that they, they think I, like a Jedi master, have some magic trick that I will teach them that will allow them to go to sleep on command, and I have to start disabusing them of that belief immediately because it's just not the case. So [00:11:00] they have to find ways sort of like the surfer who gets ready to surf, puts on the wetsuit, and picks the right day and the right beach and the right time and gasses up the car, and the board's all waxed and gets out there and is standing ready to surf, but you have no control over when the waves come in. And that's what we're doing with CBTI, is we're trying to get everything lined up so people's habits and beliefs and attitudes and environments are aligned s- to support healthy sleep And to get people so they are not freaked out if they have a difficult night, because being anxious and all aroused, cognitively and physically, is not going to help you sleep. put these pieces together to get them ready to sleep, but in the end, just have to wait for their body to go back to sleep. They can't make them do it. There's no magic trick
[00:11:51] Emma Waddington: My
[00:11:51] Emma Waddington: goodness, many, so many things I want to unpack. I was thinking about, how in the last 40 years we're [00:12:00] started to think about the importance of sleep, and with that has come this idea that you must get good sleep, because if you don't, then... I was reading an article.
[00:12:09] Emma Waddington: Actually, I wasn't reading it because I don't tend to read these articles, but there was a headline saying,
[00:12:13] Emma Waddington: know,
[00:12:14] Emma Waddington: "Poor sleep is linked to dementia in women," or, all these sort of scandalous, distressing articles or headliners that make us more anxious about sleep. But truly, what is it that we need to think about when we think about good sleep when it comes to the individual?
[00:12:32] Emma Waddington: Because I've had moments in my life especially around having babies hormonal transitions, where my sleep has been more elusive, and it is crazy-making, as in it is something that
[00:12:46] Emma Waddington: I found
[00:12:46] Emma Waddington: myself getting obsessed with, and I'm trained in CBTI. And I found it incredibly frustrating, depleting
[00:12:54] Emma Waddington: depleting
[00:12:56] Emma Waddington: not to be able to sleep what I felt I needed.
[00:12:58] Emma Waddington: It was particularly hard [00:13:00] when I had children, when I had babies, and they were sleeping,
[00:13:05] Emma Waddington: and I
[00:13:05] Emma Waddington: was telling myself, "You must sleep because you don't know how long you have
[00:13:10] Emma Waddington: Until they're awake again." And just that pressure meant I couldn't sleep.
[00:13:16] Sue McCurry: to
[00:13:17] Emma Waddington: Yeah. Yes. Oh, it was, it was, it was real crazy-making behavior to the extent that I actually had my husband sleep with the babies, and I would remove myself.
[00:13:27] Emma Waddington: But so what are we looking at when we think about
[00:13:29] Emma Waddington: Ideal sleep? How do we track that? if it
[00:13:32] Emma Waddington: it
[00:13:32] Emma Waddington: isn't a number of hours, what should it be? What, what should we be using as a reference?
[00:13:37] How Much Sleep Is Enough
[00:13:38] Sue McCurry: Well, there is no ideal number. The number everybody hears bantered about is seven to nine hours everybody's different in how much sleep they need. We know that people who are really short sleepers chronically... Now, by short sleepers chronically, I'm talking four to five hours a night [00:14:00] chronically, people who are really long sleepers chronically, more than 10 hours every night. Actually, both ends of that curve at increased risk for all sorts of negative health consequences. So there is something about being in the middle, and as we've been talking in this culture, we are presuming that that has to be all in a single chunk, and that accommodates our society fairly nicely.
[00:14:28] Sue McCurry: But in reality, if you're getting eight hours a day and you're getting it in two chunks, there are still polyphasic sleepers in, in the world, even in our own culture, particularly after retirement that... when it's allowed for. But, but people are usually dissatisfied 'cause nobody else
[00:14:44] Sue McCurry: is doing that. It doesn't work very well.
[00:14:46] Sue McCurry: So i-in an ideal sleep situation, you are getting enough sleep for you, of what the number is that the next day, not the second you sit [00:15:00] up in bed and stand to start the day, but after you get up and you wash your face and brush your teeth and, and you start your day, how do you feel, and as you go through your day? If you're, if you're really exhausted then probably you're not getting enough sleep. Although I will say sometimes people are seemingly getting plenty of sleep. Say, "I, I get eight hours a night and I'm so exhausted." Well, those individuals may have an undiagnosed sleep apnea condition, which is leaving them extremely fatigued because they're not aware they're not sleeping, but their brain is aware they're not sleeping, and so they're very tired during the day.
[00:15:39] Sue McCurry: So that's, that's one possible thing that can happen. There may be other things that are going on that are contributing to this great fatigue. They might have other health conditions. They might have anxiety or depression. They might have, any number of life stressors that are, that are [00:16:00] impinging upon them. In their mind, they attribute this all to the fact, " I'm not sleeping well," rather than looking at the fuller context, because there's a lot of things that make us not feel good during the day. if, if it was o- if it was true that the only people who have all these problems are, are bad sleepers, then good sleepers would never be tired or would never be depressed or anxious or whatever.
[00:16:25] Sue McCurry: It's, So it, it's just the message has gotten oversimplified, I think. And, and because sleep is an easy target, people can point to it and say that's the problem.
[00:16:38] Sleep Stories and Anxiety Loop
[00:16:44] Sue McCurry: But here's the thing. I, I talk to a lot of my clients about stories. Human beings love stories. We all love stories. And stories are a beautiful thing.
[00:16:49] Sue McCurry: They're very parsimonious. They capture a lot of information in a little bit. but they can-- we can become quite rigid about our stories. We can hold [00:17:00] onto our stories very tightly, and stories often have rules embedded in them. So I ask people to talk to me about what their sleep stories are, and they all-- people with insomnia all have stories about their sleep, they're all very good stories.
[00:17:15] Sue McCurry: "I, I don't sleep on Sunday nights before Monday when I have to work," or, "I haven't slept since my first baby was born," or, "I haven't slept since I had menopause," or, "I haven't slept since that night I was st- preparing for my dissertation 52 years ago." I mean, they all have a s- multiple stories about their sleep. But here's what I tell people. Stories, we're not gonna get into whether stories are, are true or false or verbatim right or wrong. Stories are always incomplete, and in the world of sleep, that's particularly true. When someone comes to me and says, "I haven't slept for the past three years," I know that's not true, or they probably wouldn't be alive if they truly weren't [00:18:00] sleeping as much as they think they are not sleeping for such a long period of time. So they-- their story is, "I can't sleep." And each night when they go to bed, they approach the bedroom and bed with the anticipation, the prediction, "I'm not gonna sleep tonight," 'cause of course I can remember I haven't slept for three years. And I can also remember when I don't sleep, tomorrow's a terrible day. I feel bad. I'm cranky with my spouse. I'm not as good on my game at work. And that's a th- that's a threat. a, an actual physical, psychological threat, as real as I'm being chased by a tiger. It's, it's a danger. And so what we humans wanna do when we're in a threat situation, if we can predict it ahead of time, we wanna control the environment, change it to keep ourselves safe, and ergo, that means I have to try to make myself come to sleep. But the problem is I cannot. So I get [00:19:00] all in a lather m- cognitively, physically hyper-aroused. I'm, I'm checking, am I, am I falling asleep yet? Oops. Am I, am I falling asleep yet? And getting very upset. I'm checking the clock, looking at it, seeing the minutes, the hours tick by, thinking how tired I'm gonna be tomorrow. All of these are compounding that sympathetic nervous system stress response, and it is not under those conditions that the sleep waves are likely to come in. The sleep waves will come in when we are safe kinda bored, not when we're threatened. So you can see how conditioned insomnia, which is not necessarily a, a, a physiological problem.
[00:19:45] Sue McCurry: It's not even necessarily habits, although a lot of people with insomnia have what we would consider poor habits that don't support long-term sleep. They have become conditioned because of this prediction and control [00:20:00] process, I think, to come to associate bed and bedroom as being a place of danger ra- rather than a place of rest, and that has to be disrupted as well as the habits improved.
[00:20:13] Emma Waddington: I've actually been there in those places where the lack of sleep becomes such a threat. And it is so overwhelming because it's like a catch-22. The more you think about needing to sleep, the more distressed you become, the less likely you are to sleep, and you get
[00:20:31] Emma Waddington: really
[00:20:31] Emma Waddington: stuck. And so what are some of the things that you would recommend?
[00:20:36] Emma Waddington: I love that, sleep comes when you're bored. That's very powerful. So what are some of the things you would recommend for our listeners? Because I know, sleep issues or struggling to sleep is really quite common. Throughout life we'll have different times, and sometimes I think of it as, different transitions.
[00:20:56] Emma Waddington: You if you start a new job, you move a country, or you-- [00:21:00] there's lots of people who move countries, jet lag having children. There's a lot of conversation about perimenopause here, I'm sure globally. So all these transitions invite sleep issues. So what can we recommend for our listeners if they are struggling with sleep?
[00:21:18] Practical Help and Three Ps
[00:21:18] Sue McCurry: Well, I think what we can do is first we want reassure people that even good sleepers, certainly normal sleepers have bad nights And that is to be expected. So if you have, if, if you're doing along swimmingly and you have a couple of nights, even a week, where sleep is bad, that doesn't mean, "Oh no, I'm going back into my insomnia pattern." have bad nights, good, bad weeks. There's a theory for insomnia development. It's called the three P theory. The first P stands for predisposing factors, and that says everybody's born to be some sort of a sleeper, [00:22:00] a good sleeper, a poor sleeper, a light sleeper, a, a whatever kind of sleeper.
[00:22:06] Sue McCurry: Our, our kid came out of the womb with a nine o'clock bedtime. That is not what I had been led to believe was gonna happen, but that was just a fact. So everybody's born to be a certain kind of a sleeper, women are more predisposed towards sleep difficulties than men are. Sometimes there are genetic factors.
[00:22:23] Sue McCurry: You can talk to people whose or parents have all been poor sleepers, or maybe they were raised in a, trauma, a traumatic household. And, and, and they-- their nervous system just got wired up towards hypervigilance at night and be-because of the threat that they were under when they were very young.
[00:22:41] Sue McCurry: I mean, all these things can predispose one to be some sort of a sleeper. But then the second P stands for precipitating factors. And so the theory would say, just as you were giving these examples, Emma, often there's something that happens in life that starts the insomnia pattern off. So it might [00:23:00] be menopause, it might be the birth of a child, it might be that dissertation that I, was studying for fifty-seven years ago. it might be a car accident, a bereavement, a, a major health problem. Any number of things can kick us up into a poor sleep pattern. And insomnia is defined as trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking up too early at least three nights a week for at least three months. I mean, that's chronic insomnia. And it has to be interfering with daytime quality of life. So there are many people who are short sleepers that are just fine during the day. They're, they're not impacted. So if, if you're getting six and a half, you might feel like you're a wreck, and this person's getting six and a half and they feel dandy. So it's not really insomnia if the, if the perspective is sleep isn't poor. But anyway, those are the precipitating factors. But you-- one would expect that as the more time goes [00:24:00] by from this precipitating event, then you would drop back down below that insomnia threshold and become the kind of sleeper that you were previously, right?
[00:24:10] Sue McCurry: Makes sense. But that doesn't always happen.
[00:24:12] Perpetuating Habits and Sleep Drive
[00:24:17] Sue McCurry: And so the theory says often the reason that doesn't happen Is because of, of our habits and behaviors are perpetuating factors. These are things that we do seem logical. For example, I had a terrible night's sleep, so instead of get up at 7:00, I'm gonna get up at 9:00.
[00:24:34] Sue McCurry: I wake up at 9:00, I feel a lot better. So these things in the short run may even appear to be helpful, but in the long run, if they are maintained, they actually disrupt our body's natural ability to sleep. 'Cause our body's sleep physiology is controlled by two processes. One is homeostatic sleep drive, where, that's our, our need to sleep gets higher and [00:25:00] higher and higher.
[00:25:00] Sue McCurry: It should be high at nighttime. That helps us fall asleep and stay asleep. And then our circadian biorhythm, and these two things, and our... And, and that, our body temperature rises and falls in a sine wave, and the melatonin levels rise and fall, and those two processes work together. And so some of these perpetuating factors interfere with one or both of these processes.
[00:25:22] Sue McCurry: So for example if I-- instead of getting up at 9:00, I sleep by 7:00, I get up at 9:00, I feel better, great. But now what I've done is I've made the length of time between when I got up and when I'm going to bed the next night shorter, so less sleep drive has time to build up. I've basically pulled drive out of the bank, so it's less available for night. And I've also potentially mucked with my circadian patterns. Now, one night's not gonna make a difference one day, but if you're, you're kind of very irregular in, in particular in your rise times our, our biorhythms, our [00:26:00] sleep-wake ones particularly, what they like better than anything is for everything to be done on the same time.
[00:26:05] Sue McCurry: I mean, they've done studies like in nursing homes that they could improve residents' sleep if they got them up at the same time, had their meals at the same time, had their recreation at the same time, had their exercise at the same time. Regularity is a very good thing from our point of view. So you can see how we can fall easily into these patterns that make sense, but they are they are compromising the two processes' abilities to be as robust individually and to work together as well as possible. So does that answer your question?
[00:26:39] Emma Waddington: But it,
[00:26:39] Emma Waddington: Yeah. And it was, it was reminding me of, um, clients and even myself where because we get so obsessed with how much sleep we need, it will-- you know, it's not uncommon for people to get to bed at 9:00 because they had a bad night's sleep, and then really struggle to fall [00:27:00] asleep. And then wake up feeling unrested and then decide, "Actually, I'm going to bed at 8:00," and
[00:27:06] Sue McCurry: ' cause
[00:27:07] Emma Waddington: wake up feeling-
[00:27:07] Sue McCurry: sleep at 9:00 instead of at 11:00, but now they're, "Oh, I'm awake at 4:30." Yeah
[00:27:14] Emma Waddington: does, it does become this sort of vicious cycle. And this idea of sleep drive
[00:27:19] Emma Waddington: is really powerful because we can control that by managing more consistent
[00:27:27] Emma Waddington: sleep
[00:27:28] Sue McCurry: we can, we can control it
[00:27:29] Emma Waddington: patterns
[00:27:30] Sue McCurry: but I-- you have to be really careful in the world of sleep to put the language of, "This is something I can control." have
[00:27:37] Emma Waddington: Yeah
[00:27:37] Sue McCurry: to, apply that expression quite carefully, I
[00:27:41] Emma Waddington: Yeah.
[00:27:42] Sue McCurry: because
[00:27:42] Emma Waddington: fair enough
[00:27:43] Sue McCurry: drive isn't exactly under our control. We can control how much time it's been since the first, last time we slept and whether there was a nap in the middle that also pulled it out of the bank.
[00:27:55] Emma Waddington: Yeah
[00:27:56] Sue McCurry: we're trying-- these are natural physiological [00:28:00] processes that are working not under our conscious control, and we're just trying to create the context in which they're gonna be as efficient as possible.
[00:28:11] Emma Waddington: Yes. That's a very important point
[00:28:12] Sue McCurry: control is our environment and our behavioral responses to the situation
[00:28:17] Weekend Catch Up and Choices
[00:28:17] Chris McCurry: So catching up on the weekend is a myth
[00:28:21] Sue McCurry: Well, y- myths are like stereotypes, right? They all have a little bit of truth to them, and it, it's I think what I was saying just a minute ago is if you, if you have a really hard time getting enough sleep during the work week, and you have that extra time on the weekends, sleeping in may make you feel better And if you don't have insomnia, then God bless you.
[00:28:47] Sue McCurry: Go ahead and do it as much as you want. I mean, we only need to follow these rules strictly our sleep is a, a little bit touchy. [00:29:00] So I, I have people actually who go through CBT-I with me and their sleep gets much better. And they say, " Okay, now that I've seen you for six sessions, Sue, I'm gonna go live my life and I'm gonna do what I want."
[00:29:13] Sue McCurry: And I talk to them about how to ease back into beha-- how to peel off the sleep plan recommendations I'd given them kind of s- very slowly so they can monitor if something seems to go awry, catch it quickly. But sometimes they'll call me up and they'll say, " Darn it, I st- I started, trying to my emails in bed again and now my sleep's gotten all messed up. And, and my friends, they all check their emails, but it's just not fair." And, and I say to people, I say, "Yeah, it's just not fair, but it, it's not fair that my sister-in-law got COVID and it turned her into a Type 1 diabetic, too. She can't eat what she wants. She can't-- That's [00:30:00] not fair." But that's the body you got, so it's up to you.
[00:30:05] Sue McCurry: You get to decide, are you gonna do things that you know have good data you interfere with your sleep? there's lots of things that people will do a big, heavy, spicy Mexican meal like at 11 at night and then go to bed at midnight or, or have those extra two glasses, three glasses of wine before bed or whatever they do that they know reliably, based on their experience, is gonna impair their sleep. But for this night, that's worth it to me, and I understand it's a choice I've made and I'm gonna pay a consequence. But it's not like I'm a victim of my insomnia. There, there's a, a, a high correlation here between these behaviors and the quality of my sleep, so I'm gonna try to avoid these things most of the time in the spirit of getting good sleep, knowing that sometimes I'm gonna be living a [00:31:00] life that I'm not gonna do that. That is quite different, that have a vulnerability to certain things impairing your sleep, and you get to choose whether you do those things or not and, and there's no rule book of the universe that says you have to do it that way. But that's very different from feeling like, "I have no control over my sleep.
[00:31:22] Sue McCurry: I'm a, I'm a victim. I'm powerless here." You don't have control in the sense you can't turn your sleep on and off, but you do have control over your habits and your environment and your responses to sleep difficulties
[00:31:34] Different Sleepers in Families
[00:31:34] Emma Waddington: I find it very validating, and I didn't know about these precipitating factors that some people-- that we all sleep differently. Maybe, there's certain categories, but I didn't know that.
[00:31:45] Emma Waddington: anybody who is a parent of more than one child can see that.
[00:31:50] Emma Waddington: see.
[00:31:51] Emma Waddington: I have
[00:31:51] Emma Waddington: three children, and my eldest was a fantastic sleeper. My second was [00:32:00] cataclysmic, and my third is a great sleeper, but she's a night owl and was, a bit like your son. From day one, slept late but slept in, and she still does. I mean, she's nine, and her ideal sleep time is 11:00 at night, which is a problem because school does not allow for, afternoon shifts.
[00:32:20] Sleep Differences Persist
[00:32:20] Emma Waddington: But so looking at it in children feels quite obvious, but I think we sort
[00:32:25] Emma Waddington: of forget that that
[00:32:26] Emma Waddington: continues, and that some of us are lighter sleepers or need less sleep. Or perhaps, is it true that there are transitions in life that change our need for sleep? Is that true too?
[00:32:40] Sue McCurry: f-- and for sure with kids there are.
[00:32:43] Couples And Circadian Mismatch
[00:32:51] Sue McCurry: But it's an, it's interesting, I'm reminded as you're talking, I heard a speaker once at a sleep conference, and he was saying, in old days before people know, had to get m- when they had to get married before they lived together, often the first fight that a couple would have would [00:33:00] be after they got married, was about sleep. he'd want to stay up and tell them, watch the 11 o'clock news, and have her on the couch cuddling with him, and she wants to go to bed at 9:00, have him cuddle in bed, and then go to sleep early. they were shocked, shocked that-- because sleep is one of those things you just assume the way I do it, the way my family does it, is the way everybody does it, and you don't know any difference.
[00:33:21] Sue McCurry: It's like you're, you're too young to remember "The Waltons," but it used to be this TV show that was on, and at the end of the show, they were f- a farm-dwelling family, and, someone would say, "Good night, Pa," and someone would say, "Good night, Joe," and, "Good night, Harry." And, and the lights would go out one by one, like this giant family are all going to bed at the same time, you know? so we, we have this idea that sleep is just one thing, but yeah, it's, it just isn't. This g- this speaker said, "Unless you are married to your first cousin, no reason to believe physiologically that you should be married to someone with the same circadian pattern as yourself."
[00:33:59] Emma Waddington: [00:34:00] And, and does it change? Because I've certainly noticed I was a massive sleeper up until having children, and then my sleep really changed and I sleep... My hours changed. I, I seem to sleep earlier, which has--
[00:34:17] Emma Waddington: And,
[00:34:18] Emma Waddington: and, and my husband sleeps later, so we've now sh-shifted. And I seem to need less sleep, which is rather convenient sometimes.
[00:34:29] Emma Waddington: I've had some periods of my life where I've been up ridiculously early and
[00:34:35] Emma Waddington: rather excited
[00:34:36] Emma Waddington: by it because,
[00:34:37] Emma Waddington: the s-
[00:34:37] Emma Waddington: the house is quiet and I then paid the price later on. I had a few weeks where I was getting up at
[00:34:42] Emma Waddington: at
[00:34:42] Emma Waddington: 4:00 and getting a ton of exciting work done, and Chris and I were writing our books and and then I'd start,
[00:34:50] Emma Waddington: it started to catch up with me
[00:34:51] Aging Shifts Sleep Timing
[00:34:51] Sue McCurry: There's a tendency as we age, sometimes people's circadian clocks shift. may move to [00:35:00] earlier wanting to go to bed, that's called advanced sleep phase, or sometimes they move to going to later. With aging, advanced sleep, wanting to go to bed earlier, is more common. So your whole body rhythm, the dropping of temperature and, the raising of melatonin, everything sort of sinks over, shifting your tendency from maybe how it was when you were younger. That's something that can happen.
[00:35:29] Deep Sleep Declines
[00:35:31] Sue McCurry: Another thing that happens, so, I talked about the sleep stages earlier.
[00:35:33] Sue McCurry: There's stages one, two, three, four, and there's REM sleep, dreaming. And stages three and four are our deep sleep, and that's the sleep that everybody, when they come to see me, wants. They wanna fall into bed, go to sleep, and stay in a coma until they spring out of bed the next morning, ready for the day. And they, they, they've got these trackers, of course, that are telling them how much deep sleep they're getting, and they're constantly [00:36:00] monitoring their trackers. And the thing about deep sleep, it is really good stuff. It's when human growth hormone gets put out, and that's when the glymphatic systems takes-- increases the cerebral spinal fluid in your brain by 60% and flushes out all the toxins from the day.
[00:36:17] Sue McCurry: I mean, it's really great stuff. But if you look at graphs of how deep sleep changes as we age, each decade it goes down, down, down, down, down, down, down. And by the time you're at Chris' and my age, y- you are just not getting hardly any dark-- d- deep sleep at all. REM sleep, on the other hand, doesn't change much over the course of a lifetime. So if you have the same amount of REM and much less deep sleep every decade so that's affects menopausal women, too. They're getting up in decades. You're having much less deep sleep. Then ergo, what you have left in between is [00:37:00] more time spent in light sleep, lighter sleep. And by definition, lighter sleep you can wake up out of easier.
[00:37:07] Sue McCurry: There might be a light or a noise or your bladder singing to you or there's a kink in your neck from the pillow or whatever. In deep sleep, that sort of stuff, you just sleep right through it. But in lighter sleep, it's more likely to wake you up. And then once you're awake, you may have a harder time falling asleep, particularly if you've got all this sleep anxiety, associated with being awake and thinking waking up is bad.
[00:37:30] Sue McCurry: And I mean, that just really exacerbates it, makes it worse. But so there's- There are things that happen in life physically, and kids are a whole another picture, right? I can't really s- I don't work with kids' sleep, so I can't speak to it much except I can say that in the teen years, teens' circadian clocks shift that opposite direction I was talking about, that delayed where their body wants them to go to bed later and sleep in [00:38:00] later. And, it, it's usually well in their 20s before it starts to kind of slip back.
[00:38:05] Kids Sleep Training Myth
[00:38:08] Sue McCurry: And so what we try to do with kids, right, is we, when I was on that podcast in Singapore, they were talking about raising their kids, and one of the women, one of the speak- interviewers was saying that was very faithful when her kids came along to, to use the Ferber book to Ferberize her kids, to put them on a really strict schedule in bed and make them stay there and just cry themselves to sleep.
[00:38:26] Sue McCurry: And, and, uh, she has two or three kids. I only have one. I was incapable of Ferberizing my kid. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. But, but it's an example of how we, we train children to sleep into patterns that mimic what adults do and, and more or less we're pretty successful doing that. So that also contributes to this myth that I have control over my own sleep. I trained up my kids' sleep. I should be able to train up mine too. [00:39:00] But, but all we trained up was environment and the behaviors, and then the kids went to sleep when they did. And we know of plenty of kids who to bed when mom says to go to bed, but then they lie in bed reading with a flashlight, for hours until they fall asleep.
[00:39:17] Sue McCurry: So we-- But, but it, I think, feeds further this myth that w- I should be able to make myself sleep the way I want,
[00:39:26] Sue McCurry: which you cannot.
[00:39:29] Melatonin Facts And Risks
[00:39:29] Chris McCurry: A few words about melatonin
[00:39:33] Sue McCurry: Melatonin, very popular. I will say for those of you who are international listeners, in the United States, melatonin is not FDA regulated. That means you have no way of really knowing if you go to the drugstore and buy a bottle, what's in there. They've done studies that have shown if you get a whole bunch of different brands at different dosage levels, and they measure the actual melatonin product in [00:40:00] the bottles, it might be of what it says on the label it's gonna have, or it may be almost five times as much as it says on the label that it has. There's no quality c- control assurance with melatonin, so that is a big problem in the States. I know in, I think in Singapore it's by prescription only or, or maybe in the UK too, but, but here, that's a big issue. Many people think melatonin is a sedative. It will put them to sleep like a sleeping pill. Melatonin is not a sedative. a messenger signaling to the brain turns on when it starts getting dark. production is turned on in the pineal gland, and l- bright light turns it off, so that's why getting up to eat in the night and opening the refrigerator door and, and looking to see what's there to eat, bad.
[00:40:53] Sue McCurry: That's bright light going in through your eyes, gonna turn off your melatonin, as do screens, unless they're, they're carefully [00:41:00] blocked for any blue lights. So it, it's not intended to work like a sedative. It's inter- intended to signal to your body it's time to start getting sleepy Natural melatonin at its peak in the body is probably somewhere between 0.2 or b- maybe fi- 0.5 to 0.8 milligrams, probably go- 'cause it, remember, it goes up and down. Probably goes up and down from 1.2 to 0.58 milligrams. So people who are taking 10... I had one client taking 20 milligrams of melatonin every day, of course, she's not getting it from the pharmacist, so goodness knows how much melatonin she's actually taking. But she believes she's been taking 20 milligrams of melatonin. way, way, way, way more than your body needs, and it's, it's a relatively... That you can get some adverse side effects or side effects with interactions with medications. [00:42:00] But it's it, it's, it doesn't have a ton of adverse effects associated with it. And, and taking the supplement doesn't turn your own melatonin production off. But obviously, if your own body is producing maybe 0.5 milligrams of, of melatonin and you're consuming 20 or 10 your own signals are being way overridden. It's got a pretty short half-life, but you, you're not allowing your system, your natural body system, to work as it's intended to do That said, I know many people who swear by melatonin, that they, they really believe it's the answer to their dreams.
[00:42:47] Sue McCurry: I, I have an older adult client who has had sleep problems for years, and his doctor just recently put him on melatonin, and the last time I saw him, he says, haven't slept in years. I'm sleeping now." Is, [00:43:00] is that because he's melatonin deficient? Some people are, and actually melatonin supplementation is very useful and important for them. Is this placebo? Plus we, we as psychologists, we know placebo is a very good drug. I got nothing against placebo. so if melatonin is helping you, I generally don't pers- you know, try to get people to stop taking it. I do give them the spiel that I've just given you, which leads to the conclusion you don't really know what you're taking, and we don't know if this is placebo or if you really need it because you haven't had a test to find out if you're melatonin deficient. If you wanna keep taking it, it's probably not gonna hurt you much.
[00:43:45] Melatonin For Jet Lag
[00:43:52] Sue McCurry: It is good for jet lag, so you can t- you can take melatonin, um, one to three days before you travel, and you take it at the time it will be [00:44:00] dark and you will be wanting to go to sleep in the place you are traveling to. It's not a sedative, so it won't put you to sleep if you're taking it at 3:00 in the afternoon, so you can go to sleep at 11:00 where you are going. But it starts that signaling process queuing initially, and then you keep taking it for a couple of days after you get there. And then you can do the, in reverse coming back home. And there is some evidence that, this eases jet lag symptoms. But a- again, in the clinical trials, even with jet lag, the improvements in sleep are relatively modest. We're not talking about everybody has a spectacular response, and the trials are kind of mixed in terms of some, some come out negative.
[00:44:52] Sue McCurry: They don't... They aren't better than placebo. it's just
[00:44:56] Chris McCurry: that would have been prescription-grade [00:45:00] melatonin in those studies and not...
[00:45:01] Sue McCurry: the randomized trials, yeah
[00:45:03] Chris McCurry: So they knew the doses accurately,
[00:45:07] Sue McCurry: Yeah,
[00:45:07] Chris McCurry: well
[00:45:07] Sue McCurry: in those bottles that they found, that there wasn't the right amount of melatonin, they also had contaminants in them. Some of these bottles did, is not good, so
[00:45:16] Emma Waddington: That
[00:45:16] Emma Waddington: so concerning. 'Cause it's quite c- popular here in, in Singapore, we get melatonin in the chemist. You don't need a prescription, and it's quite popular for jet lag, but it's also popular for children who struggle to sleep. I know, families who use it, especially with the neurodivergent community.
[00:45:36] Emma Waddington: It's not uncommon, so I had no idea.
[00:45:39] Emma Waddington: I
[00:45:39] Emma Waddington: guess it makes sense if something isn't necessarily being controlled that
[00:45:43] Sue McCurry: at all on neurodivergent kids, but I do know some of the reviews I've seen on melatonin use, suggest that melatonin use in kids, is, is not well-studied.
[00:45:59] Emma Waddington: Hmm.
[00:45:59] Sue McCurry: [00:46:00] fact,
[00:46:00] Emma Waddington: Yeah
[00:46:00] Sue McCurry: use in kids is not well-studied, but there was a s- in just a couple years ago, there was a study in the UK, a survey, and they found that in the previous seven years, there'd been, like, a, a huge increase in prescription medication, sleeping meds for children. So, this s- this trying to get our kids to sleep better
[00:46:20] Sue McCurry: Is on the rise, and we don't have really as much data, I don't think, in the research literature to support it as we would like
[00:46:28] Chris McCurry: Scary
[00:46:29] Sleep Meds And Tapering
[00:46:29] Emma Waddington: think about sleep medication? I mean, it's not unusual for me to meet clients who are on sleep medication, either, muscle relaxants or, hypnotics. What do you, what are your thoughts on using sleep medication to help with insomnia?
[00:46:48] Sue McCurry: So, de- despite my, my training in the the ACT community, I'm not strongly opposed to people taking sleep medicines, part because people [00:47:00] who been long-term users particularly, sleep medicines are very psychologically addictive. They're not easy to get off of. you think about why that would be.
[00:47:10] Sue McCurry: Well, because they work. If my fear is I have insomnia, I can't sleep, and I take zolpidem every night, and I go right to sleep, bam, well, that gets reinforced pretty quickly, right? and people then lose their trust in their body's natural ability to sleep. So I have some people who are coming to me, and they specifically, they want their sleep to improve, but they, they also wanna taper off their meds. I have a tapering plan that I'll work with people to get them off of meds, and it's, it's so slow. It's slower than any physician would ever put them on because I'm not concerned about getting them to where they're not gonna have adverse physical effects. I'm trying to get them psychologically prepared if you're gonna successfully taper off a sleep med that you've been on for a long time, you have [00:48:00] to believe your body knows how to sleep without them. You have to trust that that's in there. You have to have a really good reason to do it, and my doctor's not gonna prescribe it after this bottle is empty anymore is not a good enough reason. There's always another doctor out there that will do it. So you have to have a personal reason, and you have to be able to tolerate having nights you don't sleep because normal sleepers have bad nights. And so you, you have to... people have to have these pieces in place, I think, to successfully get off of sleeping meds. And if they don't have that, then I don't try to get them off the med. I just say, "Well, me know you want to."
[00:48:41] Emma Waddington: I,
[00:48:42] Emma Waddington: I, I see it a lot with, with clients that, present with anxiety disorders and, insomnia often comes hand in hand or with, with clients who are struggling with their mood too. And so sleep medication is often prescribed alongside their, [00:49:00] SSRI or whatever other medication they may be on.
[00:49:02] Emma Waddington: And you're absolutely right that that idea of trusting that, A, sleep is something we can't control. And, and w- with sleep medication, of course, you feel like you can control because-- And for some people, the sleep medication doesn't help, you
[00:49:20] Emma Waddington: And
[00:49:20] Emma Waddington: it, it's even more frustrating when the sleep medication doesn't help because not even that.
[00:49:24] Emma Waddington: But for those that it does, it is like a light switch. You take it, you sleep
[00:49:29] Sue McCurry: take something at the start of the night, and then when they wake up at 2:00, they take something else. But they have to be careful what they take because they don't wanna feel too groggy the next day, so they have to titrate their dosage just, just right. It becomes quite effort to maintain your sleep pharmaceutically
[00:49:46] Emma Waddington: And isn't that agitating in and of itself?
[00:49:50] Emma Waddington: Waking
[00:49:50] Emma Waddington: up in the night and having to then think about how much I take, because if I take too much, then doesn't that wake you up as a process?
[00:49:57] Emma Waddington: in and of itself as a process?
[00:49:57] Emma Waddington: Having to plan your [00:50:00] medication in the middle of the night
[00:50:01] Mindfulness And Rest
[00:50:01] Sue McCurry: have time today, I don't think, to talk about, cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT-I strategies very much. But one of the things that m- many people now do in CBT-I, including myself incorporate into their version of CBT-I is mindfulness strategies. And, and mindfulness is not a sedative either. The So if people come back to me and say, "I tried it and it didn't work." What do you mean it didn't work? "It didn't put me to sleep." Well, it's not supposed to put you to sleep. It's supposed to give you, if you're using mindfulness strategies in the middle of the night, it's supposed to give your mind something quiet and boring to do while you wait for the sleep waves to come back. So it's, it's an attempt to, provide the mind with something other than that ramping up the sleep anxiety, the cognitive hyperarousal about the fact I'm not asleep. And of course, it's very useful for all sorts of things in daily waking life, too. So I mean, there's not much to [00:51:00] dislike about mindfulness practices, but
[00:51:02] Emma Waddington: Actually, one of the, the lessons that I found most helpful was to realize that rest is really good for you. So whether you sleep or not, paradoxically, I used to say to myself when I was struggling with sleep, rest is good too. Like just resting.
[00:51:20] Emma Waddington: And it's quite relaxing
[00:51:21] Sue McCurry: yeah, it is relaxing, and it's not the same as sleep. But, but here's the thing, when you go through those sleep stages, one, two, three, four, one is a transition stage. It's very light, if you wake someone up out of stage one sleep, possible and you say, "Were you asleep yet?" They will say no. Their brain hasn't caught up with... Their cortex hasn't caught up with the fact that they- their brainwaves have changed. They're, like, in the first stage of sleep. They're drifting there. And yeah, that's not that deep coma stage three, four sleep that everybody wants, but it's part of nature, it's our biology of sleep.
[00:51:58] Sue McCurry: We, we transition up and [00:52:00] down. And lots of times when people are these paradoxical insomnia types and they s- you know, they swear, "I don't sleep all night," and then they go in the sleep lab, and they got f- five good hours to brainwaves. S- lots of times these are people who part of that sleep is in this lighter sleep, and so they think they're not asleep they're kinda moving in and out, and they're, they're, they're kind of bobbing up with wakenings and, and maybe they're looking at the clock, and they're, you, or they'll, they'll say "I, I don't, I don't think I slept from 4:00 to 6:00, but I was surprised it was two hours that had gone by." Well, I think-- So I tell people, "If you have a period of time that you aren't sure whether you're asleep or awake, chances are you were asleep a good chunk of it." if you're wide awake, your mind is, "Boy, I am awake," that's a different experience from this, "I'm kinda in and out."
[00:52:54] Sue McCurry: And people think the in and out is bad, but the in and out is part of that natural [00:53:00] sleep cycle process, and it's restful as long as you're not upset about it.
[00:53:05] Emma Waddington: . I found that that was, yeah, it was very powerful, and it took away some of the agitation around whether I'm gonna be rested enough to do what I needed to do the next day. And I use it with the kids. Like my, one of my sons is, is-- does a lot of football, and so sometimes he'll be back from having done a match at 9:00 at night, and
[00:53:24] Emma Waddington: and
[00:53:25] Emma Waddington: he struggles to fall asleep, of course, because he's just had a,
[00:53:28] Sue McCurry: yeah.
[00:53:29] Emma Waddington: a lot of adrenaline.
[00:53:30] Emma Waddington: And so that's what I say to him, "It's okay. You can just rest. Just rest your body."
[00:53:36] Emma Waddington: Often
[00:53:37] Emma Waddington: that really helps him to then eventually fall asleep when his body is ready to, but takes away that, "I must sleep, I must rest." Because even children,
[00:53:46] Emma Waddington: mean,
[00:53:47] Emma Waddington: are given this message that you need to, to sleep because your body needs it to recover,
[00:53:52] Emma Waddington: you
[00:53:53] Emma Waddington: know, if they're, you
[00:53:54] Emma Waddington: very
[00:53:54] Emma Waddington: physical and very athletic, or your, your body needs it in order to study.
[00:53:58] Emma Waddington: And there's already [00:54:00] a, a pressure that I noticed that I didn't have around
[00:54:03] Emma Waddington: sleep
[00:54:04] Emma Waddington: needs. Like
[00:54:04] Emma Waddington: they're taught,
[00:54:05] Emma Waddington: they're taught about sleep habits and
[00:54:08] Emma Waddington: you
[00:54:08] Emma Waddington: know, being able to sleep, what you need to be able,
[00:54:10] Emma Waddington: know, no
[00:54:11] Emma Waddington: screens, et cetera, et cetera, which are all good ideas. But I can see those narrative, those stories building about, The importance of sleep and that pressure.
[00:54:20] Sue McCurry: sleep. I mean,
[00:54:21] Emma Waddington: Yes.
[00:54:21] Sue McCurry: the messaging is correct that sleep is important. So is breathing. Yeah, it's important. It's just it's just not something that we can control
[00:54:32] Emma Waddington: No. that's right
[00:54:33] Stop Obsessing Over Sleep
[00:54:33] Sue McCurry: And that we shouldn't be so obsessed with it. I've got people who have insomnia, and they're not only thinking about their sleep when they're getting ready for bed and during the night when they're awake, but
[00:54:41] Emma Waddington: Yeah.
[00:54:42] Sue McCurry: about it all day. What's tonight's
[00:54:43] Emma Waddington: All day
[00:54:44] Sue McCurry: like? What's tomorrow gonna be like if tonight's bad?
[00:54:46] Sue McCurry: What, what was the... It- it's s- sleep becomes one of those kind of tunnel vision where Chris was looking through our tube thing, where all you're seeing is your sleep, and your quality of life is greatly [00:55:00] diminished. you're not getting up and going to the gym or going to lunch with your friends or even going to dinner that night with a guest from out of town because I had a bad night's sleep. So
[00:55:13] Emma Waddington: it's
[00:55:14] Sue McCurry: gonna really greatly shrink, if people become overly preoccupied with their sleep, and I'm not saying it's not important. just saying you have to be clear where you have control and where you do not,
[00:55:27] Sue McCurry: start trying to let go of some of the myth
[00:55:31] Sue McCurry: information about what your personal risk is for getting six and a half hours sleep at night instead of the seven and a half or eight that you're aspiring to
[00:55:43] Emma Waddington: Yeah. And I think this idea that we are-- we each have a sort of sleep need, sleep
[00:55:51] Emma Waddington: sort of
[00:55:52] Emma Waddington: predisposing factor. Some of us are lighter sleeper, and that that can change over time, which sort of adds to this
[00:55:57] Emma Waddington: of
[00:55:58] Emma Waddington: desire to control, is [00:56:00] very validating. That is very helpful. And I can see how that will help a lot of our listeners, this idea that, we're all different and our sleep needs are different, but the way we sleep is also different.
[00:56:12] Emma Waddington: And to understand that and
[00:56:15] Emma Waddington: to
[00:56:15] Emma Waddington: be compassionate with ourselves if our body isn't ready for sleep instead of forcing it to sleep and, setting us up, to feel more relaxed and more bored. I think that's a very good invitation that perhaps, s- we're more likely to sleep, but as soon as we want it, probably won't get it, as we say in the ACT world.
[00:56:38] Sue McCurry: mean, I think sleep is definitely more dissatisfying to many people as they get older because they remember what it was like before. I, I had someone at my office just last week who, who was talking about how he wants to get to where he doesn't use any sleep medications and he never wakes up at night.
[00:56:55] Sue McCurry: He says, "I hate waking up at night." And I reminded him he's almost 80 years old and his sl- [00:57:00] chances are he's gonna wake up more often at night. And he says, "Well, I didn't used to." And we laughed because he, he knows that too. But it's like, it's just, it's harder to get the kind of sleep as you're older than it was were younger.
[00:57:15] Sue McCurry: But many younger people are not getting the sleep they want because there's so much stress or family demands or all the other things that are going on in a middle l- aged person's life that may make difficult for them to fall asleep at night. So, Probably the-- many people are holding on to their own story, their own myth, like the Waltons, that I used to be able to do this and it was great every single night.
[00:57:41] Sue McCurry: And chances are it wasn't great every night even back then, but they don't remember that in the story.
[00:57:47] Emma Waddington: And that, poor sleep isn't dangerous. I think that's also very important. There's this fear that, if I have a few months of bad sleep or, if I'm not sleeping my eight hours, this is not gonna be [00:58:00] damaging my health. I think there's this idea at the moment that you need to aim for your eight hours, otherwise you're gonna get dementia or all kinds of other issues, and that creates more anxiety too, and that sounds like that's also a myth.
[00:58:14] Sue McCurry: Yeah. The, you need to get eight hours or you're gonna get dementia is like a whole nother show, I think.
[00:58:22] Emma Waddington: Yes, maybe.
[00:58:24] Sue McCurry: that with Claudia maybe.
[00:58:25] Emma Waddington: yeah, we were planning on that, so that would be another one to look forward to
[00:58:28] Sue McCurry: like all of the stories about sleep and health. it's so much more complicated than the popular press leads us to believe. to say there's not some truth to it much less truth to it than are led to understand, I think
[00:58:48] Chris McCurry: Me final, final thoughts
[00:58:51] Final Takeaways
[00:58:51] Sue McCurry: Well, sleep is something we all do, right? Sleep is good. it when I sleep well, but I don't every [00:59:00] night. And I guess I guess that's the, that's the main message is you don't have to sleep great every night. have to get
[00:59:08] Sue McCurry: enough sleep for you, whatever that
[00:59:11] Sue McCurry: is, to have the ability to function and live life well during the day. And being excessively preoccupied with your sleep will not help you sleep better.
[00:59:23] Emma Waddington: Hmm.
[00:59:24] Sue McCurry: It will make it worse
[00:59:26] Sue McCurry: In my opinion.
[00:59:27] Emma Waddington: you very much. Well, this has been really helpful, and I've really enjoyed our conversation, Sue, so thank you so much for being with us on Life's Dirty Little Secrets.
[00:59:36] Chris McCurry: Thank you for,
[00:59:37] Sue McCurry: welcome
[00:59:38] Chris McCurry: being here
[00:59:38] Emma Waddington: No, it's been fabulous.
[00:59:40]
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