How does the impact of lack of sleep affect mental health?
Sleep and lack of sleep affect our mental health considerably. If you imagine that everything in our system has a way of balancing, e.g. when we are hot we sweat to cool down, our sleep is the balancing partner of our consciousness. It's the place we re-calibrate and our unconscious, everything we are feeling but not thinking lives, it soothes, it speaks to us in our dreams and it's a balancing place for our bodies and souls to repair. When we aren't sleeping properly we are more sensitive, and less able to cope with everyday events and challenges, we might have a more disturbed state of consciousness- eg more anxiety, depression, and more stress. The phrase and attention given to ‘sleeping like a baby and getting babies to sleep is not without its due merit. We can see that when children do not sleep they are less predictable, manageable, less buoyant and it's the same for us adults. Apply more care to this aspect of your life, your sleep routines, how you wind down, tend to yourself with small rituals, sleep spray, hot milk, a nice album, whatever it is make the passage to sleep a lovely invitation. When you aren't sleeping well try to work out and unpick what's on your mind and how you might take an active stance around this. When we don't value our rest and sleep, this will show up in our waking lives.