Five Easy Tips to Improve Your Sleep Quality

by: Dr. Karine Côté, D.Psy., C.Psych.

Do you have a hard time falling asleep? Do you wake up frequently during the night? Do you tend to wake up too early? Do you feel like your sleep is never really restful? You are definitely not alone! According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, about 30% of adults experience occasional insomnia, and 10% of the population suffers from chronic insomnia.

The impacts of sleep difficulties on our psychological and physical functioning are diverse. They can include mood fluctuations, increased stress and irritability, problems with concentration and motivation, low energy and fatigue, an upset stomach, and muscle tension and headaches. Fortunately, there are strategies that can help improve your sleep quality.

1. Practice sleep hygiene

Limit coffee, tea, and sugar intake after 3 PM. Eat your dinner and exercise at least two hours before your bedtime. Your bedroom should be comfortable and quiet, and try to limit looking at electronics, screens, and alarm clocks while in bed.

2. Implement a sleep routine

Maintaining a consistent routine throughout the week is vital. Ideally, your bedtime and wake-up time should be the same every day, even on weekends!

3. Limit time spent in bed to sleeping

Time spent in bed should be reserved for sleeping (and romantic activities) only. Activities such as watching TV or reading in bed can contribute to your sleep difficulties. It is, therefore, more beneficial to engage in these activities in a comfortable space outside of your room and go to bed only when feeling sleepy.

4. No napping

It is often tough to resist napping when we feel tired. However, to give you the best chance of sleeping during the night, eliminating any length of napping is essential.

5. Regulate your anxiety

Our sleep difficulties are often related to anxious thoughts that are hard to control. Writing them down before bedtime can help release anxious feelings, while also being reassured that your thoughts are not forgotten in the morning!

Consistently practicing these strategies will give you the best chance to overcome your sleep difficulties. However, if these tips do not work and insomnia persists, don’t be discouraged! Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) offered in psychotherapy can help you regulate your sleep and provide beneficial effects that last well beyond the end of treatment. Don’t hesitate to reach out to Centre for Interpersonal Relationships for support - it is time to prioritize your sleep and regain restful nights!

Dr. Karine Côté, D.Psy., C.Psych. is a psychologist at the Centre for Interpersonal Relationships (CFIR). Dr. Côté provides psychological services to individual adults and couples experiencing a wide range of psychological and relationship difficulties related to mood and anxiety disorders, trauma, eating disorders, sleep disruptions, and interpersonal betrayal. She works from a humanistic approach and integrates therapeutic techniques from gestalt and object relations psychotherapies, emotion-focused therapy (EFT), and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).

Whole-Person Self-Care for the Holiday Period

by: Reesa Packard, M.A., Ph.D., R.P.

The dawn of a new holiday period is upon us once again; as the cool air sets in, the decorations are mounted, and typically, the to-do lists begin to grow... The holidays can be ripe with joy and celebration, but they can also be a time of stress. Being pulled out of our regular routines, eating more indulgent food, spending more money, being more immersed in the mixed experiences of family time, etc. can add up to create a holiday period that is harder than we hoped it would be.

Whether there are specific stressors awaiting you this holiday period or you simply want to make the most of it, whole-person self-care can help you get there. So, what exactly is self-care? Self-care has its roots in 1950s medical communities, where it was learned that patients’ taking their own actions to care for themselves physically, spiritually, psychologically and emotionally was essential to their healing, health, and wellbeing. Now, decades later, the concept of self-care has been picked up by mainstream society. On social media, #selfcare now seems to depict a culture of luxurious consumerism and self-indulgence, but that is only part of its story.

So, then what is whole-person self-care? While some versions of self-care can focus on a specific task that might help you feel better in one specific way, whole-person self-care is more like an attitude of overall self-reflection, and of building self-awareness, so that you can honour many different parts of yourself at once and care for your ‘entire self’. In this way, self-care is not only about taking a quick break or reveling in indulgences—self-care is about developing yourself, and your life, in a way that makes those breaks and indulgences less necessary to begin with.

So, how can whole-person self-care help you this holiday season? You can use it as inspiration to get you thinking about questions like: "What is happening right now, how well is this working for me, and why?" "What is really important to me, out of all of this?" "How am I really doing?:" "How are my physical, spiritual, psychological and emotional parts doing right now?" "How are my relational, occupational, and financial parts doing right now?" "What do I want right now, what do I need right now, and how might those be different?"... These questions are the type that can lead you to become more self-aware, and as you build this self-awareness, you can have more clarity about the ways in which you might act to help yourself.

Give yourself the best holiday gift this season, by connecting with yourself in the present! Try out some of the self-care strategies below:

• Physical: move your body or take rest, eat some nutrient-dense foods, quench your thirst, stretch your muscles, breathe deeply; 

• Spiritual: immerse in a moment of silence, (re)discover some nature, attune deeply to yourself and others, contemplate some higher power or higher-order, seek experiences of awe and wonderment;

• Psychological: build gratitude by naming what you are grateful for, emphasize relationships that fuel, and de-emphasize those that drain, ground yourself by scanning and taking in the details of the room and space around you; 

• Emotional: practice feeling feelings as they arise, practice taking small breaks from feelings when they feel too intense, notice bodily sensations associated with feelings, try to fathom perspectives different than your own.

CFIR professionals can help you learn about and practice whole-person self-care. Contact us to inquire more and to begin or continue on your journey toward making yourself and your mental health a priority.

Reesa Packard is an Associate at CFIR. She has a doctoral degree from the Saint Paul school of Psychotherapy & Spirituality and works in private practice as a registered psychotherapist. She works with clients hoping to develop a more integrated sense of self as a means to well-being and meaningful, lasting transformation. Reesa is currently building a new service at CFIR called ‘The Integral Self’, which offers a place for clients to receive support and guidance in their advanced self-development, including spiritual and body-based growth. Reesa is also involved in teaching and supervision of psychotherapists-in-training and advanced knowledge through research in her specialty fields.

The Best Gift this Holiday Season – Self-Care

By: Dr. Brianna Jaris, C.Psych.

The holiday season is an incredibly stressful time for many people. There are some things that we may not be able to avoid – congested malls, traffic and travel, holiday gatherings and parties, buying gifts, etc… but, throughout it all, the best thing that we can do is to give ourselves the gift of self-care. Here are a few things that we can do to make the best out of this holiday season:

1) Make a plan – Be prepared by making a plan. For example, make a grocery list or plan out when you can do your holiday shopping. Having a plan is the first step in preventing the added stress of forgetting something or having to do things last minute. 

2) Be proactive – Don’t wait until the last minute to shop for groceries for a holiday dinner or shop for gifts. Getting things done ahead of time can give you a great sense of accomplishment and can help avoid the stress of overwhelming yourself with having to do too much at once. 

3) Be realistic – For example, plan for there to be traffic or for the shopping centres to be busy. Also, set a budget and don’t go overboard. It’s important to realize that you may not be able to do it all yourself, so don’t be afraid to enlist help if you need to as well.

4) Set up appropriate boundaries – Establish a timeline for visitation - don’t let guests overstay their welcome. Do certain topics of conversation need to be set as “off-limits”? Don’t forget that setting up healthy boundaries also means being able to say “no” to people or demands. Remember that in order to be healthy, sometimes you have to risk disappointing other people.

5) Build time in for yourself – The most important thing of all this holiday season is to take care of you. Take breaks and build in time to relax as necessary. Self-Care is the best gift you can give.

Stay ahead of stress this holiday season by sticking to a plan, recognizing your limits, and not letting others dictate your holiday. We all want to make the holiday season special for the ones we love, but don’t forget to take care of YOU this holiday season!

Dr. Brianna Jaris, C.Psych. is a clinical psychologist at CFIR.  She has extensive experience in psychological assessment and diagnosis and the treatment of a wide range of psychological issues, including trauma, depression, anxiety.  She is currently the head of CFIR’s Trauma and PTSD service. You can visit www.cfir.ca to find out more about Dr. Jaris.

The Power of Mindful Compassion: What It Is, Why It Can Influence Mental Health, and How to Begin Cultivating It In Four Steps

By: Kamala Pilgrim, Ph.D.,C. Psych (Interim Autonomous Practice)

Mindful compassion is a concept that has garnered increasing attention in the scientific community especially over the last two decades. It is taken from the Eastern spiritual traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism and in recent years, research demonstrating the benefits of the practice for mental health have fuelled efforts to discover the mechanisms through which it exerts positive outcomes.

The practice can be broken down into two integral components: Mindfulness and compassion.

Mindfulness is defined as an openness to and acceptance of all that is occurring in the present moment, without judgment or over-identification with our experience including our thoughts, beliefs, feelings, urges, and actions (Gilbert & Choden, 2014; Kabatt-Zinn, 2012; Neff, 2011).

Compassion has been described as the ability to adopt a supportive attitude toward ourselves. It also involves taking courageous, wise, and healthy action to promote care for ourselves and/or of others.

Why mindfulness and compassion combined are important?

The practice of mindfulness stabilizes the mind so that we can step back and bring awareness to patterns that are not serving us well. Compassion fosters the kindness and understanding needed to sustain and commit to really seeing what is happening and to take committed action (Gilbert & Choden, 2014).

Through the practice of mindful compassion we strive to recognize our common humanity by accepting that we all make mistakes, stumble, fall, get up again, and sometimes triumph; we start to see that we are all average in many ways and unique in others (Neff, 2011). We stop dwelling on labelling ourselves as sometimes bad and on other occasions, good; we make efforts to embrace the full range of what it means to be a human and approach ourselves as we would a close friend, child, or other family member we love.

This attitude is not carried out in a “fluffy” or self-indulgent way; rather when we observe our thoughts, emotions, behaviours, motivations, and intentions in a caring framework, we paradoxically become more open to doing something differently; we become willing to make necessary changes because we clearly see how we may be perpetuating our own pain and/or that of others.

Mindful compassion does not make us a pushover either; in fact, fully observing what is happening in our lives aids us in understanding how the behaviours of others may be impacting us in harmful ways and can help us in making the decisions necessary to foster growth and healing for ourselves, and perhaps for the other as well. There are times when mindful compassion can help you respond quickly and efficiently to ensure your safety as you develop a deeper ability to observe everything going on in the environment for what it is and not for what you may want it to be.

By considering everything we observe in ourselves as different aspects of what it means to be a human being we can become less self-critical with time. We can understand that there are basic needs that underlie our initial or habitual reactions and we can strive to take action to attain what we’re really looking for at our core.

To summarize, I like to envision mindful compassion in the following way, based on Buddhist and Hindu perspectives:

The mind is like the seed of a lotus flower buried deep in the shallow, warm, and still waters of a pond.

Our basic emotions such as, rage, lust, despair, and fear, as well as our drives for freedom, dominance, protection, belonging, and connection, are akin to the mud that covers the seed of the mind.

Compassion is the sunlight the seed absorbs; the resulting roots are the elements of mindfulness that create a firm foundation of non-judgemental awareness, settling deep into the earth so that the stem can navigate up and through the dark environment to the surface where the lotus of greater wisdom and clarity can manifest.

                 

Here are 4 ways you can begin to shine the warm, rejuvenating sunlight of mindful compassion in your own life:

1.     Discover patterns

Start to bring some gentle awareness to the automatic thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, urges, and behaviours you have in response to various situations such as:

• When you look in the mirror?
• When you experience a setback?
• When you say something you didn’t mean?
• When you make a mistake?
• When you argue with someone close to you?

Simply practice noticing without judging.

2.     Practice expansion and self-soothing speech

When you observe a painful thought or feeling, practice pausing before reacting as you normally might. Notice where you experience any disturbing emotions in your body. If you are anxious or afraid you may notice a tightness in your chest and/or butterflies in your stomach. When you are angry you may feel your jaw clenching. Breathe into and around the region(s) to give the feeling more space. As you do this, say something nurturing to yourself such as:

• “I know this is hard for you right now.”
• “This feeling is distressing but it will pass in time; may I give myself the understanding I need right now, may I take good care of myself in this moment.”

3.     Understand your needs

Sometimes we assume that our knee jerk reactions are true reflections of what we actually require.  Mindful compassion can help you pause with these initial experiences long enough to discover what underlies them. For example:

§   Arriving home from work you may suddenly feel overwhelmed with a feeling of sadness and anger when you see the kitchen sink filled up with the morning’s breakfast dishes. You may notice yourself begin to criticize yourself or others for not cleaning up immediately after eating. If you practice taking a moment to pause before reacting, to observe these feelings from a non-judgemental, loving and supportive frame of mind and heart space, you may discover that you are actually exhausted and just need to take a few minutes to relax on your own before interacting with others or starting in on your evening routine.

Though you won’t always be able to get exactly what you need in the timing or in the form you would like, you can still respond to yourself kindly, see if you can take small steps toward providing yourself with what you really need, and/or consider asking someone to help you. Sometimes just taking these few brief moments to recognize and validate your feelings is enough.

4.     Set aside time for a loving kindness meditation

Find a few minutes in your daily schedule to try the following:

• Sit in a comfortable, but alert position
• Close your eyes
• Notice the rise and fall of your belly, diaphragm, and chest as you breathe in and out naturally several times without trying to control your respiration in any way
• Visualize someone you love, respect, and care for
• Imagine sending them your love and appreciation
• Next, see yourself in your minds’ eye and practice surrounding yourself with the same feelings

This is by no means an exhaustive list about how to foster mindful compassion; There are many contextual factors, including our societal and cultural perspectives and early life experiences which strongly shape our sense of self, our perceptions of others, our views of and how we operate within the world, which each in turn affect our capacities for mindful compassion and our mental health and well-being overall.

CFIR professionals can help you learn about and practice mindful compassion. Please don’t hesitate to contact us to inquire more and to begin or continue on your journey toward making yourself and your mental health a priority.

For more information please see the following sources:

Gilbert, P. & Choden. (2014). Mindful Compassion: How the science of compassion can help you understand your emotions, live in the present, and connect deeply with others. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.

Harris, R. (2008). The Happiness Trap: How to stop struggling and start living. Boston, MA: Trumpeter.

Kabat-Zinn, J. (2012). Mindfulness for Beginners: Reclaiming the present moment – and your life. Boulder, CO: Sounds True.

Neff, K. D. (2011). Self-compassion: The proven power of being kind to yourself. New York: William Morrow.