I was talking about my sleep patterns last night and have been thinking about my sleep journey, if I keep the journey analogy going.

I’ve been working on my sleep over the last months, here is the post I wrote previously. The time with the sleep clinic, and the psychologist there, has been eye-opening for me. Working through my thought patterns around sleep, using a technique called cognitive behaviour therapy or CBT, has made me realise that

• I can manage on much less sleep, and still function. 4 or 5 hours of sleep is far from ideal, but the world won’t come to an end
• Waking up and lying there awake isn’t a disaster. I can enjoy the warmth and comfort, or get up and read
• I don’t perform as badly as I perceive after a bad night. If it’s been a really bad night, a day filing and doing routine tasks is ok
• I need a sleep routine. This is fundamental for me, and when I deviate ( seems to happen at the weekends !) for a few day my sleep quality diminishes

I am starting to relish seeing the dawn. My routine, and I’ll emphasise this is my personal need/preference, is to get up around 5-5:30am, see the dawn, and go to bed around 9:30-10pm. That’s around 7 hours sleep, and when I am strict with myself, the routine works well.

We are all creatures of habit. Because there has been no cat spam for a while, below our two creatures of habit. They are most content when we keep their lives stable and predictable.

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I’ve been guilty, the last few weekends, of disrupting my sleep routine and lingering in bed too long. The consequence has been rapid; my sleep starts fragmenting and it’s taken a few days of rigour to get back to a restful night. I’m in exactly that position right now, a weekend of snoozing followed by a broken night, although without many of the negative thought patterns that the CBT appears to have addressed.

So I must remember to relish the dawn.

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