Sleep Archives - Andrea Tackore

Rest times seven

April 5, 2022 by Andrea

Isn’t rest simply sitting still or sleeping?

Have you found yourself sleeping or being still a lot but feeling more exhausted than ever?

Maybe the rest you’re getting isn’t the kind of rest you need!

Anyone who knows me personally knows that I am fascinated with the biblical significance of numbers. It is well known by many in the Christian faith that the number seven represents completeness and perfection. Couple that factor with our recent focus on the body/soul/spirit depletion rampant in our society right now and it makes sense why the IG post shown here grabbed my attention!

The timing was perfect as we had decided, only days prior, to take some time off and I was in the midst of trying to plan that week away to be most replenishing. From the other side of that week off, I want to share how I used this information in hopes that practical examples help you apply this insight to your own life…

Step One: Make the decision to stop. No matter what kind of rest we will discuss – all of it requires that we stop what we are doing. As a small business owner, that is particularly difficult because we do not have a guaranteed salary. If we aren’t seeing clients, we are not earning income. With recent financial punches fresh in our memories, it didn’t seem possible to step away for a week but we knew that if we failed to walk our talk, not only would we pay a price far greater than money but our clients would be negatively affected as well. We’re not advocating reckless abandon. We simply know that we must count every cost: health, sanity, relational and functional – not just financial.

Step Two: Planning. What I am about to share did not happen automatically. I was already working on the details of our time off but when I saw this post, I ran with it to help ensure that our time would generate maximum benefit.

Physical – I chose several restorative yoga moves shown to address exhaustion and began with a 20 minute Savasana on the eve of our first day off. I slept in that next day and made it my goal to stay in bed as much as possible all day. I had already planned out my nutrition for the day so it was easy for me to get my meals and go back to lying down. I ended the night with a full yoga practice and for the rest of the week, I ended each day with an extended restorative pose before getting into bed on time.

Mental – I logged out of all my social media accounts so that I could give my brain a break from all that is wrong with the world. I committed one day to completing work tasks that had been plaguing me undone for weeks. I picked up books I haven’t had time to read – giving me a chance to enjoy learning new concepts for my work as well as diving into fiction I love. Throughout the week, I tuned into the playlists I already have. During my nightly restorative pose, I used a beautiful bilateral worship music album. Bilateral techniques are used to help heal our brains that have been wounded by the stresses and trauma of life.

Emotional – If you’ve followed us for any length of time, you know that we talk about grieving a lot. It is a vital component of our response to the challenges and changes of life, but is a process we are not typically taught how to move through. We made a commitment during this week off to utilize the same strategies that we teach our clients – focusing on the losses of the past two years. Since Justin and I spent this time together, we were able to process our experiences with each other. Another option is to schedule time with a friend, therapist or mentor who holds space well for your thoughts and feelings.

Social – The goal here is balance. If you spend a majority of your time alone, then rest would entail spending more time around life-giving others. As therapists, we spend the majority of our time interacting with others so we chose to spend our time alone. Even as a couple, we spent a good bit of our week off in separate areas of the house.

Creative – I regularly keep an art journal so creativity and play is already an important part of my life. I had grand plans for painting one of the many blank canvases I have piled up but I ended up just coloring in pages with my watercolor brush pens. It was about play, not creative productivity.

Spiritual – We chose to spend a couple of days at St Leo Abbey which turned out to be the best decision of our time off. Staying in their guest house places you in an atmosphere of quiet reflection. We took the option of joining a couple of their prayer services where the Benedictine monks sing the psalms as prayers and ate meals with the brothers who live there. This is where we leaned in to our grief work, making it a painful but deeply healing time. Being away from home allowed us to truly focus internally and connect with God in ways we struggle to do in the every day. The Abbey also has beautiful grounds on which to wander and commune with nature.

Sensory – It is amazing how logging off all the “apps” automatically creates quiet. I log out of everything on my phone because it is such an ingrained habit to tap on icons. When I take this automatic action, I am faced with login prompts which immediately remind me, “I’m not doing this right now”. Each time this happened, it was a reminder to simply sit in quiet and ask myself what I was looking for. What do I need in this moment? We also spent a quiet day in what I call our “happy place” – Bok Tower Gardens. We have a membership which makes it an easy decision to go. This membership also gives us free or significantly discounted access to gardens and museums around the country.

Did this week solve all of our problems and give us endless energy? No. The world, with all it’s ills, was there all along but we return to our work with mental, emotional and physical energy restored. Our warning lights had come on and now we are able to get back on the road without alarm bells ringing. We will take what we’ve learned about rest, forward into better management of ourselves as well as into our work with clients.

Hopefully, these thoughts give you ideas for identifying the type of rest you actually need and ways in which you can access it. You don’t have to take a week – start small…even five minutes dedicated to a specific type of rest is a gift your body, soul and spirit will benefit from!

Filed Under: Emotional Health, Mental Health, Mind-Body Tagged With: Coping Skills, Grief, Holistic health, Mind Body Connection, Retreats, Self Care, Sleep, Spirituality

Weary

February 28, 2017 by Andrea

If you read last week’s post, you know that sleep has been an “issue” for me lately. Generally speaking, exhaustion has been my constant companion. At first, I chalked this up to the aforementioned backsliding on sleep hygiene. But…in my heart I knew there was more to the story. There always is.

There is a popular metaphor about the frog in boiling water. The story goes that if you put a frog in a pot of cold water, set it on the stove and turn on the heat…the frog will stay in the water as it continues to get hotter. Apparently, the gradual rise in temperature is not something it notices and eventually, it will literally boil without ever jumping from the pot as it is free to do. Now, let’s put aside the very reasonable question of who discovered this awful truth and why. The point is, it illustrates how we can get so normed to dysfunction or negative circumstances/emotions that we remain oblivious to its dangers.

As I pondered this season of exhaustion and wondered what in the world was wrong with me, I realized that my daughter’s birthday is March 2nd. Those who know me, realize exactly what that means. Words cannot describe how much that little girl was the center of my world and what trauma it meant to lose her 22 years in. How could my body not remember the process of giving life to this central figure? How could it not mourn the absence of whom it had birthed? You see…that’s the thing. The body remembers. Often, when sleep is elusive, it is absolutely connected to emotional traumas. What that means is that sleep hygiene becomes even more important as a means of tender loving care for these wounds. There is no healing without rest. At the same time, there is no rest without healing so facing the emotional traumas is a must. And so, I make space to hold. Wednesday morning, I will head to Sholom Park in Ocala with a dear friend. It will be a time for reflection. A time to honor Christina’s memory and to check in with my own grieving process. It has been five and a half years. It would be easy to take this process for granted. To be that frog in the ever hotter water. To flip the auto pilot switch on which – to be honest – I do much of the time at this point. However, grieving a child never ends and I must set aside time to reconnect with it. In the meantime, I treat myself with grace. I value my imperfection, my brokenness and I seek out people and environments who do the same.

Your sleep difficulties are probably not related to the loss of a child. However, I am willing to bet money (and I am not a gambler) that you have your own unique story of pain and longing that lurks beneath the surface of insomnia. Take the steps, yes, to develop a better bedtime routine but do not be fooled – attention must be paid to your emotional health so give some thought to how you will address that. Keep in mind that you may not remember the relevant factors right now. Just this morning, I remembered another crucial anniversary that is absolutely contributing to my exhaustion. One associated with much heartache. How the heck could I have forgotten that? I am a therapist…I specialize in these connections! So there you have it, none of us are immune to these dissociative habits that we develop to keep ourselves protected. The brain is an amazingly complex and tricky son of a gun. Venturing into its depths is not for the faint of heart and seriously not a journey to take alone! If you’re ready to get to the root of sleep difficulties…enlist a qualified wilderness guide. I promise it is one of the scariest, yet best decisions you’ll ever make!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Grief, Holistic health, Mind Body Connection, Psychotherapy, Self Care, Sleep, Somatic

Sweet Dreams

February 23, 2017 by Andrea

The best preachers deliver the messages they most need themselves :). That’s the principle behind this week’s post…on sleep. I’ve definitely fallen off the wagon in this area of life and so perhaps by writing about healthy sleep habits, I will jump-start my own process back to the land of nod.

According to the CDC, more than a third of Americans do not get enough sleep on a regular basis! Clearly, I’m not alone. First – what do they mean by “enough”? The general guideline for this study is 7 hours per night. Interestingly enough, geography, race/ethnicity, employment and marital status all seem to affect the odds of healthy sleep. Those of us here in the Southeastern US for example, are less likely to hit the 7 hour standard. But why? What are the factors making this such a widespread issue? The culprits tend to be longer work hours as well as longer commutes to work which push other aspects of life into the wee hours. Shift work (now more prevalent thanks to a global economy) wreaks havoc on the sleep-wake cycle. Finally, most everyone is entertaining themselves on some sort of screened device late into the night, despite the fact that we have well established the harmful effects of blue light from those devices on the body’s production of melatonin – our sleep hormone. This is especially common for those living in high stress situations. For many – the additional factors of chronic illness, medication side effects and sleep disorders come into play. All of this adds up to a major concern: consistent sleep shortages contribute to heart disease, obesity, depression, lowered immunity, type 2 diabetes and other ills!

No matter the cause, developing healthy sleep habits is part of the cure. In my work with clients, I always assess quality and quantity of sleep. If we find deficiencies, I encourage my clients to consider changes in their sleep habits as adequate rest is absolutely necessary for fueling whatever work we are trying to do in therapy. What does that look like? Here are the guidelines I usually work with. Adjustments are made to align with each person’s unique situation so discuss these with your doctor to create a plan that works for you:

Do not get into bed except when it is time to sleep. Our beds often become associated with work and we need to retrain our brains to associate bed with sleep.
Avoid caffeine four hours before bed (this includes chocolate).
Avoid naps during the day until your sleep-wake cycle has been established.

Set an alarm for one hour before bed as a daily reminder. When it goes off, cut out all screen activity (TV or computer).
Eat a small snack of complex carbs.
Drink a cup of warm milk or Sleepytime tea.
Dim the lights – consider putting your bedroom lamp on a timer to automatically dim each night.
Shower, get ready for bed, etc.
Journal the concerns of the day. This allows your brain to ‘let go’ of these issues.
Listen to relaxing music.
Read relaxing material.
Turn lights out at the same time every night.
Consider use of a white noise machine or earplugs.
Use a relaxation exercise to quiet the central nervous system.
If you lie awake for 20 minutes, get out of bed and do some other quiet activity in dimmed lighting until you feel sleepy – repeat as often as necessary – do not lie awake for endless amounts of time
Wake up every morning at the same time. Do not use a buzzer-type alarm which has been shown to kick off an adrenaline rush (not how you want to start your day).

It takes at least two weeks of consistency to see a change in sleep quality so once you’ve developed a routine that works for you – stick with it for the long haul. When you consult with your doctor, ask about nutritional changes/supplements that can help improve the quality of your sleep. Do your homework to learn as much as you can.

I hope these suggestions will bring improvement in this vitally important area of your life. Check back here for a report on my progress in the coming months! I’d love to hear from those of you who make changes as well 🙂

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Self Care, Sleep