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John Kappas, Ph.D., observed that
depressive sleep tends to be light, which allows the individual to maintain
enough awareness of the environment and maintain a sense of being able to stay
in control. Often, someone who is dealing with depression reports tossing and
turning throughout the night and easily awakens. However, the person’s belief
that he or she does not sleep at all is usually not completely accurate, the Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder
stated.
The
hypnotherapist can prove that the client actually does sleep by having the
individual place an illuminated clock beside the bed. That way, the individual
can always see what time it is whenever his or eyes open. For one week the person
should record the time whenever he or she wakes up, and then try to drift back
to sleep. By the time the person finally “gets up” out of bed in the morning,
the individual can look back at the times he or she woke up during the night to
see that there were some solid hours spent asleep—usually between three to five
hours.
“If you get
that pattern, and the person has had some sleep (a nap) during the day, people
can get by on five hours of sleep,” Dr. Kappas explained. Once the person
realizes that he or she is actually getting some sleep, the anxiety about not sleeping usually disappears and the
person sleep six to eight hours a night. “This mechanism works pretty well with
depressive sleepers, and we use it quite regularly.”
However, if the
person is genuinely unable to sleep at all, he or she will not have venting
dreams and therefore is at risk of stimulus overload and a subsequent loss of
the critical thinking/reasoning process. In this case, it would be
inappropriate to use dream therapy because the thought of not sleeping would
only induce further distress and anxiety.
“Don’t take
away what little sleep they have,” the hypnotherapist advised.
Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in
Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation
Institute in 2005. For more
information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an
appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
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