Insomnia
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Insomnia
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Hypnotherapy for Parents Who Are Up All Night by Stephanie Jourdan, Ph.D. Sleep deprivation will do that to you. It is rarely the child who complains about his or her sleep disorder; it is the exhausted parent.
Your client is initially the parent who has been inundated with well-intentioned advice. Presumably, the child has been diagnosed by a physician and the sleep disorder is clearly behavioral and not due to a physical dysfunction. Treat the problem as a family systems issue and offer suggestions to hypnotized parents that they are now aware of the first steps to take to establish new routines and schedules. Hypnotize both parents simultaneously if both parents live in the home and have them discuss the approaches that they feel confident about while in trance. Help them to negotiate the specifics of the family plan. Emphasize that this is not a matter of poor parenting. Reassure them that sleep disorders are common. Amazingly, researchers still don’t fully understand why people need to sleep and what purpose sleep serves. They do know that sleep does serve some restorative function and is mandatory for normal daily functioning. Researches had always thought that sleep was a single state that was completely different from an awake state. Now we know that sleep itself is divided into two different states: REM (more active, dream state) and non-REM (when the sleeper lies quietly). After the earliest months of life, non-REM sleep divides into four stages of its own that represent progressively deeper levels. These stages can be identified by monitoring brain waves, eye movements, and muscle tone on a polygraph. As you begin to fall asleep, you enter Stage I, the state of drowsiness as your awareness of the external world begins to diminish. As you continue to deepen, you transition into Stage II of a fully established non-REM sleep. Short bursts of very rapid activity called sleep spindles and large, slow waves called K-complexes, begin to appear. Someone could easily awaken you at this stage, but you might not believe that you had been asleep. As you fall more deeply asleep, you enter Stage III and finally Stage IV. The smaller and faster brain waves of light sleep and waking disappear and your brain waves now show predominantly large, very slow delta waves. Your breathing and heart rate becomes very stable. You may sweat profusely, and you will be very difficult to awaken. However, if the stimulus is important enough, you would awaken, so it seems that even in the deepest Stage IV sleep, our minds can still process some outside information. We would probably awaken somewhat confused. The difficultly in making the transition from Stage IV non-REM sleep to alert waking is very significant in several sleep disorders in children, such as sleep terrors, thrashing, enuresis (bedwetting), and sleepwalking. After one or two cycles in non-REM sleep, you will enter REM sleep, a different state entirely. Both breathing and heart rate become irregular. Your reflexes, kidney function, and patterns of hormone release change. Temperature regulation is impaired, and so you will not sweat or shiver. REM sleep requires more oxygen ... you are expending more energy. There is more blood flow to the brain, its temperature increases, and your brain waves will become quite busy, resembling a mixture of waking and drowsy patterns. The mind now "wakes," but the wakefulness of the dream state is quite different from that of being truly awake. You primarily respond to signals originating within your own body instead of from the outer world. The strange dream world seems quite normal and acceptable. During this state, you have very poor muscle tone, especially in the head and neck, where you become extremely relaxed. Nerve impulses that otherwise would pass down the spinal cord and out to the muscles are blocked within the spinal cord, so that much of your body is effectively paralyzed. Signals to move may still be sent out from your brain, but they do not get through to your muscles. The only muscles spared are those controlling eye movements, respiration, and hearing. Because the blockade is not complete, some of the stronger signals will get through to the muscles, leading to frequent small twitches of the hands, legs or face. So although REM sleep is very active in terms of metabolic and brain function, you remain fairly still. One theory suggests that, over the course of evolution, REM sleep was an intermediate state between non-REM and waking in which the mind would wake up before being connected to the body. This would allow an animal to go to sleep and obtain the restorative value of non-REM sleep. In this state, with no movement and regular breathing, it would be safe from predators. A sudden waking from non-REM, however, would leave the animal confused and subject to attack. By switching first into REM sleep, the animal’s brain could become more alert, but still disconnected from the muscles to prevent any movement that might alert a predator. Once the animal was sufficiently alert, it would wake fully, the muscle paralysis would disappear, and it could react appropriately to the danger. This checking for danger may still be relevant in humans. We all tend to wake up briefly after an episode of dreaming. At this time, we will notice whether something seems amiss in our environment, i.e., the smell of smoke, sound of footsteps or crying, etc. If all seems well, we simply return to sleep and usually do not remember this waking in the morning. Many young children, however, fail to return to sleep quickly after these normal arousals because something seems wrong to them, such as they feel asleep in a parent’s arms and have awakened in a crib.
A newborn sleeps approximately 16 to 17 hours every day, but only a few hours at a time. By the age of three or four months, the baby sleeps about 15 hours a day and is broken down into four or five sleep times. By six months, nearly all infants have settled down into a continuous nighttime sleep for about 12 hours, plus a daytime nap of an hour or two. Most children still sleep 14 hours a day at a year old, but it dwindles down to 11 or 12 hours by two years old. The afternoon nap generally continues until about age three. From age three to adolescence, children need less and less sleep, rarely napping post toddler phase, sleeping a total of about ten hours. Teenagers sleeps about seven to eight hours, but this is considered a result of academic and social pressures more than a reduction in need. Of course these figures are overly generalized. When it comes to nightly bedtime routine, keep in mind that a pleasant bedtime ritual creates a happy association for the child. She looks forward to going to bed and sleeping instead of becoming fussy. It helps to remind the parents that bedtime equals separation from the parent for the child. He needs cozy, personal time from the parent. The parent is your client. It is the parent that is frustrated. Instill the understanding in the parent that the key to good sleep patterns for his or her child is creating positive, happy associations for the child as he falls asleep. The parent needs suggestions that the sleep she does get is deeply refreshing enabling her to awaken as needed during the night to help recreate the positive bedtime rituals so that the child can return to sleep. This may mean holding, rocking, back rubbing, singing, talking, etc. until he falls back to sleep. Offer a suggestion that every time the child cries or calls out during the night, it is a pleasure to give the child what he needs to feel safe and secure. It is easy to give in this way because whatever sleep she (the parent) has already gotten seems enough. Most of us as adults have forgotten how important it is to have just the right bedtime ritual. It becomes most apparent to us when any of those factors is altered by sleeping away from home. We need our pillow that is just the right softness or fluffiness and our mattress that is just the right firmness. We need our side of the bed, our blankets, our usual sounds, ventilation, and temperature. If our senses are picking up different smells, sounds, textures or air movements, we can’t let go because our mind is busy registering the differences. Imagine falling asleep on your pillow only to awaken with your face against the mattress because your pillow is missing. You’d want your pillow back. But what if it wasn’t just a matter of reaching for it and repositioning it again. What if you were somehow powerless to retrieve it. You’d call out for help. Help your client comprehend this feeling. Often the problem is that the child’s usual bedtime ritual or happy sleep associations are no longer desirable or possible for the parent. The child is too big to hold and rock while standing. Or the family dog that slept on his bed has passed away and the new puppy doesn’t settle in. The child needs a new set of positive, happy bedtime associations. The parent needs to choose what ritual can be realistically practiced with consistency. If the child is old enough, the parent may want to talk about it with the child. Once the new routine has been decided upon, you should hypnotize the client and offer her helpful hypnotic suggestions along the lines of the following: It is easy for you to be patient while your child learns new, happy, bedtime associations. Every minute of your own sleep renews and replenishes your body, mind
and spirit. Your wisdom and love for your child keeps your
emotions even. Giving your child what he needs gives you what
you need. You easily stay focused on what is important,
allowing you to maintain regular meal and nap times. You are able to immediately fall back to sleep
whenever you return to your bed at any time during the night or early morning. It is easy for you to adapt to the sleep
routines of being a parent. When your child whines, it is easy for you to
remember that this is your child’s way of asking for closeness. You can trust your own wisdom regarding your child’s best interests. Sometimes a parent complains of sleep problems in a child that are really rooted in the parent’s unrealistic expectations. If the parent were put to bed way before his natural bedtime, he would also have a hard time going to sleep. If the parent were encouraged to take extra long naps during the day, he too would have a hard time falling asleep at the normal bedtime. If the parent were awakened before his normal waking time to meet another person’s schedule, he too would feel groggy and unable to move quickly to get dressed and ready to leave. |
