Sleep has a pretty significant impact on our mental health. When we’re not sleeping well, our mood, energy, ability to tolerate stress, eating habits and even our motivation to exercise can all be affected.
And during perimenopause, getting good-quality sleep can become more challenging.
Changes in estrogen can contribute to disrupted sleep and more frequent night wakings. Hot flashes and night sweats can also make it harder to stay asleep. For some women, waking up at 3 or 4 a.m. and realizing they’re wide awake becomes a frustratingly familiar part of the night.
And then the cycle can start to feed itself.
Poor sleep can make you more irritable, anxious or emotionally overwhelmed the next day. When everything already feels harder, another restless night can start to feel like something you really need to fix. Which, can make falling back asleep even harder.
One strategy used in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) is cognitive restructuring. Essentially, this involves noticing the thoughts that may be adding to the problem and looking at whether there is another, more helpful way of thinking about the situation.
For example, you might wake up in the middle of the night and immediately think:
I need to get back to sleep.
I have to be up in three hours.
Tomorrow is going to be awful.
Why can't I just sleep?
Understandably, those thoughts can create more pressure and frustration at exactly the time when your body needs to settle.
One alternative is to shift the goal from “I need to sleep” to “I can rest.”
You’re not trying to convince yourself that being awake is wonderful. And you’re not pretending that sleep doesn’t matter. You’re simply taking away some of the pressure to make sleep happen.
Even if you’re lying awake, you can still allow your body and mind to be quiet and restful.
This is something I’ve been experimenting with myself because I’m no stranger to the early-morning wake-up. Recently, I woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep. Rather than checking the clock and calculating how many hours of sleep I had left, I reminded myself that resting was still worthwhile.
And honestly it took some of the pressure off and I fell back asleep.
Now, I realize one successful night doesn't exactly qualify as scientific evidence. But I’ll take the win.
If you regularly struggle with perimenopause and sleep problems, it may be worth paying attention not only to how much you’re sleeping, but also to what happens in your mind when you wake up.
Are you immediately worrying about the next day? Checking the clock? Getting frustrated with yourself? Trying harder and harder to fall asleep?
Sometimes, changing the conversation in your head can be a small but meaningful place to start.
The next time you wake up, you might try replacing “I need to sleep” with something as simple as:
“I don’t have to make sleep happen. I can rest.”
And then see what happens.
If sleep disruption, stress or changes associated with perimenopause are affecting your mood and day-to-day life, counselling can be a useful place to explore what’s going on and develop practical strategies that fit your situation. I offer counselling in Port Moody and virtually across BC, with a focus on women’s mental health and life transitions. You can also book a free 15-minute consultation to see if counselling feels like a good fit.