In this episode, we delve into the complexities of sleep disruption and chronic insomnia with the expertise of Dr. Kat Lederle, a leading sleep scientist. Dr. Kat explains the stark differences between occasional poor sleep and long-term insomnia, emphasizing that attempting to control sleep can exacerbate the problem. She shares impactful stories from her work and offers practical tips for mid-career professionals to create an enjoyable, restful sleep environment. Join us to uncover strategies to naturally improve sleep and enhance overall well-being.

Speaker Links:

Website: https://drkatsleep.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkatsleep/ or @drkatsleep

Dig a little deeper:

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30-minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed and it's a fabulous place to begin a joy-at-work redesign.

https://www.midlifeunstuck.com/derailed

I've never met a professional who doesn't sometimes

struggle with sleep due to work demands.

But insomnia is a whole different ballgame.

And that's why I invited one of the world's leading sleep scientists, Dr.

Kat Lederle, to share her insights into the difference between sleep disruption

and insomnia, and how attempting to control our sleep is the worst thing

we could do and what to do instead.

Let's dive in.

Dr. Kat Lederle: Hello, I'm Dr.

Kat and I'm a sleep therapist and sleep scientist.

And I work with people who suffer with their sleep.

Fabulous.

Dr.

Kat, I have been dying to ask you these questions.

So I've got three questions for you.

As a busy, midcareer professional.

We've all experienced periods where sleep is difficult, but insomnia

is a whole different ballgame.

Can you explain a little bit about why that is?

Dr. Kat Lederle: Yeah as you just said, we all experience poor sleep, at some

point in our lives and typically it's related to stress, but it could also be,

having a cold and so on and so forth.

And that sort of short lived a few nights and then normal sleep returns.

However, with chronic insomnia, It's the word chronic, right?

There are long term sleep problems, and it's defined as having a problem

sleeping more than three nights per week, and it's been going for more

than three months, and that obviously has an impact on our daily life.

Oh my gosh, that definition is really interesting.

What do you see?

What are some of the most common impacts of insomnia that play out in the lives and

work of professionals that you work with?

Dr. Kat Lederle: Yeah very good question.

And I would say just first off that it, it presents slightly differently.

The sleep problem is a little different from person to person and also the impact.

But overall, what I see is an impact on performance and performance at work,

but I would say all areas of life.

People who are retired, for example, they still can feel an impact on their

performance, their ability to show up.

It affects and lowers our self confidence, our confidence in, that

we can do a piece of work or task, but also it affects how we look.

Or it's certainly our perception of our own looks.

It impacts on our physical health, right?

And there are myriads of studies showing exactly what my clients tell

me, you know how their health can be impacted upon it also impacts our

emotions our emotional well being.

So how we show up in life, how we show up to our loved ones, to our

friends, to our work colleagues, right?

And also, and I think this is really interesting for mid level career

potential leaders we know that lack of sleep impacts on leaders and

how they interact with their team.

They become less charismatic and unfortunately they become more

critical, harsh, or abusive.

So there's a whole range of ways in which sleep, or rather lack of sleep impacts us.

Wow, so there's barely an area of life that

is not touched by poor sleep.

Can you share one or two little stories of people that you've worked with, who've

experienced the change, the sort of before and after, what difference did

it make getting control of their sleep?

Dr. Kat Lederle: That's a good question.

There's also something important that you just said, getting control of their sleep.

And in a way, that actually is the problem that we try and control our sleep.

Now, sleep is a biological process, and that process is

actually outside of our control.

And what I mean is we can adopt all the healthiest sleep habits and follow sleep

hygiene rules and cut out all the coffee and have the strictest healthiest diet, do

all those things, go on the marathon run, to tie ourselves out, all of that stuff.

And still We may be unable to sleep.

So the more we try and control sleep by doing certain things, not doing other

things, often that leads to a huge amount of expectation and pressure.

Okay, I've done all this.

I followed the rules.

I've done the right things.

Surely I must sleep now.

And with that pressure and that expectation comes attention and

comes some physiological arousal.

Right.

And that then will make it harder to sleep.

Now I'm not saying having healthy sleep habits is a bad thing.

It's more how we apply them.

It's the attitude behind that.

And that brings me, for example, to a female client who had been

suffering with poor sleep for maybe sort of 15 years on off.

And it would get particularly worse if there was something big the next day.

It may be a report was due or a personal event like attending a wedding or catching

an early flight for business meeting.

Whenever that happened, there was this pressure to sleep and what

will happen, if I don't sleep and if I don't sleep, I won't be able

to do X, Y, Z, I won't be able to do what's needed or demanded of me.

And that client had done all these things to control her sleep, stop

seeing her friends later on in the evening, that healthy diet,

going to the gym, all of that.

And nothing really happened when she woke up, she was awake

in the middle of the night.

And so what we did is, we first of all explored what actually happens at

night, when she woke up, and it turned out that her mind was really busy.

Busy with stuff to do, but also more self critical thoughts, sort of nasty

thoughts, telling her off for, how she would be unable to do certain things and

so on and so forth if she didn't sleep.

We also looked at how poor sleep impacted her during the day.

And then we really figured out, okay, what did she do in order to control

her sleep and then we started to let go of all of these things that she

intended to do to control her sleep.

And what we learned was, first of all, at night, when she woke up and

these self critical thoughts would come to stop fighting them, distance

herself and letting these thoughts be.

Now, all of these changes obviously took a bit of time, like any behavioral change

does, but her courage to not run away or not try to avoid all of these thoughts

and allowing herself to simply lie in bed and rest, what that did is it lowered

that physiological arousal, that tension that I mentioned earlier on, right?

Because she allowed herself to.

to just lie there and rest.

And in doing so, as I just said, she lowered her arousal and that is

when sleepiness could come back in.

She started to fall asleep more quickly after waking up around

three o'clock and then eventually slept through the night again.

Wow, I had not understood that control mechanism that we like

to have is actually counterproductive.

That is fascinating.

So my final question, if someone is listening, they're at a midpoint in

their career, they are busy as anything, they're doing the normal juggle, what

can they do tonight or today or tomorrow that could practically help them start

a journey to enjoying better sleep?

Dr. Kat Lederle: Yeah.

That's a lovely one to enjoying sleep, right?

So I think treat sleep exactly as that, as something to be enjoyed

rather than a must have, right?

Rather than another thing, another behavior or another task

you have to perform at, right?

So really treating it as, okay, now this is my time for my body,

for my brain, To rest and relax and my body and brain will do that.

I don't have to do anything other than get myself into bed at the time.

That's right for me.

Create a sleep friendly environment, meaning that it's quiet, that it's

slightly cooler and that it's dark.

So being mindful of using electronic devices close up to bedtime.

I'm not saying you can't ever do that.

It's just being mindful of what you use, when you use, what you look at.

And also during the day, don't forget you have the entire day from the

moment you wake up in the morning to prepare for your nighttime sleep.

So considering your diet, considering, alcohol intake, caffeine intake,

movement, Spend time outdoors in natural daylight, all of that can help you, but

I think fundamentally you capture that so very well is it's about enjoying

going to sleep at night, letting go of that pressure to sleep well and rather

allowing body and mind to rest to just be, and that's the easiest way actually

to fall asleep without any control.

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my

Life Satisfaction Assessment.

It's a 30 minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas

of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you time.

I call it D.

It's a fabulous place to begin a joy at work redesign.