SuZir
Well-Known Member
My difficult child's team (difficult child is basically minimum wage pro athlete) has hired a professional to help the team handle difficult child's issues and work with difficult child in certain problem areas as well as work as his mental coach. difficult child shared one interesting trick this mental coach has been teaching him to help with his sleep issues. I too tend to have issues on getting sleep and found this interesting and have decided to try it. Have any of you tried anything like this before and has it worked?
Idea is to manipulate state of mind (or what would be better word, I can't come up with a good English word for what I'm looking for.) Basically you purposely build mental triggers to get you to desired state of mind. For difficult child they are working for example on him learning to dress the 'just right' emotional state for the game and practice simultaneously with dressing up his gear and also undressing it with the gear. With sleep it goes something like this:
-First you either pick a memory or create an image of perfect falling the sleep situation. From that moment there you are just about to fall sleep.
-Next you start to make it livelier. You think about details, if it is memory and you can't remember, you just make them up. Think it through every sense. How it smells, feels on your skin, what you hear etc. Just to make it very lifelike.
-Make a connection between this image and falling sleep stronger. Think it when you are peacefully in your bed and already starting to fall asleep. First don't think about it at times you have trouble falling sleep, just when you are actually very near to succeed in getting sleep.
-When connection between falling a sleep and this image is strong enough, you can start to use it. It should work like a trigger. I think most of us here are very familiar to small triggers that can rise an awful anxiety in us and this should work a same way. Just starting to think about this image should trigger a sleepiness and getting to that state there you are just about to fall asleep.
No idea if this work, but to me it sounds something that can not do any harm at least, so I'm going to start building this kind of image. I can then tell you month from here, if I have had any success.
Idea is to manipulate state of mind (or what would be better word, I can't come up with a good English word for what I'm looking for.) Basically you purposely build mental triggers to get you to desired state of mind. For difficult child they are working for example on him learning to dress the 'just right' emotional state for the game and practice simultaneously with dressing up his gear and also undressing it with the gear. With sleep it goes something like this:
-First you either pick a memory or create an image of perfect falling the sleep situation. From that moment there you are just about to fall sleep.
-Next you start to make it livelier. You think about details, if it is memory and you can't remember, you just make them up. Think it through every sense. How it smells, feels on your skin, what you hear etc. Just to make it very lifelike.
-Make a connection between this image and falling sleep stronger. Think it when you are peacefully in your bed and already starting to fall asleep. First don't think about it at times you have trouble falling sleep, just when you are actually very near to succeed in getting sleep.
-When connection between falling a sleep and this image is strong enough, you can start to use it. It should work like a trigger. I think most of us here are very familiar to small triggers that can rise an awful anxiety in us and this should work a same way. Just starting to think about this image should trigger a sleepiness and getting to that state there you are just about to fall asleep.
No idea if this work, but to me it sounds something that can not do any harm at least, so I'm going to start building this kind of image. I can then tell you month from here, if I have had any success.