How your dreaming is connected to your stress

Wanting to manage the stress in your life better?

Wanting to manage the stress in your life better?

Let’s focus on your dreaming.

Let me explain.

Your REM sleep - that is your dream sleep - is longest in the last stages of the night.

▶ Most of us, due to daily life, go to bed too late.

▶ Most of us due to work life, wake to an alarm.

▶ Most of us do not wake refreshed.

▶ If travelling and jet lagged, REM takes a hit.

If you've gone to bed late, an early alarm is likely to be short changing your REM sleep.

So how does that affect your stress the next day?

REM is the only time during 24 hours where your brain shuts off the stress related chemical noradrenaline (sister to adrenalin which acts on the body). That is time worth preserving.

So if you're getting to bed late, eating late [within 3 hours of bed], caffeinated [caffeine has a 5 hour half life, so that reads as 10 hours in your system] or perhaps drinking alcohol [blood sugar dysregulation that can wake you up and disrupt sleep] - you are short changing all sleep likely but specifically here your REM sleep, creating an environment for stress (emotional dysregulation) the following day.

This is how it works.

REM is overnight therapy. It's the only time that noradrenaline shuts off allowing us to process difficult experiences, like emotional first aid. Our emotional centre - the Amygdala and the memory centre, the hippocampus, can now process difficult experiences.

This critical part of our sleep cycle creates a safe chemical environment.

We know that when the body is feeling calm and energised, that shapes our emotional state. We start to feel more positive and maybe even excited about the challenges that we face, and when we feel positive, that shapes how we focus and our level of presence.

Otherwise if I'm stressed, what happens is the amygdala part of the brain activates.

Some of our strongest and most potentially destructive emotions come from the Amygdala - perhaps anger, sadness, fear, craving and disgust. Unfortunately they are not all accurate and when hijacking our thinking, can cause damage.

One of the fundamental strategies we demonstrate at the Resilience Institute is called Tactical calm. We want to reduce reactivity and restore cognitive space. Long exhalations signal safety and bring us back to state of coherence. Similarly, Box Breathing can keep you calm. Using the breath is one quick and effective way to calm your nervous system.

▶ So remember your sleep.

▶ Protect your dreaming.

▶ Protect your emotional regulation.

▶ Lower your stress.

Viktor E. Frankl famously wrote, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

To find that space, protect your REM sleep.

This newsletter is put together from listening to Dr. Matthew Walker, the renowned neuroscientist, sleep expert, and professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley; as well as key scientific data gathered from the Resilience Institute.

For more about the Resilience Institute and resilience for you and your team, please get in touch. hello@deborahmctaggart.com