New Home Issue #77

The Importance of Sleep

Published Wednesday, May 1st, 2024

Written by Connor Molloy, Psychotherapist, MSW, LICSW

Sleep is the time your body recovers from the effects of stress.  Traumatic stress, from experiences in Afghanistan, and daily stress, from the complications of resettling in Minnesota, both cause activity in your body, such as increasing your heart rate and appetite to stay hyper-energized.  Over time, this leads to things like high blood pressure and weight gain.  Getting good sleep is shown to lower weight, lower the risk of heart problems, and improve concentration and the ability to learn.  However, getting good sleep in a new environment can prove challenging.

Therapists that work at the Center for Victims of Torture work every day with new arrivals to Minnesota affected by conflict and other violations of human rights.  These clients often have a disruption to their normal routines, difficulty falling asleep, and experience nightmares.  These therapists love to work with clients to improve their sleep, and these are some pieces of advice that their clients have found useful in the past:

1. Try to get things that light up out of the bedroom (like smart phones and digital clocks), because these lights can activate the nervous system.  Looking at the clock can also be frustrating when you feel like you slept for hours, but it turns out to be minutes.  Instead of focusing on the quantity of sleep, focus on getting back to a relaxed state so you can fall asleep again.  If you can’t imagine not having your phone, you can turn the screen to a red light.
2. No bad news after six pm.  Catch up with news from back home earlier in the day, distressing stories, stressful movies, and doom scrolling mess with nightmares and sleeping.
3. Make the bed sacred.  If possible, no working on the bed or engaging in anything stressful like phone calls or reading. Keep sheets clean and try to make your bed as comfortable for you as possible.  Make it a place your body associates only with sleeping.
4. In the evenings substitute, black, green, and white tea, which all contain caffeine that makes sleep difficult, with chamomile, mint, lavender, or  passionflower, which can help you relax.
5. Relax your body with counting exercises.  Try counting down from 100, going slowly, about one number per second.  Or try 4-7-8 breathing: breathing in for four seconds, holding for seven seconds, breathing out for eight seconds, and repeating that pattern.  Some people do this after their Isha prayer to make it a pattern as they wind down their evening.
6. Talk to your doctor.  There are supplements like melatonin and magnesium that help with falling asleep.  There are also medications that specifically target nightmares.  Addiction is a common worry, so you can start on a low dose.  

You don’t need to do all of these things, but trying some that may help sleep can have a ripple effect for many additional parts of your health and well-being.