Sleep help for burnout - what actually works?

Burnout and poor sleep often fuel each other – becoming a vicious circle that’s hard to crack! Overwhelm and a nervous system stuck in hyperdrive make it harder to relax and sleep, and insomnia always ramps up anxiety and concentration problems.

In my experience, conscientious professionals can de-prioritise sleep for a while, as important deadlines loom. This can become a too-frequent habit. Then they either fall back on a couple of drinks (or more) or over-the-counter sleep medication to help or, on the nights when they can prioritise sleep, they just try too hard. So many of us have smartwatches now that monitor our sleep and this, unfortunately, can just add to the obsession – tracking sleep nightly, worrying about not getting enough and what that will mean. That kind of pressure, on top of an already stressful life, is never going to help you get the rest you need.

But the good news is that the approaches I use (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) have quality evidence supporting their use in improving sleep.

Here I provide a few key pointers, focusing on all-important sleep help for the burnout.

1. Stop Trying to “Win” Sleep

Perfectionism is rife amongst burnt-out people, and one of the biggest traps is turning sleep into another performance metric.

You might think:

• “I need 8 hours or tomorrow will be a disaster.”

• “Look at the time! Why am I still awake?”

• “If I don’t sleep now, I won’t cope.”

  
  

These thoughts are understandable. But, unfortunately, as soon as you spend time with these thoughts, your brain registers that there’s a problem and your brain’s threat system is further activated. The result? Relaxation is further away. Sleep happens when the nervous system feels safe enough to let go.

Think back to the times when you’ve had a bad night of sleep – what was the next day like? Did you manage to work? Usually, people look back and see that, although it might not have been the most productive day or a very enjoyable one, they functioned fine. They got through what they needed to do. So, resist the catastrophising and remind yourself that you have a good (maybe even excellent?) track record of coping when you’ve had ‘insufficient sleep’.

Ideally, we want to convince ourselves that we don’t really care how much we sleep. There are tips below about useful behaviours to let us sleep, but developing this ambivalent attitude is super helpful too.

Your negative thoughts may still come to you, but try to see them as insignificant background radio and gently counter them with more helpful thoughts.

So, instead of: “I must sleep right now.”

Try: “Rest is still useful, even if sleep takes time. I’ll be fine, whatever”

Initially, I often recommend my clients listen to podcasts - nothing too exciting (and definitely not work-related), just entertaining enough to give you something else to focus a busy mind on. Just ensure there’s no screen light on as you listen.

2. Keep a Consistent Wake-Up Time

When you’re exhausted, sleeping in feels so tempting. But regular wake-up and sleep times are a powerful tool, training our body clock to our advantage.

So, even after a poor night:

• Wake up at roughly the same time

• Avoid compensating with long or late naps

• Go to bed at a regular time and when you actually feel ready for sleep

  
  

This helps rebuild a stable sleep rhythm over time.

Beware getting into the vicious circle of napping because you're shattered, then not being able to sleep at night time... then napping the next day again. Your body builds up a ‘sleep drive’ through consistent rising and the time spent awake.

3. Use light to your advantage

You may well be aware that using screens before bedtime is bad news. Before the time of electric lights, we worked around natural shifts in daylight. Morning natural light hits the back of our eyes and signals to our brain to release cortisol, which makes us alert and motivated, and serotonin, which improves mood and focus. Then, reducing daylight in the evening makes us less motivated, leading us to withdraw from activity and fall asleep as cortisol drops and melatonin (the sleep hormone) increases.

Morning: Get some natural light exposure soon after waking. This can just mean having your cuppa in the garden. Note that a window screens out most of the good rays we need, so you do need to be actually outside. This not only helps to wake you up, but it also sets the timer for sleep-associated hormones 14 hours or so later.

Evening: Avoid screens at least for an hour before bedtime. Ideally reduce light before this (to mimic reduced natural light), using only the artificial light that you really need. Blue screen light has the same effect as morning daylight – arousing your brain when we need the opposite to happen!

4. Strengthen the Bed-Sleep connection

As humans, so much of what we learn is by association. We fall asleep in bed when we’ve learnt that this is where we relax. Bed becomes a cue for that relaxation to happen.

But imagine what happens when we are in bed answering emails, scrolling, worrying about tomorrow, exposed to blue light or stressful content. That strong connection becomes broken. Bed is now a cue for lots of alert or anxious behaviours rather than sleep.

So:

Use bed only for the 3 ‘S’s – sleep, sex, sickness

• Go to bed only when sleepy, when your eyes feel heavy.

• If you can’t sleep after around 20 -30 minutes, get up briefly

• Do something calm in dim light

• Return to bed when you feel your eyes closing again

  
  

The goal is to reconnect bed with sleep rather than frustration.

This may feel counterintuitive at first, and may initially involve being up and down for a few nights. However, what this does is rebuild the association of bed with sleep and weaken the association with worrying or other tasks.

5. Consider the bigger picture

Just a few other things to be aware of:

• Exercise is a logical way to ‘use up’ stress hormones, such as cortisol, aiding sleep -can you fit some in if not doing so already?

• Avoid alcohol – it may help you get to sleep, but the quality of your sleep will be badly affected.

• Avoid eating large meals too close to bedtime – this forces your digestive system into action when your body should be winding down. This can disrupt your natural circadian rhythms and sleep quality.

• Switch to decaff? – advice on when in the day to stop drinking caffeine varies but, for people with sleep problems, it should be at least 8 hours before bedtime. On average, caffeine takes about 10 hours to be completely out of your system, with a half-life of 3-6 hours. There is a wide individual variation, though, so it’s always worth some experimentation.

• Stay hydrated - It’s easy to find yourself at bedtime before you know it, having not drunk enough through the day. It might not be the most obvious factor, but dehydration prompts more cortisol release, which keeps brain and body alert. Dehydration can also trigger muscle cramps, tension headaches and restless sleep.

• Nutrition matters - Eating a balanced, largely unprocessed diet improves sleep quality in several ways. Firstly, it stabilises blood sugar, meaning fewer wake-ups from sugar crashes. It also promotes natural melatonin production and reduces the nighttime digestive discomfort that can result from heavy processed foods.

As a last note, don’t worry if this seems overwhelming – just start somewhere. Consider this a project, a gradual change of habits rather than an overnight transformation (tempting though they always are!)

 And, again, remember that we’re not aiming for perfection here, just a balance between improving sleep-related behaviours with some acceptance that you’ll cope if it doesn’t work (which ironically, makes it more likely it will!)