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In our complicated lives in a complicated world, it is not uncommon to experience <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780128153734000022?via%3Dihub" target=_blank>sleep challenges</a>. Fortunately, there is hope and help.

We behavioral sleep specialists have learned a lot over the years about individualizing care, empowering patients and incorporating customized psychological strategies. On a self-help basis, you may want to approach changes as experiments that you fine-tune and adapt to your needs.

Here are my top five behavioral and psychological tips for a fresh start toward better sleep in the new year, spanning five categories — sleep drive, circadian rhythm, sleep hygiene, overthinking and pre-bed activity. Sleep strategies often work best in combination, collectively tilting the scale toward improvement.

These tips are meant to be educational and are not a substitute for health care. It is always smart to seek evaluation by a sleep physician if you have concerning issues.

Sleep drive, also called “homeostatic sleep drive” or “sleep pressure,” is one of <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jsr.12371" target=_blank>two</a> key physiological determinants of propensity to sleep. We accumulate sleep drive over the course of the day, and it only begins to dissipate when we sleep at night.

This is my top tip. The purpose of this short-term experiment is to deepen your sleep and limit the number of wakings and the duration of wakeful periods in the middle of the night. It should not leave you sleep-deprived.

For several consecutive nights (up to two weeks), adopt fixed, easily sustained guardrails on your sleep (for example, 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.). This is not the familiar advice to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. Go to sleep when you feel ready and wake when you like as long as no sleep occurs outside the guardrails.

Most of my patients elect a seven- or 7½-hour permissible interval. Don’t try to alter your circadian rhythm with this technique — so, for example, night owls will start and end later. Don’t sleep outside the stably timed bookends even if you have a bad night.

You can always compress more (or less) in fine-tuning experiments. If successful, you can ultimately implement the schedule a little less strictly, ideally without waking to an alarm clock.

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Circadian rhythm — when, in the 24-hour day, our bodies are inclined to sleep — is the other key physiological determinant of sleep.

Strongly dim and restrict the wavelengths of any light in the middle of the night. Limiting light exposure is not just important in the <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001571" target=_blank>lead-up to bed</a>. Light in the middle of the night, when our eyes are dark-adapted and when our biological clocks are <a href="https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1113/jphysiol.2003.040477" target=_blank>especially sensitive</a>, conveys a potent “sunlight” signal to our primitive biological clocks, shifting our internal time zones in ways disruptive to sleep and other coordinated physiological processes.

The blue (short-wavelength) end of the spectrum — a component even of white light — is also best avoided in the middle of the night, at least in part because of its <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2012.2987" target=_blank>preferential absorption</a> by the photopigment melanopsin, which <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jpi.12562" target=_blank>mediates</a> suppression of the darkness hormone melatonin. But lights of longer wavelength, if intense enough, can have a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01791-7" target=_blank>comparable effect</a> on melanopsin and circadian rhythm. Most light sources emit a generous spectrum, so it is the combination of blue-blocking and dimming that matters.

Darkness is ideal through the night, but if you need light to read or move about, make sure that the light — regardless of source — is dimmed in the extreme (to just above eyestrain level) and that it is blue-blocked by using red or orange bulbs or effective <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/04/21/how-to-sleep-earlier/" target=_blank>blue-blocking glasses</a>.

Sleep hygiene comprises environmental conditions and habitual behaviors affecting sleep, such as room temperature and caffeine consumption.

Limit alcohol at night. As a central nervous system depressant, alcohol can relax you and help you fall asleep. Unfortunately, it alters <a href="https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/B9780444626196000240" target=_blank>sleep staging</a> and is notorious for causing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/01/05/alcohol-sleep-impact-dry-january/" target=_blank>light, restless, fragmented sleep</a> and wakefulness as it wears off. It can also worsen sleep apnea. While the conventional advice is to limit intake and to avoid it altogether in the three to four hours before sleep, I never stop being surprised by how often someone’s one glass of wine with dinner ends up being a culprit in their wakefulness.

Overthinking can broadly include thought content, pace, intrusiveness and relentlessness.

Use soothing distraction. Compete with your default thoughts by repeatedly and nonjudgmentally returning your attention to an alternative, soothing focus. Peaceably coexist alongside your thoughts, letting them recede into the background rather than pushing them away.

Try This: An audio course from The Washington Post on improving your sleep.

The object of focus can be word-based to compete with the narrative in your mind, but it can also be visual or somatic (or even tactile).

Foci that you conjure within your own mind allow you to remain in the dark and not have to fuss with a book or audio player, but they may not last long enough or be distracting enough; however, they can work surprisingly quickly.

Examples of such interior techniques are visualizations (such as floating down a gentle river on a raft at night, wrapped in a blanket), mindful awareness of the in and out of your breathing, alphabet games (thinking of a mammal that begins with every letter of the alphabet except X, or naming the states by initial letter) and making up stories.

Techniques originating outside your imagination include reading or listening to gentle audiobooks or lectures or relaxation recordings (for instance, yoga nidra for muscle relaxation) if they last long enough.

Try not to choose content or a method that keeps you awake. Try to relinquish any goal orientation about sleep. I wrote about a number of techniques for overthinking <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/08/18/overthinking-insomnia-worry-sleep-strategies/" target="_blank">here</a>.

This category might include, among other things, wind-down routines, bedtime rituals, and decisions about when to come to bed and when to declare a moratorium on activities such as checking email and the news.

Finish everything before you get sleepy. It’s a bit punishing to start to feel drowsy on the couch and then have to disrupt that process to shut off lights, traipse to the bathroom, take meds, put on pajamas and so on. It’s also alerting such that when you do get into bed, your body may no longer be ready and you may create unwanted associations between bed and (frustrated) wakefulness.

6. Extra help: Self-talk for special circumstances

If you have ADHD: “You deserve rest and sleep even if you haven’t accomplished everything.”

If you have anxiety about sleep: “It’s not your job to sleep.”

If you have OCD: “That’s just the OCD talking. It can wait until tomorrow.”

If you have PTSD: “May you know that you are safe. May you be at peace.”

If you are under excruciating stress: “Rest now, love. We’ll suit up for battle tomorrow. Relief will come.”

Lisa Strauss, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in private practice in the Boston area. She specializes in sleep disorders.

We welcome your comments on this column at <a href="mailto:OnYourMind@washpost.com">OnYourMind@washpost.com</a>.

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University of Pennsylvania, PhD in Psychology

Lisa Strauss is a licensed clinical psychologist in the Boston area.

Lisa Strauss

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