Too much time in bed may cause insomnia
Strange but true: one major contributor to insomnia is allowing too much time for sleep.
As one example, if you find you fall asleep easily, sleep reasonably well through the night, but are concerned that you consistently awaken “too early” and can’t fall back asleep — you may in fact just need less sleep than you think you need.
The myth of 8 hours may be a one reason for this. We often hear this number repeated as the ideal amount of sleep we “should” get each night. But when it comes to sleep, there is nothing magical about 8 hours. That’s the myth — thinking anything less than 8 hours is not normal and results in less than optimal performance the next day.
The truth is there is no “normal” — and there is no predetermined set amount of sleep you or anyone else is “supposed” to get. Fixating rigidly on 8 or any other number may in fact contribute to excessive worry about the idea of sleep, and such worry is a major contributor to insomnia.
A critical question to ask is this: is your performance the following day adversely affected? If you think you might have insomnia but feel no grogginess, fatigue, or irritability when awake, then you may just need less sleep than you think you need.
To sleep better long term, there is only one number to focus on: what’s right for you, and the interactive sleep logs in the Sleep Training System will help you determine that.
The STS’s sleep logs enable you to track and better understand your unique sleep patterns and needs each night over several week period. Using these methods, you will learn how to progressively adapt and adjust your sleep timing to best fit your own unique sleep system.
Sleep timing techniques are just one part of the comprehensive set of sleep tools you’ll use in the STS. These methods have proven to help many insomniacs sleep better long term without the use of drugs, and to achieve optimal daytime performance. For more on this, see the Sleep Timing section of the STS.
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