Sleep for positivity

There are a couple of quotes around sleep floating around that have lots of bravado but little veracity. You may have heard “sleep is for the weak” or “sleep, how I loathe those little slices of death”. There are more along this line like “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” but they all show a lack of understanding as to what life is and what sleep is. In truth sleep is a positive state of regeneration and creation on a mental and physical level. It is part of the yin-yang, the balance that underlies life and a new study has shown that not getting enough sleep, and disrupting sleep, can create negative thoughts.

Negative thoughts are entirely appropriate on occasion but for the researchers conducting the new study having “negative thoughts” was defined as having “an abstract, perseverative, negative focus on one’s problems and experiences that is difficult to control”. Yes, before you rush off to Google it, “perseverative” is a word…it’s a clumsy, jargonistic, arcane word that you wouldn’t use in everyday conversation, but it means repetition that is uncontrollable.

People who experience excessive negative thoughts tend to worry too much about the past or future and to experience unwanted intrusive thoughts. These people are likely to experience a generalised anxiety disorder or a depressive disorder and they often have sleep problems. So these researchers wanted to see whether lack of sleep may be the problem.

To study this they had subjects complete questionnaires that measured how much they worried, ruminated, or obsessed about something (negative thinking). They then asked the subjects to identify whether they were “morning or evening types”, whether they have regular sleep hours, or whether they tend to have a later sleep-wake schedule.

It emerged that people who slept for shorter periods and who went to bed later experienced more repetitive negative thoughts. People who went to sleep later and identified as “evening types” were also more likely to have negative thought patterns.

It might just be that readjustment of sleeping patterns could be an easy and early intervention for anxiety, depression, and negative thinking.

People who spruik the lack of need for sleep probably won’t be reading this of course, they will likely be somewhere snarling at the world through the mists of their dysphoria, but it is comforting to think that they too may only be a cuddle with a teddy and a eight hours away from a more positive world view.