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The information on this website is designed to offer self-care tips and recommendations based on evidence-based research and literature from professionals in each field. It is not intended to diagnose or treat any specific medical condition. Please consult with your healthcare provider before making any health-related decisions.
According to recent CDC data, 1 in 3 Americans reading this is not achieving enough quality sleep. But there’s hope. Lack of quality sleep can have severe negative impacts both mentally and physically. In working to improve my sleep quality and the sleep quality of the clients I treat, I have found that we all can train our brains to influence us to fall asleep quickly and stay asleep throughout the night through stimulus control. Keep reading, and I will describe how it works and provide some stimulus control techniques that can significantly improve your sleep efficiency.
What Is Stimulus Control?
Stimulus control for sleep is a set of specific behavioral strategies that help us form a strong connection between our bed and sleep. The aim is to condition our brain to recognize the bed as a signal for sleep, thereby enhancing sleep quality and reducing insomnia. This technique taps into the brain’s natural associative networks, like interconnected systems of neurons that link related ideas, experiences, and concepts.
These networks, formed through learning and memory, establish and strengthen associations between stimuli and responses over time. They significantly influence various bodily systems, triggering emotional, physiological, and behavioral responses. In the context of sleep, these networks can be harnessed through stimulus control to influence the brain’s chemical and physiological changes that promote sleep.
As we begin to fall asleep, several chemical and physiological changes occur in the brain and body. These include a change in brain activity, heart rate, respiratory rate, and the release of neurochemicals and hormones. These changes cause our eyes to become heavy, and we gradually drift into the first stage of sleep. Through stimulus control, we employ behavioral strategies that cause the brain to associate these strategies with sleep, empowering us to influence the chemical and physiological changes that induce sleep. Â
Stimulus Control Techniques
Below, you’ll find a list of stimulus control techniques. When practiced consistently, these techniques help establish the associative networks that promote sleep. It may take weeks of regular practice before these new networks become ingrained in your brain. Remember, everyone’s brain is unique, and the time it takes to restructure and organize these networks can vary.
Only use your bed for sleep and sex. If we only use our bed for sleeping or sex, over time, the brain begins to associate the bed with sleep, influencing drowsiness as soon as we lay down in our bed. It is also important to avoid sleeping in other places and only reserve sleep for your bed.
Go to bed only when you are tired. Going to bed when you’re not sleepy and staying awake while lying in bed prevents your brain from associating the bed with sleep.
Avoid phone use 1-hour before bed and avoid using it in bed. We do not want to associate the bed with anything we usually do while awake. The lights within phones impact melatonin development and prevent sleep as the brain actively focuses on the phone’s content. Additionally, by routinely stopping phone use one hour before bed, an associative network can be developed to increase sleepiness once phone use has ceased and you enter your bed.
The 15-Minute Rule. If you find it taking longer than 15 minutes to fall asleep or go back to sleep when waking up in the middle of the night, immediately get out of bed. This will reinforce the brain’s association between the bed and sleep. When you get out of bed, do something relaxing until you feel sleepy. Do not allow yourself to become frustrated that you can’t fall asleep, and Do Not stare at the clock. Engage in relaxing activities such as reading puzzles, folding laundry, etc.
Choose an activity to conduct at the same time each night before bed. If you pick an activity you will do every night before crawling in bed, you can develop another associative network. This must be a calming, relaxing activity, such as letting the dog out to go to the bathroom one last time, closing the blinds, or finishing a crossword puzzle.
Many of us struggle with achieving good quality sleep because, over time, we have poorly trained our brains not to associate our bed with sleep. However, it’s through stimulus control and the brain’s built-in associative networks that we can retrain our brains in a way that influences the changes in our body that cause us to fall asleep.
I challenge you to begin implementing these strategies now. I also challenge you not to become frustrated, as it takes time for the brain to reestablish these neural networks. I promise you that if you stay consistent and stick to the routine, you will find that you can fall asleep fast and stay asleep throughout the night.
