When I look at the clock while lying in bed tossing and turning, I get more and more anxious, and sometimes I can’t sleep anymore. “What if I can’t sleep!” “I have an important exam tomorrow!” Sometimes these words run through my head and I feel compelled to go to sleep.
For these people, ‘Today’s Psychology’, an online specialized media for psychotherapy in the United States, recently introduced the ‘paradox intention’ technique.
The pressure to sleep causes a person’s autonomic nervous system to fight, run, or freeze. You become more nervous and it becomes very difficult to fall asleep. If you tell yourself to go to sleep, on the contrary, you will not be able to sleep and will become anxious. Clinicians use the paradoxical intention technique to help sleep.
Paradoxical intention is a psychotherapeutic technique that directs undesirable behavior to continue or make it worse. The goal is to make the customer feel in control of their situation.
Psychologists Ralph M. Turner and Michael Asher have used this technique for people who have trouble sleeping. A person with a sleep disorder was instructed to stay awake for a long time. They concluded that people with early sleep insomnia have high performance anxiety and can fall asleep by removing the stress of falling asleep.
This technique may help with other disorders as well. It has proven to be a useful technique for people suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder, phobias, and other anxiety disorders. For example, encourage someone who washes their hands for too long to tell themselves, “Keep washing your hands and never stop.” It sounds like the opposite of what you want, but it can help you reach your goals more effectively.
I tell myself not to sleep no matter what
△ Tell yourself that you need to be as sleepy as possible tomorrow.
Tell yourself not to close your eyes
Reporter Lee Ji-won [email protected]
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