Narrative reframing for sleep
The shorter you sleep, the shorter your life span. ―Matt Walker
👥 Serves: 1 person
🎚 Difficulty: Medium
⏳ Total time: Ongoing
🥣 Ingredients: “At the beach” story PDF, Book “Stories for Getting Back to Sleep” by Diane Gillespie (if you’re curious to find out more about it!)
🤓 Wholebeing Domains: Awareness, Positive Emotion, Rest, Ritualising
💪 Wholebeing Skills: Calm, Centring, Focus, Mindfulness, Peacefulness, Relaxation, Sleep, Storytelling
Narrative reframing for sleep
📝 Description
Stories for getting back to sleep.
In our recipe “CBT strategies to help you to sleep”, we introduced the practice of narrative reframing for sleeping purposes, which, according to Educational Psychologist Diane Gillespie, “is about crafting sleep scenarios designed to help you fall back to sleep in the middle of the night.” This is what the book Stories for Getting Back to Sleep is all about. The following recipe, narrative reframing for sleep, showcases one such story by Diane, titled “At the beach” which you can download here. You can read the stories at any time, but they are designed to help you get back to sleep in the middle of the night.
👣 Steps
Step 1 – Find a story that works for you
This recipe showcases one story from Diane’s book, but there are 15 more and it is important that you find a story that works for you.
Step 2 – Engage the senses
Use all of your senses to engage with the story bodily. You want to smell the salty water, you want to hear the train whistle, you want to feel the soft sheets on your hand.
Step 3 – Learn the story
Learn the story so you can remember the details when you wake up at night. This way you don’t have to turn the light on and read the story, but you can run through the sequence in your mind as if it were a movie.
Step 4 – Go right into the story
When you wake up in the middle of the night, go right into the story. Imagine the sequence of events and linger on all details.
Step 5 – Go back to the story
Find a signal to help you return to the story if you get distracted and get out of the sequence. You might want to touch your cheek, bend your knees… Whatever might help you to bring your awareness back to the story.