Can self-hypnosis help me get a better night’s sleep?

Anxiety. Stress. Insomnia. Unhealthy habits. There are so many different things that can cause us to get a poor night’s sleep. Could self-hypnosis be the answer you’re looking for?

Sleep – how much we’re getting, and the quality of that sleep – can have a huge impact on our overall health and well-being. When we don’t get enough of it, we can be left feeling exhausted, demotivated, and easily overwhelmed. When we struggle to get a good, restful night’s sleep over a prolonged period of time, it can even lead to more serious health conditions such as depression, diabetes, or heart disease.

Yet getting a good night’s sleep isn’t always that easy. Sleep disorders such as insomnia, night terrors, and even teeth grinding can lead to a disturbed night’s sleep or hours laying awake. While for others, anxiety disorders or day-to-day stress can build up over time, affecting not only your waking hours, but also your sleep too.

Why am I struggling to sleep?

The reasons why we struggle to sleep can vary greatly from person to person. You may be aware that something specific is causing you restless nights, such as a big project or upcoming work presentation that you are feeling anxious about. However you may be unaware of underlying causes or feelings of stress, anxiety, or even bad habits that are contributing to your difficulty in getting a restful night’s sleep.

Poor quality sleep can cause our anxiety levels to increase, creating an unhealthy, unhelpful cycle that you may struggle to break away from. You may even start to dread going to bed, as you anticipate a poor night’s sleep before you have begun.

What is self-hypnosis, and how can it help?

In essence, self-hypnosis is a relaxation technique that can help to open your mind to new ideas or thought processes, helping you to change how you think and react to certain situations or events. Hypnosis allows you to reach a relaxed state where you can use positive suggestions to introduce new, more healthy or helpful thoughts or ideas. Over time, this can lead to positive changes in your behaviour.

As hypnotherapist Fiona Lamb explains to Happiful, “People underestimate the power of our conscious mind but it influences so much of what we do and we are a product of everything that has ever happened to us. Hypnotherapy allows us to work with the unconscious parts of the mind and the parts that consciously, you’re not aware of.”

Hypnotherapist Linda Mortimer explains how we can learn to use self-hypnosis to our advantage.

“We can all learn how to use it to our advantage. This happens when we combine the natural state of hypnosis, or trance, with the power of suggestion. It is the suggestion to your subconscious mind to let go of whatever habit, behaviour or thought that is holding you back.

“Self-hypnosis is a highly effective way of bringing about change at your own convenience. It can be used anywhere, at any time. Self-hypnosis is such a wonderful and effective way of taking control of your problems. Just keep practicing it until it becomes natural and easy, and enjoy the benefits.”

If you’ve never tried self-hypnosis before, this simple introductory guide can help you to get started.

Working with a professional

If you have a sleep disorder, are having trouble with self-hypnosis, or would like the additional support of a trained, qualified expert, working with a hypnotherapist could be for you. Hypnotherapists can help you to enter a state of deep relaxation (hypnosis), allowing your subconscious to be more open to suggestion.

Using a variety of different techniques, they can then help to introduce more positive suggestions that can help you to subconsciously react differently to sleep. This can help you to feel less anxious or nervous about going to sleep, introduce healthy bedtime habits like going screen-free for an hour before you go to sleep, and more.

Hypnotherapist Caroline Evans explains how solution focused hypnotherapy can help to improve your sleep. 

Working with a hypnotherapist online or in person can have just as positive of an impact. Hypnotherapists will often teach self-hypnosis techniques as part of their sessions, to help you continue to reinforce the ideas that were introduced during the session.

To find a hypnotherapist near you, enter your location in the search bar below, or click the link below it to search for online hypnotherapists across the country. To find out more about what happens in the room during hypnotherapy, check out this great article from Happiful on the truth about hypnotherapy: what really happens in the therapy room?