145. 7 Steps for Getting Better Sleep feat. Nicole Shallow
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Today's guest is Nicole Shallow— a sleep expert, behavior coach, and public speaker who works to help others develop habits that ultimately improve their overall quality of life. In this episode, we discuss signs that you might be struggling to get good sleep, why teenagers often struggle most with getting good sleep, an ideal sleep schedule for teens and how teens can begin to try out this schedule, why getting good sleep is so important for your mental health, what to do during the day to get better sleep at night and the optimal nighttime routine for good sleep, and popular sleep myths debunked.
Nicole's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourbehaviourgal/
Mentioned In The Episode…
+ EP Your Foolproof Guide to a Good Night's Sleep (+ 2 Guided Sleep Meditation Practices)
SHOP GUEST RECOMMENDATIONS: https://amzn.to/3A69GOC
Episode Sponsors
🛋This week's episode is sponsored by Teen Counseling. Teen Counseling is an online therapy program with over 14,000 licensed therapists in their network offering support with depression, anxiety, relationships, trauma, and more via text, talk, and video counseling. Head to teencounseling.com/shepersisted to find a therapist today!
About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)
After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.
a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental misspellings!
Sadie: [00:00:00] Welcome to She Persisted. I'm your host, Sadie Sutton, a 19 year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of Penn. She Persisted is the Teen Mental Health Podcast made for teenagers by a teen. In each episode, I'll bring you authentic, accessible, and relatable conversations about every aspect of mental wellness.
You can expect evidence-based, teen approved resources, coping skills, including lots of D B T insights and education in. Each piece of content you consume, she persisted, Offers you a safe space to feel validated and understood in your struggle, while encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and build your life worth living.
So let's dive in this week on She persisted.
Nicole: When we sleep, it's like a dishwasher for our brain. It clears it out, it gets the gunk out. It allows us to think clearly. And if we're not sleeping well, then that's gonna perpetuate into our days. Mm-hmm. We might make more mistakes.
Might be more hard on ourself. It's easier to be harder on yourself [00:01:00] when you're not sleeping, cuz you can't use those tools that you've been able to build
Hello, hello and welcome back to She Persisted. If you're new here, I'm Sadie. I am a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania. We actually just had our last day of classes on Wednesday, so now I'm like almost a junior, basically still at finals, but crazy busy, stressed. So this week's episode is fashionably late, let's say.
And as we are in final season, you guys know one of the most important things to stay on top of is your sleep schedule. One of the first things for me at least, that falls back and starts to struggle when my mental health is in the balance is my sleep schedule. And it has such a significant impact on my ability to be emotionally resilient and cope with things.
And. Literally every single aspect of mental health. I've done quite a few episodes talking about sleep, and it's because it just had such a significant impact on my wellbeing when I was struggling. Not only was it one of the biggest things that we were addressing before I [00:02:00] went to intensive treatment, like every single sleep aid you can imagine, whenever I was in the hospital, that was what we were focusing on.
So many different ways that it presented. I remember it had such an emotional resistance to wanting to fall asleep because I connected it with. Waking up in the morning and feeling depressed and anxious and just that extreme avoidance, but having to lay in bed and be alone with my thoughts. And so sleep has always been something that struggles when I'm struggling with my mental health and.
I learned so much about sleep hygiene and improving my sleep at McLean and and during my time in treatment, and still continue to maintain all those practices today. But of course, it's one of those dues. I say not as I do because my sleep schedule still gets messed up. My friends, their family are listening to this are like, what are you talking about?
You're napping all the time. A disclaimer. Still we're a work in progress with sleep because it's so easy to get off track and it's something that I'm super sensitive to. So unless I'm like following my sleep regimen 100%, I am very prone to [00:03:00] being an insomniac and sleeping in and napping. I love sleep and I can never get enough of it.
So with that context, I'm so excited for this week's episode because we are diving into all things sleep and talking about it from a really holistic perspective. So I've done episodes before where I get into the nitty gritty of like, this is exactly what you're gonna do.
This is the meditation you're using before bed. This is when you stop drinking tea. This is why teenagers are more prone to struggling with our sleep, et cetera. And so this episode we're talking about it from a more holistic perspective, which I loved, and it really was helpful for me as I'm always in the process of getting my sleep on track.
So Nicole brought up some really great things about. How you're structuring your day and having things to look forward to and understanding how different lifestyle choices impact your sleep. And really looking at things from the bigger picture and not just necessarily the micro of like, what exact time are you going to sleep?
What exact time are you waking up? But really coming at it from a lifestyle [00:04:00] perspective, which is how you are experiencing sleep. So this is so important, so relevant. I love this conversation. Our guest is Nicole Sallow. She's a board certified behavior analyst and an expert in sleep habit building and behavior. So we talk about everything from warning science that you might not be in an optimal place with your sleep. We talk about why teens struggle so much with getting good sleep because it is a common theme in this age demographic. Me included, calling myself out. We talk about ideal schedules and how you can try and work towards this schedule, and of course, we talk about the connection to mental health and a ton of myths to be debunked around getting a good night's sleep.
I love this conversation. I hope you do it as well. And as always, if you enjoyed this week's episode, make sure to share it with a friend or family member, and if you share it on social, tag me and I'll give you a little repost. Shout out.
Thank you guys for listening. I hope you have a good final season and get enough rest. If not, we're recharging, we're recovering this summer. Prioritize your sleep. I [00:05:00] hope you have a great rest of your week
Sadie: Well, thank you so much for joining me today on Chief Assistant Nicole.
I'm so excited to have you on the show and talk about probably the biggest determinant of my mental health initially and today, which is sleep. So thank you so much for being here. Oh,
Nicole: thanks for having me. I'm excited to, to chat.
Sadie: So I'd love to start with your background and how you started specializing in sleep. It's something that is relevant to everyone's health and wellness, physically, mentally and , it's also challenging to find a provider that specializes in sleep. And it's really difficult to know where to start, what to address. It's great when it comes naturally and then when it doesn't and you're like, I don't even know what to do. So talk to me about how you started specializing in
Nicole: sleep. All right. So professionally it all happened in my master's class. So I was taking my master's.
I have a master's in special education. I specialize in autism and developmental disabilities, and my certification is board certified behavior analyst. So, [00:06:00] I was in that class, my professor was like, we have toileting, we have feeding, but no one's doing sleep. And there's a lot of research in our field of behavior analysis around sleep because a lot of what ha like resulting from behavior change or you know, not engaging in the right behaviors and things like that actually impact our ability to fall asleep.
Mm-hmm. And framing sleep in a way as a behavior. So learning to fall asleep is something we're supposed to learn when we're little. I don't think I ever learned that because my parents didn't know how to teach me properly without adding a bunch of extra things. Yeah. Into the mix. So that intrigued me and I love a challenge, so I dove right into it.
I did my master's presentation on that and I did mentorship around it and just continue to educate myself around sleep and how it works. I think I've got, I've got a lot of tools in my tool belt and I just love to share that with everyone else. [00:07:00]
Sadie: I love it. Mm-hmm. And completely relate.
I think that that's one of the reasons why I'm hone in on sleep so much on the podcast is that for me as well, that has been such a big determinant of so many factors. Mm-hmm. It's absolutely foundational. And if you struggle with your. Sleep. It becomes very apparent how important it is to get good at mastering those skills because they don't come naturally to everyone.
And there are ways that you can improve your sleep. So I'd love to start with even before we get into the impact of sleep on mental health kind of. depicting what bad sleep is because there are so many different ways that you can struggle asleep. Maybe it's falling asleep. I would like avoid sleeping at times.
Some people wake up really early and just can't go back to sleep. I've never had that problem. I'm more someone who like can't wake up in the morning. So there's this whole spectrum of. Struggling with your sleep. And so what are those different markers that you see in patients and clients and do [00:08:00] they all have the same underlying factors or do they kind of correlate to different challenges, whether it's stress or how much movement you're getting or all these other different things that can impact our
Nicole: sleep?
Yes. So sleep problems, I kind of like to categorize them into a few different areas. So difficulty falling asleep. That's pretty common. And when we're looking at that, we look at what's leading up to it. Why is the body's natural ability to do this so increase the melatonin, decrease in cortisol?
Is there anything that could be impacting the ability to fall asleep? Waking up in the middle of the night, ruling out medical. Conditions that might be impacting that. Understanding them and how they can correlate. So sometimes if there is anxiety or depression or any sort of other conditions that we could look at, so sleep apnea you could maybe have a sleep disorder and that's when sleep studies come into play.
That's why talking to someone so like myself, I don't specialize in sleep [00:09:00] disorders like narcolepsy or other sleep issues, but that is where like a doctor would be really helpful. Mm-hmm. Cuz there is some physiological pieces going on there. But when it comes to behavioral, I look at those pieces and early wakings inconsistent sleep.
So sometimes people will sleep really long for a few nights and then they have a really big dip and they can only sleep for four hours. So when it comes to sleep support, we really look at the data we talk about like, what is the sleep like for me, if someone sends me their sleep data, I'm like, awesome.
Got it. I see the picture, I know what's going on. And then we take a deeper dive into what's happening during their day, what's happening at night, and for teenagers, like I am super passionate about teenagers and getting good sleep, but the societal expectations around getting up for school extremely early, yeah. Is not conducive to a teenager's circadian rhythm. Mm-hmm. Because it actually shifts during teenagehood when you're [00:10:00] a teenager because you are meant you're programmed to fall asleep later.
That's just biologically the way you're programmed. , but we're still expecting them to be at school. I mean, I saw some. Like astounding numbers, like seven 30, sometimes
Sadie: six. You have like a zero period. It's insanely early. Like I never had one of those. Thank God I've always been someone who's like, I cannot wake up early.
People are leaving for school at like six in the morning. Especially if you have a commute. It's the most insane thing.
Nicole: And when we're cutting off their, so what, when you look at a typical sleep, like sleep architecture the cycles of sleep that we go through, teenagers are meant to have nine to 11 hours of sleep.
It's a lot of sleep. Yeah. But if you ask a teenager to go to bed at nine, 10, like they're not gonna be able to, not because they don't want to, but it's gonna be extremely hard. Cause you're working against that circadian rhythm.
But when you cut that sleep, you're actually missing a lot of your REM sleep. Mm-hmm. Because a large portion of our REM sleeps at the end of the night.
Sadie: [00:11:00] Yeah. And when we It's so important for like emotional restoration.
Exactly. Processing. And so you're like, why are teenagers so hotheaded and emotional and overwhelmed all the time? It's like, well, maybe they're not getting enough sleep.
Nicole: They really don't have the regulation tools because their brains are not resting. Yeah. Like they're not able to.
Sadie: A hundred percent. For teenagers, if they could have like a perfect schedule for whatever reason, they have more control over what time they get to go to bed and wake up, what would be your perfect situation to get enough sleep? And also based on the, the data on how adolescent circadian rhythms function, what would be like the perfect schedule?
Nicole: Well, I think it's looking at, so there's gonna be some. I think probably some adolescents who naturally will go to bed at like a typical time, but it's almost seen like, how does your circadian rhythm run when you don't have anything to do in the morning and you literally can just run your day naturally, which is mm-hmm.
Hard to find those blocks of time. Sometimes [00:12:00] vacations are a great time to see when do you naturally feel hungry? When do you naturally start feeling tired? Minus all the things that may be keeping you awake. So if you were to like, take yourself out of your world and just start to see how does your clock really run, that would probably give you a good time.
But I say on the average, like if they could, you just wanna give yourself a nine to 11 hour, well, probably 10 to 11 or 12 hour window for sleeping. Mm-hmm. And having that consistent. Okay, so if you, if you do find yourself sleeping in extremely long on the weekends, which I would say a lot of teenagers probably do, if they don't have anywhere to go in the morning, yeah, that means they're in a huge sleep debt.
From the week.
Sadie: Yeah. So interesting. One thing that I want to touch on that you mentioned is trouble falling asleep. Mm-hmm. What qualifies trouble falling asleep? I feel like in my experience, I've never been like, oh, I just lay down and my eyes shut. Yeah. Like what period of time is like, okay, this is not as efficient as we would [00:13:00] like it to be.
Nicole: So it depends. Again, there's so much pressure to be like, oh, if I don't fall asleep within 15 minutes, something must be wrong with me.
Sadie: I wish that would be like a perfect, like what people work their brains
Nicole: work like that. Yeah. But I think like from my personal experience and working with people, giving yourself like a 30 to 40 minute window, Because melatonin is what is gonna take over.
Mm-hmm. And it's gonna help you get to sleep. And so it actually needs two hours to build. So if you think about, okay, I need to be in bed by 10, well at eight o'clock it should be starting to rise. And there's a lot of things that we can do to cause that rise to be disrupted. So watching a lot of blue light, being exposed to a lot of light.
Sometimes physical exercise too late might delay your sleep onset, so your body will need more time to unwind. If there's a stressful event that happens a couple [00:14:00] hours before bed, that's gonna delay your sleep, so trouble falling asleep when you define it, I think you'll know it because you'll be stressed out about it.
Yeah.
Sadie: Yeah. Okay, so looping back to the link between mental health and sleep, before we dive into problem solving, these issues we mentioned and really giving a lot of tips people can implement, but why is it so important to get sleep? Like what is that link between specifically mental health and sleep?
Obviously, you know, the physical effects, like you can't stay awake. You have your brain fog, like it's miserable when you haven't slept well. But I think a lot of the times we almost. Minimize or really gets fine, like mental health-wise, it's not a big deal. It'll be okay. So shedding some light on the, the impact on our mental health when we aren't sleeping well, especially over an extended period of time.
Like you were talking about, if your school schedule isn't conducive to getting enough sleep. Mm-hmm. What happens to our mental health, especially for teens when we aren't sleeping [00:15:00] enough?
Nicole: Well, I think our ability, like what happens when you're not sleeping enough, is your emotional regulation, your ability to manage stressful events, your ability to problem solve and critically think and just be more aware starts to be inhibited, especially for individuals with autism or adhd or anxiety.
And so there's a lot of things I don't necessarily know specifically around like the, the physiological pieces, but from what I've read is that. When we're not sleeping, we're more susceptible to all of these things, which then can make it harder. Yeah. So dealing with stressful events, we might experience more anxiety.
Our ability to kind of bring ourselves back into the present moment. It's not there. When we sleep, it's like a dishwasher for our brain. It clears it out, it gets the gunk out. It allows us to think clearly. And if we're not sleeping well, then that's gonna perpetuate into our days. Mm-hmm. We [00:16:00] might make more mistakes.
Might be more hard on ourself. It's easier to be harder on yourself when you're not sleeping, cuz you can't use those tools that you've been able to build. Yeah. And then it goes the opposite. So if you struggle with anxiety or if you have adhd, you're actually more susceptible just to cortisol spikes in general.
And cortisol has a huge impact on our sleep quality. So ability to fall asleep and the quality that we're getting while we're sleeping. so just getting support around that piece too. It's hard to know what came first. Yeah. And you just can get caught in a spiral. So that's why it's really helpful to reach out to someone who can help you understand what might be going on.
And. It's not your fault. A hundred
Sadie: percent. Yeah. So giving listeners the tools to navigate challenges with sleep, starting even before your, your bedtime routine, your daily routine, and then we'll go through like nighttime routine during the night and then waking up. But are there things that you can and should be [00:17:00] doing within your daily routine?
That are conducive to good sleep, whether it's getting a certain amount of movement, being outside, leaving your room, not spending time in your bed, like what are the things that are helpful during the day to just set yourself up for success, especially if you know you're vulnerable too, not sleeping well.
So starting in like the day your daily routine, what are your recommendations?
Nicole: Yeah, so I always love to start off with some bigger picture things, which is. Really figuring out how to build in things that are important to you into your day. Because sometimes with teenagers you can get so tasked with like all the homework, the work that you have to do.
The responsibility starts to become more and there's not a lot of room for fun. So building in fun and connection like. I r l like in real life. Mm-hmm. Connection with people to just set yourself up just generally, cuz that will really support mental health [00:18:00] and just stress in general. Just by having more fun Yeah.
And connecting with people. But in general, sleep hygiene kind of suggestions or basic sleep things is to really. Get outside in the morning if you can, to get daylight right away pretty quickly after you wake up. It's a great way to just anchor your circadian rhythm, and that's something that's pretty easy to do.
It can be while you're doing a chore, if you have that, or if you need to take the dog out for a walk, do that. I'm so grateful for my dog because that is what we do now and without, I don't have a choice. To not to go out.
Sadie: Okay. This is like going in my prose column because I like kind of talked myself out of getting a dog.
I'm like, I'm a college student, this is the worst idea. But then I'm like, okay, but it's good for my sleep, so maybe I should do that. Why not? Exactly. When you mentioned getting light first thing in the morning mm-hmm. Just count to have your window open and look outside or is it actually different if you are going outside and like actually being out fresh air, all the things.
Nicole: Being outside in [00:19:00] it, because it comes through your eyes, it absorbs through your skin. It's something that like if you can get outside in the fresh air and move your body right away, mm-hmm. It's a great way to just wake yourself up. Even if you're tired, you will feel better afterwards. And so also avoiding the caffeine right away in the morning.
Give yourself that distance between if you're gonna have caffeine or not, and also understanding the use of caffeine. And how that can impact sleep. It's not gonna, I don't say cut caffeine, it's just understand how your body processes it and how much time you need. Cuz that can be a real important factor.
When you're looking at quality
Sadie: of sleep,
Two day's episode is brought to you by Teen Counseling. I am sharing teen counseling with you because I have gone to therapy many a times to work on my sleep. I swear every time I go into therapy for the first time in a while, or even just on a routine basis, I'm like, what are we gonna do about my sleep?
Because it's something that is consistently struggling and it's the first thing I need to get back on track to thrive. So if you are struggling with [00:20:00] implementing these behaviors, holding yourself accountable, and you are noticing that that lack of sleep is impacting your mental health therapy could be an amazing resource.
I speak from experience. if you haven't heard of teen counseling, it is Better Health Online branch of therapy. Specifically for teens. They have over 14,000 licensed therapists within their network and they offer support on everything from depression to anxiety relationships to trauma to sleep and habits, all of these things.
And what's great is that they offer talk, text and video counseling. So depending on what level of support you're looking for, they meet you where you are at. There have totally been times where I. I'm using more phone coaching, or I'm getting tech support versus being in an intensive therapy session, so I love that they offer these different levels of support.
So if you wanna check out teen counseling, you can go to teen counseling.com/she persisted again, teen counseling.com/she persisted to find a therapist that meets your needs today
Sadie: what's your optimal length between waking up and drinking caffeine and then also recommendations, like, especially for [00:21:00] teens, you're so sensitive, you have no tolerance. Mm-hmm. So what are your two recommendations there? I mean, if you
Nicole: don't have to have it mm-hmm.
Don't have it. But I have tea in the morning. Tea is very different. It's not as much as coffee. I had to quit coffee four years ago. Like five years ago, I think now. I was just so anxious on
Sadie: it. I, I, I, that happened to me right before I went to residential and actually in treatment, I like couldn't do coffee.
It took a long time. And then after I dealt with anxiety and I learned the coping skills, then I could reintroduce it. And now in college I like crave. The taste like I love a vanilla latte. It's not universal caffeine, like the idea of an energy. I'm like, no, thank you. That sounds like the worst thing ever.
A coffee.
Nicole: I remember when I was a teenager, oh my gosh. We would go to the store and get energy drinks and drink it in the middle of the night. I was like, crazy. What were we
Sadie: thinking? Crazy.
Nicole: So there's a lot of things being a teenager. There's a lot of exploration across a lot of different things.
Substance use, alcohol. Again, I wish someone told me [00:22:00] like, I don't know if it would've changed my behavior or not, but.
Sadie: Alcohol, but then at least you're, you're making an educated decision so
Nicole: you know exactly you're in choice. You're like, I know I am making this call. So alcohol actually cuts your REM sleep.
It really decreases. It, it decreases the deep sleep you're getting. It will help you fall asleep cuz it's a sedative. Mm-hmm. But it's gonna drastically impact your sleep. Plus of course, long-term use, we all know that's not ideal. Yeah. Substance use as well. So cannabis Any other drugs, like that's significantly going to impact your sleep and of course mental health in general.
Just with the chemical changes that go on. Yeah. So understanding that, making a choice around it. If you are gonna drink alcohol, makes you drink water with it so that you're not falling asleep with too much alcohol in your system
Sadie: and food.
Nicole: Yeah. it's funny because you actually want to have an empty stomach when you fall asleep. Yeah, yeah. Which is, but then also when you're drinking, at least if you're drinking, you have food and water and [00:23:00] allow, allow your body to just process through it. Binge shrinking is not ideal, but again, I live through my teens and I'm not, things happen.
Yeah,
Sadie: Especially like we forget that teens, you're still a teen when you're going to college. And so you are, especially people that are listening, you like still are not in adult brain development stage. No. And so it's making sure , you know the skills, you know what you can do to make informed decisions.
Absolutely. And. Not over correct but Do things to help your body recover and and still get the best sleep you can. Even when maybe there are other vulnerability
Nicole: factors. Yeah. And I think that's like just such a huge, I wish that I could have been more aware of how much sleep was impacted by a lot of the choices that I made cuz I struggled in my early twenties and I know my sister struggled when she was in high school.
Like she definitely thought. There was something going on and it's just, I think when we look back at [00:24:00] it, like I swam and our practices were at 5 45 in the water in the morning. I was like, you were
Sadie: like the og cold plunging influencer.
Nicole: Exactly. Then we had to go to school and then I had to work after and it was just, or we had some practice again and it was just, I was like, okay, that would make sense.
Accumulatively. Over time, that adds up. So yeah, it's just being aware and sometimes, through awareness, that's where we can make different choices.
Sadie: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. So going back to other things people can do during the day, what are your recommendations with regard to like movement and exercise?
Nicole: Movement? Do what fills you up? Like figure out what kind of exercise, what kind of movement you really like and do that. Sometimes strength training can be really helpful for managing stress. Like, I know for me it's both regulating because I'm lifting heavy. And so I work with a lot of autistic children and we work with OTs and they talk about regulation and heavy lifting.
Mm-hmm. And I was like, [00:25:00] oh yeah, that's me. I feel so much better if I've lifted something versus just doing cardio. So mixing it up. And whatever brings you joy again, that's the key piece. Not because you have to, but because you want to. Mm-hmm. And sometimes if you don't want to talk yourself into it and still do it anyway, just show up.
The hardest part is showing up. Yeah. And then it can be any time of day really. For me, when I was younger, I, I'm now 32, so just so everyone's listening, they're like, okay, what is she talking about? But when I was like younger twenties, early twenties, I could get up and work out really early in the morning.
Mm-hmm. My cortisol would get up high. I would have a lot of energy. It'd be no problem. Now I'm very much like later in the morning I like to have a slow morning and then I find that I have more energy to work out and that just is what works for my body and my rhythm and it's really kind of becoming in tune with that.
Mm-hmm. Of what works best for you.
Sadie: going into night routine, which is huge. [00:26:00] Especially if you can kind of get into that cycle of rinsing and repeating and mm-hmm.
Really, like you were talking about solidifying those behaviors. What are your recommendations with night routine? We talked about starting to wind down at 8:00 PM But what are some things people can do to, again, increase the likelihood of falling asleep more easily, staying asleep, whether it's, we talked about appetite, we talked about movement, whether it's like reading versus watching a TV show, meditation supplements.
Mm-hmm. All these different things that are thrown out there. What are your favorite. Tips that you recommend to patients and
Nicole: clients. So it's really finding a routine again that works for you. So there's never a one size fits all. When I talk with clients, I ask them, what do you enjoy? Like, what are activities that are really calming for you that also you enjoy doing that wouldn't be hard to introduce to your routine.
Like if someone has a hard time reading, I'm not gonna say that. Make them more stressed. Yeah, exactly. [00:27:00] Absolutely. But like what if they love listening to music? Then maybe we find music. When it comes to the evening routine, you look at when you naturally fall asleep slash want to go to sleep, and you plan kind of two hours before that.
Okay? So you look at it from, okay, two hours before my melatonin needs about two hours to kind of start rising and then it has like a steep incline near the end. So things like dimming the lights, So just changing your lighting, turn the overhead lights on, keep the like sidelights and just low light in general.
Candlelight is your best bet. But if you're in a dorm room, please don't light your dorm room.
Sadie: I'm not making this up. Literally this morning slash last night, someone lit their bet on fire in one of the dorms at pet, like on purpose. I don't know. There was smoke coming out. The fire department was there, and then they put like an burned singed mattress in the middle of the quad.
I'll, oh no, I'll show you a picture, because like this is just the most insane thing I've ever [00:28:00] seen. So here we have them looking at the smoke. Oh no. And then here is the mattress.
Nicole: Oh, maybe someone wanted a new
Sadie: mattress. They wanted to do a mattress or they were like, Hey, listen to this podcast in advance.
They were like, I heard use candles.
Nicole: Just don't put them on. So funny near flammable material. Yeah, a hundred percent. But really what you wanna do is just dim the lights, create an environment that's really chill and then like your last meal is around two hours before you fall asleep, okay? So that way your stomach is somewhat empty when you fall asleep.
It's just important to be empty so that when you're sleeping, your gut has time to heal. Mm-hmm. Because we know a lot of issues also rise from gut issues, right? Yeah. Like it's all interconnected. So allowing that time and it just helps is just a great way to
Sadie: Set yourself up. What are your thoughts on like tea and water before bed?
Nicole: Water's okay. But I mean, I'm so guilty of this cuz if you give me a water bottle with a straw, I'll drink the whole [00:29:00] thing a hundred percent. Yeah. And so I have to be mindful like, hey, you have a cup. Nicole, you can sip on it.
But if just knowing again, it's a choice. If I'm gonna drink that much water, I know I'll probably wake up and have to pee in the middle of the night. Mm-hmm. That's okay. Tea. I try different teas. I always say caffeine free. Yeah. No caffeine. There's some that will have valerian root or whatever.
Cammo meal. Lavender. Yeah, lavender, chamomile. Again, notice how it impacts you. So for me, when I was drinking those two close to bed, I definitely wake up to pee cuz I feel like there's just something in it that my kidneys are obviously trying to process.
Sadie: Yeah. tea is like a diuretic, it's going to make things move faster.
Yeah.
Nicole: Yeah. So it's just noticing like, how's my body responding? Do I, it's all about. Nec, not necessarily what but when. Mm-hmm. A hundred percent. So you can just adjust that. That's pretty easy. Limiting your water. So try not to chug too much water before bed, but it's also not great to go to bed. Super thirsty.
And keeping water [00:30:00] next to your bed cuz it's normal to wake up thirsty. And then when you wake up, drink a ton of water cuz you're pretty dehydrated after asleep. I love that. And then what else? Oh, usually around an hour I suggest. Letting the scrolling stop and the phone an hour before you want to be asleep.
Okay, so let's say you want to be asleep at 1130. Okay, I'm gonna put my phone away at around 10 30. Mm-hmm. And then slowly build some distance around it. Again, I'm 32. I don't know what I would've done. I didn't, we didn't have phones like this. When I was a teenager. When you're a teen, your brain is really susceptible to all of these pieces and all the things, the dopamine that comes through, all the fun things that are happening online.
TikTok, I have never been on a more addictive app. I could not keep it. Yeah. Because I found myself in it for two hours and I didn't even know. It's crazy. Yeah. I was like, this is wild. Instagram, I'm not as addicted. I feel it cuz it's mostly work [00:31:00] related, but I could, if I went on a real. Scrolling, I would get there.
But the thing about scrolling in more active screen use, so video games and all of that it can really increase just the activation of your brain. And so really just doing more passive tv, like passive screen use is better. So watching Netflix mm-hmm.
Or on low blue light, something like that. To just chill out. Yeah. Best case scenario, grab something like a book, grab, something you can listen to. Maybe you're a drawing and maybe you like to draw, maybe you like to do a crossword, maybe you like to do just something else that's not screen related.
Mm-hmm. When I work with teens there's a huge component around electronic use and the motivation to be connected. Yeah. Socially. With others and well, we just got, well, I don't know. We're not really through it. I still feel like there's things going on, but through the pandemic, like we really were connected [00:32:00] all through online.
We had to be. Yeah. But I think for teens, like that's just extra, cuz peers are so much more important at that time. So being mindful of that, like I'm always mindful when working with teenagers around how can we build more connection? During the day, during different hours so that the motivation to stay connected online really late into the evening, early mornings goes
Sadie: down.
I love that. Mm-hmm. And I think that when I was in middle school, high school, that really was a huge factor in what was keeping me up, was talking to friends, FaceTiming. And so I think that exactly what you said, what did you say?
Nicole: Yeah. It's not about what it's about.
Sadie: When, yes. That was it. Yes. I love that. And I think that's so true, and especially if you're like, oh my gosh, I'm scrolling on TikTok so late at night. Like, I, I still want to use TikTok. Okay. Do it earlier in the day. Yeah. Or I'm catching up on all my favorite TV shows at night.
Okay, let's move this earlier and maybe you take a homework break and do that. Yeah. So I love those tips. I think that's so helpful. Talking about [00:33:00] the morning routine. Mm-hmm. What are your. Best practices, recommendations. We talked about coffee and once you're actually awake, but with regard to like alarms and snoozing and all of those kinds of things, how do you recommend that people wake up for the day, especially if that's what they're struggling with, which I think is a huge thing with depression and anxiety is like not wanting to get out of bed and struggling with that motivation and even physically having the energy.
So advice there.
Nicole: Yeah, so when I look at that, I'm gonna use like a personal example. Yeah. Cause I'm guilty of this too, and so I evaluate myself as well for waking up in the morning. Snoozing can be a couple things. So like, what is it about today? That I'm not excited about.
What about today is causing me a little bit like I'm not ready to jump outta bed and get my day started. Mm-hmm. Like if you ask me to get up at 4:00 AM to go on a vacation, I'm up and I am a morning person. [00:34:00] Yeah. But, or if sometimes on the weekends I'll get up early on the weekends cuz I just love having days where I have no responsibilities.
And so it's looking at that. I sometimes for teenagers, I look at that if we've tried everything else or adults. It's looking at it from a different lens. So like I talked about at the beginning, connection, fun, purpose in our days that really lift us up. Mm-hmm. However, we're all guilty of a snooze button and it's, it starts like I am too.
And so that's why I try to teach myself. Like I get myself sometimes a new clock and I just don't teach myself how to snooze it. I love that. Cause sometimes if I learn how to snooze, I'm like, I will hit it. It's just an automatic, it's a conditioned response. Yeah. So some suggestions that I've used on my own is I have the light clock, so mm-hmm.
The sunlight one, I don't know if you have one.
Sadie: I don't, but I've seen it all over TikTok. It's on my Amazon, I'm like, do I need this?
Nicole: Do I buy this? I just got the cheaper one, like the $45 [00:35:00] Canadian one, not the 250 Phillips one. I'm sure it's great. Yeah. But I just got the cheaper one and it does seem to like it.
The light will help bring you out of the deep, deep sleep. Okay. Which is the sleep that's really hard to wake up from like, you're so groggy. You actually probably don't even hear your alarm sometimes. So the light is helpful. I usually set it for 20, 30 minutes. It goes from red to like bright.
And at least now I'm a bit more consciously snoozing. So what I've accidentally conditioned myself, and this is where like the behavior analysis portion nerding out comes in, is that I hear the sound, I click the snooze. Mm-hmm. And I go back to sleep.
So now I've like reinforced that entire behavior pattern. So I need to just change the sound. Yeah. And reteach myself. Don't snooze it. Yeah. Sometimes I have to pep talk before the night before as well. Don't say, I love
Sadie: that. Don't, I'm gonna do that. I'm a big snoozer, so I'm gonna change my ringtone. Yeah.
Because I, it's a very conditioned [00:36:00] response. I'm conditioning like seven times a day. I'm like, sneeze.
Nicole: Yeah, I know. When it gets that bad, my husband. He's just like, I don't understand. Like, yeah. Why? And my dog also, he's like, What are we doing? You're supposed to get up like No, thank
Sadie: you.
Yeah. Pass, pass on that one. Yeah, exactly. Oh my goodness. Okay. If there are any sleep myths that you feel are important to debunk that you hear from clients or you see floating around online that you're like, this so inaccurate, and if this was corrected, people would have such a better understanding of their sleep.
Nicole: Oh my gosh. Sleep Miss. I think the hours of sleep mm-hmm. Everyone's so focused on the hours, but it's really about the quality that you're getting. So you could get 10 hours of sleep, but that could be over 14 hours.
Yeah. And you've had breaks and so it's just not the same. I think also the people who say they can survive on four hours of sleep, No, I'll tell you that right now. , I don't even think there's a percentage who could, it's really five hours plus. [00:37:00] Mm-hmm. Around that.
Mm-hmm. Are there any myths that you've heard that are coming to top of mind for you?
Sadie: I mean, there's that whole strange schedule where you do like the micro bursts of sleep throughout the day. There's so many different ones. Like caffeine won't impact your sleep at all. Oh yeah. No,
Nicole: that's
Sadie: not true.
Nicole: I've heard of some people talk about like biphasic sleep. So like we're supposed to, you know, have shorter sleeps at night and naps during the day.
Mm-hmm. I mean, there's some interesting research from like I think it's Italy and Spain, like they do siesta, right? Mm-hmm. So they always close down in the afternoon for a nap and then, They work later into the evening and eat later and eat differently. Mm-hmm. And they are one of the most healthiest.
Yeah. Like some of them are quite healthy and there's, I think a city in, I think we're trying to remember Italy. They live really long cuz they are prioritizing sleep, they prioritize their days around. Their sleep.
Sadie: I love that. I should move there. That feels like a good fit for me.
Nicole: I know. I feel like, and yeah, there is.
Oh, naps that. [00:38:00] Naps. Yeah. I think some people say naps aren't great, but naps for teenagers, naps for students. It's a great hack for studying.
Sadie: Yeah, I love napping in college. Yeah. It's like a problem because in college it's so easy to nap and I know as soon as you start working you're gonna be like, what happened to I nap period between my classes that I only have like two a day?
Nicole: Yeah, exactly. For the naps sometimes it's cuz you're learning so much and when you go and you learn, sometimes you just need a nap to process it all. I don't know about you. Yeah. But when I studied. I would have a nap after and I would actually get the material so much
Sadie: better.
A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Hot tip. Hot
Nicole: tip for the
Sadie: students. Yes. I love it.
If there was one thing people could do to start almost healing their sleep, if they're like, this is a disaster and falling asleep so late, they're in that vicious cycle, they're like napping, and then it's just more challenging to fall asleep. Where do they start? What is the. Best place to begin to address that [00:39:00] because we put so many suggestions out there, and obviously if you try and do all of them at once, you're gonna get overwhelmed.
You're gonna go back to what you were already doing, the more solidified pattern. So what's the best way to start healing your sleep? That will have a, a significant impact and kind of like chain reaction. Everything else,
Nicole: I think, and from what I've learned is that sleep is not something we can control.
Yeah, right. It's something that our body naturally does. Learning how to rest and relax outside of sleep time where there's no pressure to actually get to sleep could be a great first step. So, engaging in mindfulness, and we didn't really touch on that too much, but it's a great first strategy. To just teach yourself how to close your eyes, how to be present, and how to just allow your thoughts and just notice your body and be, and you actually might drift off.
Yeah. If you do that long enough, because that's the [00:40:00] action, that's the behavior of falling asleep. When we can practice that outside of the pressure of nighttime. Then when we get to bed and we've kind of set ourselves up, maybe your evening routine, maybe you've put your phone away a little bit earlier.
That won't be so scary. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Won't be so hard. And it just has great benefits all around.
Sadie: A hundred percent. Yeah. I love that. Well, if people want to continue to follow along with you, consume your content, keep getting all the sleep tips or work with you, where can they find you? Yeah,
Nicole: I'm on Instagram.
At your Behavior Gal and Behavior is Spell with a U cuz I'm Canadian and. Yeah, I have the website, same thing. Ww dot your behavior gal.com and I'm sure you'll link that. Michelle below Michelle. Yeah. And I offer discovery calls, so if you're just not sure where to start and you want someone to just bounce off where your sleep's at and just hear some suggestions yeah, they can book directly with me.
15 minutes. We'll get right to
Sadie: it. [00:41:00] I love it. Maybe I'll do that after that. I'm like, I'm gonna go book my sleep call. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so glad we got to do this. This was so helpful for me, and I know it'll be so helpful for so many listeners. Thank you so much,
Nicole: Sadie.
Sadie: Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of she persisted. If you enjoyed, make sure to share with a friend or family member, it really helps out the podcast. And if you haven't already leave a review on apple podcasts or Spotify, you can also make sure to follow along at actually persisted podcast on both Instagram and Tik TOK, and check out all the bonus resources, content and information on my website.
She persisted podcast.com. Thanks for supporting. Keep persisting and I'll see you next week.
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