Dr. Jacob Ambrose is a licensed clinical psychologist and owner of Restore Psychology where he provides therapy services. Dr. Jacob specializes in working with anxiety, depression, self-esteem, ADHD, and relationship concerns. His therapy style includes Shadow Work, Dynamic therapy, and Cognitive Behavioral strategies. Finally Dr. Jacob is currently providing educational content on psychological contents via social media and a podcast titled "Two Dudes Talkin' Therapy" co-authored with Dr. Vincent Barbieri.
Dr. Jacob Ambrose is a licensed clinical psychologist and owner of Restore Psychology where he provides therapy services. Dr. Jacob specializes in working with anxiety, depression, self-esteem, ADHD, and relationship concerns. His therapy style includes Shadow Work, Dynamic therapy, and Cognitive Behavioral strategies. Finally Dr. Jacob is currently providing educational content on psychological contents via social media and a podcast titled "Two Dudes Talkin' Therapy" co-authored with Dr. Vincent Barbieri.
SHOWNOTES:
😴 How sleep issues often signal deeper emotional imbalances—fear, sadness, or anger hiding in plain sight
😴 The vicious cycle of insomnia, anxiety, and control—why "trying harder" to sleep doesn’t work
😴 Dr. Jacob’s STARS method for assessing and improving sleep (Start time, Temperature, Acceptance, Routine, Sunlight)
😴 Why expressing healthy anger during the day might be the key to sleeping better at night
😴 The misunderstood role of sadness in allowing the body to release tension and finally rest
😴 The danger of emotional suppression: how unexpressed emotions keep your body in survival mode
😴 Inside Out, PTSD & the overactive amygdala—how emotional regulation rewires your sleep
😴 How journaling, assertive communication (like DEAR MAN), and acceptance-based techniques promote better rest
😴 Why nighttime is not the time to solve your problems—and how acceptance leads to surrender
😴 What can we learn from Dr. Ambrose’s wind-down routine—especially his ADHD-friendly sleep strategies?
😴 How reframing sleep as a daytime practice, not a nighttime task, changes everything
😴 “Sleep happens to you, not because of you.” – a powerful reframe that shifts the whole game
😴 And many more!
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The information contained in this podcast, our website, newsletter, and the resources available for download are not intended to be medical or health advice and shall not be understood or construed as such. The information contained on these platforms is not a substitute for medical or health advice from a professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation.
Welcome to the Sleep As a Skill podcast. My name is Mollie Eastman. I am the founder of Sleep as A Skill, a company that optimizes sleep through technology, accountability, and behavioral change. As an ex sleep sufferer turned sleep course creator, I am on a mission to transform the way the world. Thinks about sleep.
Each week I'll be interviewing world-class experts, ranging from researchers, doctors, innovators, and thought leaders to give actionable tips and strategies that you can implement to become a more skillful sleeper. Ultimately, I believe that living a circadian aligned lifestyle is going to be one of the biggest trends in wellness.
And I'm committed to keeping you up to date on all the things that you can do today to transform your circadian health and by extension, allowing you to sleep and live better than ever before.
Welcome back to The Sleep As a Skill podcast, we are diving into the world of sleep from the emotional side of things. So joining us today is Dr. Jacob Ambrose, a licensed clinical psychologist and founder of Restore Psychology, who specializes in anxiety, depression, self-esteem, A DHD, and relationship dynamics.
But what makes this episode truly stand out is how Dr. Jacob connects the dots between suppressed emotions like fear, anger, and. Sadness and chronic sleep challenges. If you've ever found yourself staring at the ceiling at 3:00 AM mind racing body tense, wondering why you can't sleep even though you're doing all the quote unquote right things.
This episode is going to crack open a whole new layer of insight. Dr. Jacob shares his incredibly thoughtful stars framework for improving your sleep hygiene, how shadow work and emotional. Expression can literally shift your nervous system. And why? Sometimes the best thing you can do at night is let go.
This is one of those episodes that will stay with you. So if you're ready to look at your sleep through a more emotional, psychological, and dare I say, human lens, let's get into it. But first, a few words from our sponsors, and please check them out because they really do help keep this podcast alive and we.
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So again, go to you Blockout. Spelled the letter U blockout and use code sleep as a skill for a discount. And welcome to the Sleep is a Skill Podcast. Jacob, thank you so much for taking the time to be here. Yeah, of course. I'm happy to be here talking about sleep. One of my favorite topics as a psychologist.
Oh, I bet. Yes. Huge. A whole world to discuss for sure. There's so much to get into, but maybe you can begin at the beginning of how you found yourself in your line of work, how that relates to sleep. Yeah, so, um, I've always been interested in psychology. It was something I got interested as an undergrad at the University of Louisiana Lafayette.
And so, um, as I started studying psychology, I was like, well, I really wanna turn this to a thing where I work with adults. And so after a while I started, uh, studying like anxiety, depression and all those things, and it was never really at the forefront. Sleep, but it was always in the background of like, wow, sleep is one of the symptoms that is, or one of the things that we need to get under control if we are to really deal with a lot of our other symptoms.
Yeah. And so then I started my own private practice. I'm currently the CEO of restore psychology along with my wife. She is currently, uh, finishing up some of her hours as a, a postdoctoral. Um. Fellow. And so she'll also be operating as the CEO in, uh, the near future. So now I'm working with clients all across the board, uh, 18 to 64, and a lot of them come in with anxiety, depression, and one of the things I make sure to give my clients is psychoeducation on sleep.
Hmm. Important. And I agree with you. I think it's a skill, uh, something to be developed. Absolutely. Well, thank you for doing the good work to get that information out and really prioritize that. And one of the things that we'll often see. So, you know, of course sleep shows up in many different ways and so many people can really benefit when they hear, oh yeah, this is something that's so important.
I gotta prioritize this. Like, let me kind of shift around my life and make a change to make sure sleep is a big foundation. Then we also have the group that's dealing more with insomnia or difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, and they might almost be on the other side of the spectrum where they are learning everything there is to know about sleep.
They're trying so desperately to sleep, they're. Thinking about sleep and yet they're not achieving that. Or they're waking up at three in the morning, four in the morning, and they, they want that to happen in their lives, but it's not coming to them. Are you seeing both kind of groups, both camps, where, oh, okay.
And so how can we think about this and what are you doing in those conversations for people to help support those problems? Of course. Yeah. And we have evidence-based practice for different kinds of sleep issues. So insomnia. There's the evidence-based practice of, uh, cognitive behavioral therapy, CBTI, and we also just have this assessment process that we wanna make sure we engage in at the beginning to a, to ask the very question that you're asking, which is.
What camp do you fall in? Do you have insomnia? Is it clinical? Are you currently dealing with sleep issues that are something that's not really taking over your life in a lot of ways and it's, it's more minimal. Yeah. So, so that's one of the things we try to figure out with sleep. And you wanna do a deep assessment because you wanna treat those in some ways that are similar and in some ways that are pretty different.
So, uh, I can go into more detail and we'll, we'll jump into that for sure. But I, I work with both of those worlds a whole lot. Okay. All people that are wanting to figure out why can't, why do I wake up in the middle of the night and the people that are like, I literally can't sleep and I sleep four hours a day and it's impacting my life and making it a living hell, and I don't know what to do.
Yeah, exactly, because I would say one of the most common things that we hear from people is the frustration around the wake ups. And so, you know, we'll talk about all different reasons for wake up, so whether sleep apnea, blood sugar, you know, the room's too hot, hormonal changes, all these different things, and yet I really want us to start doing more content around the psychological aspects of things, of what is at play when that is happening routinely.
So yes. Excited to hear more about what you, so when those people do come your way and they are only sleeping four hours or they wake up and now they're just like up, how do they peel that back? Because then it, they can get into this kind of vicious cycle of, well, now I can't control my thoughts 'cause now I'm overslept and Ah, yeah, yeah.
Manage that Huge, huge cycle of things to deal with. Certainly. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So people are coming to you with those struggles. Where do you begin in this conversation to make a difference with them? Yeah, great question. So the first thing you wanna do is, is you want to get a good assessment of what's actually going on.
Yeah. So you wanna see are they do, are they practicing good sleep hygiene, um, techniques? Do they, I use this acronym that really works really well, it's stars. So with stars, you start with the s what's your start time and then what's your. Wake up time, you know, how, what time do you go to sleep? What time do you wake up?
And a lot of people, they're like, they're across the board. Yeah. And if, if your start time and your wake up time are across the board and different, that's going to negatively impact your sleep because you wanna be consistent. Yeah. Um, another thing that I'll talk about, like you already mentioned it, temperature, if you can keep it a little bit cooler in your room, that's gonna be helpful.
And then with the a. Is acceptance. Yeah. If you're currently brainstorming and trying to solve problems in your head Yeah. At night, that's, that's sending all sorts of energy to your body to try to figure out and how to solve those problems at night. Mm-hmm. So if you don't have this healthy practice of acceptance at night, allowing sleep to happen to you.
Then that's gonna keep you awake. And then R is routine. Are you having a consistent routine at night? Because it's just like food. Like if you eat at the every, if you eat at the same time every day, your stomach is gonna start to growl and send signals to your brain to say, I need to eat. Yes. It's the same with sleep.
If you sleep at the same time every night, you are going to get signals from your body like it is time to sleep. They have to happen to you. You can't will them to exist. And it only happens with routine. And then the S is also important with sunlight. Yeah. If don't get enough sunlight, if you're not walking outside, you're not going to get that.
Oh, hey, it's time to wake up and do things. You're gonna feel like you've been indoors. Your body doesn't know when it's sunny or not. Your cian rhythm is gonna be all messed up. Yeah. But if you get a good bit of sunlight, just try it. You're gonna be saturated with melatonin when you go to sleep, so, so I always start with that.
I'm like, are you doing those things? And a lot of people are not, to be honest. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But then a lot of other cases can be more tricky with insomnia. Sometimes it's more difficult to tell like, what's. Actually happening. I'm doing all the things. I'm consistent. Yeah. I've been making sure I've been tracking my sleep.
I've been doing all the things, and yet at night I can't help but just stay awake. Yeah. And with those situations, as a psychologist, you have to get very specific to figure out, well, what's your unique presenting concern? Mm-hmm. For some people, it's a whole lot of. I have so much stress throughout the day.
Yeah. And I'm not going anywhere with it. A lot of people have built up emotions that aren't being expressed, and so part of the work with them is to say, well, how do we get those emotions out during the day so that at night your body can go into a state of acceptance? Because a lot of times our body is basically keeping us in a state of alertness.
If you have not solved the day's problems, you can't go to sleep if you're hyper alert. Yeah. So that's, that's just an introduction into what I'll do. Cool. Um, I don't know if you have any follow up questions on all that. I love that. No, that was so beautifully articulated and I definitely wanna kind of double click on the acceptance part of the acronym and the things that you pointed to of.
How do we get those kind of pent up, that reservoir of emotions expressed and out a bit more throughout the day? That's one of the things that, you know, people have come on the podcast or out of CBTI, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia where people will point to worry journals taking like worry time and kind of getting out all those things that you're stressing about in a kind of contained fashion.
But I'm wondering how you have people start to practice kind of. Pulling some of that out. I know before we hit record and just in some of our back and forth, one of the things I've loved about your content is sharing about some of the importance of getting some of these emotions out that maybe people don't even realize they have.
Some they, oh, I'm not an angry person. I don't have any anger. Then, oh, voila. Like there's subject or sadness or just these different states. So how do you help people that maybe have been pent, you know, have been pent up emotions? Get that out by day. Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. I love this topic. Um, and yes, it's all riddled throughout my content, but there's common pitfalls and one of the ways I like to classify those pitfalls are based on emotional expressions and suppressions.
Okay? So whenever I work with clients, I use a very emotion focused approach of, well, let's look at the alchemy of your three core emotions. And these three core emotions are fear. Anger and sadness. Yeah. Well, sadness is really the emotion that decreases our energy levels and pushes us to accept reality the way it is.
Hmm. Here is an emotion that identifies obstacles to things that are important to us. So if something threatens something important to us, we get a jolt of energy so that we can identify, well, what's going on? How can I be more aware? You're looking left and right. You don't wanna sleep in those moments.
Yes, exactly. Anger is the emotion when you feel like you can overcome an obstacle. I. So you spend time ruminating on it trying to figure it out in a much more simpler way. I describe it like this, like a game of galactica. Okay. You know that where you fly left and right as the jet and asteroids are coming towards you.
Yeah. Fear is the emotion and button that allows you to move left and right. Mm. To die. The asteroids, it's also the emotion that makes you picture the projectory of the asteroids so that you can troubleshoot. Like, what move do I need to make next to dodge this thing? Anger is the shoot button. You blow 'em all up.
Yes. Sadness is more so I accept my fate for the better or the worse and whatever happens is gonna happen to me. Mm-hmm. So with that psychoeducation to start, here's a couple of common pitfalls people run into when trying to deal with sleep. One is a lot of people who struggle with sleep are not angry enough during the daytime.
They oppress it, they're people pleasers, maybe they're anxious attackers. And it's, it's often rooted in a feeling of, um, it can be very different across a lot of people, but it could be rooted in. I am worried about the feelings of others, so I feel like my emotions might be a burden, or my needs aren't worthy of being expressed here, so I need to suppress them.
Mm-hmm. Um, some people are like, I don't wanna be an angry person. So they bottle up those emotions all day and they just ruminate, ruminate, ruminate on them. And a lot of people say, well, hey, that works for me. I'm not an angry person. But in reality, emotions don't go away. Exactly. Yeah, you have to think about them more.
So like a car, you know, you, you have this energy, it has to go somewhere. So a lot of people who suppress anger will suppress it during the day, and yet, as a psychologist, what we know is that your emotions don't go away and they become processed in the unconscious. So. What happens when you're trying to engage in rest and you have built up emotions that were meant to give you to take when you have built up emotions that were meant to lead you towards action, well then you're trying to sleep with the weight of the world telling you, go and move, shoot, fire.
Like, do whatever you need to. So if you can address that, a lot of people who start to express anger during the day slowly start to sleep better at night. Um, and that's just one, that's just one pitfall. There's, there's a couple more. So good, and I love how you're speaking to this because what you spoke to, we do see, and there's lots of frameworks in the world of sleep where certainly if we're speaking about insomnia, difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, where there seems to be certain archetypes or certain types of people that deal with some of these struggles, and certainly myself, who I went through a period of insomnia that totally changed the course of my life and.
Check the box and all those things you're talking about. People pleasing, like, oh, I'm not angry. Like, you know, and seeing that it really does seem to have some of those through lines. And of course there are exceptions and certain physiological aspects of things that people might be dealing with and what have you, but.
Often what you're pointing to is so important. So if someone's listening, they're saying, yeah, like, I think that's me. Like where do they begin? Do they start like journaling it out? Do they talk to other people? Do they start hitting things like how do they get this, um, these emotions? Wonderful question.
And I'll say, this is all educational content and if people want to take these things, of course I recommend professional therapy and. From an educational standpoint, yes. If you have anger that's being suppressed throughout the day, there's a couple of strategies you wanna become aware of. Yeah. One is anger acceptance.
So what's usually happening in, when you suppress anger, you train your mind to suppress it so much that you learn to rule out those signals. So in other words, you become so numb to anger that it starts to not really exist to you. Yeah. Less. It builds up, right? Yes. And you hit a 95, now you're like, oh crap.
I'm ready to, I'm ready to cause a tornado or whatever, you know? Yeah. But what hap, what happens when you suppress anger so much that you become numb to it? Mm-hmm. Well, your only experience with anger becomes the 90 to 95 intensity that is an explosion. And then you start to say, well, I'm a monster if I'm angry without realizing that there's a zero to 50 that you're missing out on in terms of anger.
That's actually very helpful, very constructive, and very kind. Anger is beautiful. Yeah. It's an emotion that creates order from chaos. It sets boundaries. It says this is where you're able to cross. This is where you stop. It also brings people in. It's like a marriage contract. I want you based on these conditions.
Yeah. So if you don't have anger, you don't know who's in or out of your world, and you don't have a sphere of protection around you. And if you don't have a fear of protection around you, now you're anxious and now you're hypervigilant. And now you're amygdala's activated and now you can't sleep. Right.
That's where you start. You accept the emotion and realize that you're using it ine effectively. So there's a way to use it more effectively once you start to accept it. Once you accept it, then you build your awareness to a wider range of your anger. You detect it earlier. And then once you detect it earlier, that's when you start those journaling assignments.
You start writing out your emotions. You can start being more assertive with people around you. There's an excellent resource online called The Dear Man, where it, it basically is an acronym that shows you how to communicate directly to people. Okay. Yeah. The Dear Man is, is really good. The D stands for Describe.
Okay. The E stands for Express. And the A stands for assert and the R stands for reinforce. So you can look this up online. I won't go into too much detail with it. Yeah. But it's, it's really helpful if you're really just starting out, trying to be more assertive in your communication and just watch the moment that you start releasing these internal emotions, how much it can impact your sleep in a good way and decrease your anxiety.
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Sleep and use the code. Sleep is a skill, all one word at checkout for a discount. One thing that I've been starting to share with certain clients is, I dunno if you've heard of Mind Your Body, Nicole Sach. So she's out of, um, John Sarno's work from many, many years ago. So he, um, was one of the first kind of pioneers of the mind body connection around back pain initially.
Right. And then years later, so she became kind of his like protege. And kind of making this link between how, like that emotional reservoir of kind of pent up emotions and needing to kind of let out the gasket progressively throughout the day. And so they do something called journal speak, where for 20 minutes you kind of rage on a page or get all these, you know, repressed emotions out.
And it could, to your point be, it could be despair, it could be all these different emotions as well in fear and et cetera. And then close it with a 10 minute meditation. And it's, it can seem, I don't mean to put the thoughts into people's minds, but it can seem, I would imagine as like, oh, well, how could that, just like a little journaling, a little meditation makes such a difference.
But the amount of success stories that people have with not only pain, but sleep and anxiety is just astounding. And so it just points to. What you're, what you're speaking to and have you seen that yourself too, of just like real measurable differences for people once they start getting this out and then really seeing, oh, now I'm sleeping from four hours to seven hours or what have you over time.
Oh yeah. Yeah. Very specific changes and a lot of people that come. In my office are more concerned oftentimes about, um, I just feel like an angry person. Yes. And side effect is my sleep. And then I'll restructure that and say, well also, you know, sleep is gonna make you, uh, much more dysregulated if you're not getting enough of it, of course.
But yes, I've seen huge measurable change for people that learn to express anger from the gut. More often is something that if you express it during the day, you don't need it much at night. Wow. And do you see the same for that kind of the trio emotions that you pointed to? So with getting the fear out, getting that sadness out, and sometimes people will complain about when they're really steeped in sadness, they just don't have the motivation or what have you.
If they can step through all of that, seeing that make a difference. Oh yeah, 100%. So a lot of people that have a hard time sleeping also have too much fear, right? Yes. They're spending time solving equations at night in their head. And some people they, a lot of people come to me with this. They say, I'm trying my hardest to sleep and I'm afraid that I can't sleep.
So now, not only are they experiencing fear during the day, but now they're afraid because they can't sleep. So they say, well, Dr. J, what do I do? How do I sleep? Yeah. If I'm afraid that I can't sleep and I learn that sleep is. And I learned that fear is actually the thing that's keeping me awake. Right? And usually the solution to that looks like letting go of control.
Hmm. So accepting initially that you will not sleep good and it's, it's okay for that one night. Um, if you practice allowing yourself to, to not control sleep, then sleep can start to come to you. So, um, if you, if you have too much fear, it's very likely that you feel like you need to be in control in a lot of situations.
And so, a lot of people that deal with a lot of fear, the first thing I'll tell 'em is like, you have no control over sleep at night. You, you have control over it during the day. You can set yourself up for success by waking up early and all those things. Yes. But you have to learn the emotion, um, of acceptance because sleeping, sleeping good really is like fishing.
You know, if you're sitting in a boat and you're fishing and you throw your, uh, rod in the water and you're sitting there with a rod in the water, you're sitting there with a string and you start doing all sorts of stuff, you start shaking the rod. You start saying, what am I doing wrong right now? It's like.
You can't do anything right now. Yeah, everything that is gonna benefit whether you catch the fish or not happened before you catched your ride in the water. Mm. It's the exact same thing with sleep. Everything you did before bedtime, that's what's gonna cause sleep to do well. And in fact, you stressing and trying to figure out how to sleep at nighttime is what's keeping you awake.
Just like shaking the ride is gonna scare the fish away. You have to let sleep control you and you have to let it happen to you and accept your fate because if you have too much fear, then you suppress sadness, which is an emotion of acceptance. And that's why sleep is so connected to sadness. 'cause sadness is an emotion that restores your emotional wellbeing just as much as it restores your physical body.
So a lot of people that have chronic pain, physical health concerns, not all the time. But they experience these because they don't use sadness enough. Hmm. 'cause sadness is an emotion of acceptance. Your body slowly looks down physically, your body is releasing tension. And the opposite action behavior of sadness is fear.
Fear. Everything about it is going inward. Your hands clinch up, your shoulders clinch up, your eyes clinch up and you go in your head. Yeah. And the that you do that, your whole body is in a state of bracing for impact. Because it's less painful to be hit by something that's coming towards you if you're tense rather than lose.
And so a lot of people that have a lot of physical health concerns have the distortion that they have to be tense, that they can't allow themselves to let go, and they've trained their body to do that over and over and over again. There, there's a lot in there that I could go into, but, uh, that is so good.
And I love what you said about the tapping into sadness. Have you seen the movie Inside Out by any chance? Yeah. Oh, I love that so much. Right. I feel like you're such a good model. First of all, your analogies are fantastic, so I love analogies. Thank you. No, I'm already like, oh my God, we have so many like outtakes that we need to be sharing about this.
Oh my God. And as you're sharing about this, I love how you're speaking to it because. It reminds me of inside out of the need to not suppress any one of these emotions and they're all part of this beautiful kind of kaleidoscope of what makes us, us, and certainly just in a overly simplified manner, I'm sure, I'd imagine.
But the need to have sadness, even if it might. We might have judgements about it or anger or fear, all these things. And I love that you're pointing to like the beautiful aspects of it. 'cause we might just think it's something to like get through and yet maybe that's a part of the equation that we need to move through when it comes to sleep.
Oh yeah, 100%. If you're not using sadness, if you're neglecting sadness, just like in the movie Inside Out, yeah. Then sadness is going to, uh, cause a problem later on. Somehow Anxiety is gonna take root. I loved in that movie how when sadness was kicked out, the picture. Anxiety really started to take, I think, inside out too.
And it, it's, it actually makes perfect sense, right? Because if you express sadness, you send indirect commands to the people around you to come to your rescue, sadness sends a signal to you that you're carrying a burden too heavy to carry, okay? And it signal to your community to come to your rescue. Hmm.
So what happens when you're afraid to express sadness because you're afraid of being a burden to the people around you? Well. You defeat the purpose of sadness in the first place because it's a emotion dedicated to allowing people to come to your rescue. Hmm. And two, now you start to operate under the core belief that nobody cares about your wants or needs because nobody can detect them.
Right? So what happens when nobody can detect your needs? Well, then you go into hyperdrive and you use anger and fear even more so that you can solve your own problems. And then you become convinced that nobody cares about me and I have to do everything myself. Yourself, and then you lie awake at night feeling overwhelmed at the weight of the world in your hands because you've never used sadness.
And then it turns into Inside out too. Exactly. Oh my gosh. I loved Inside Out too. I have a friend. She has a podcast too. I feel like you might be a good guest for that one because we both loved Inside Out too. So much that we saw three times in the theater. Like nuts. Oh my gosh. I know. We were really, we brought other people, you know, to have them come along for the ride.
But we are also like way too jazzed to see this thing. It was so nicely done. But I love what you're pointing to. And you also mentioned, I dunno if this was before we hit record or not, but you pointed to. How sadness sometimes can, we might see physiological changes as it moves maybe into depression. If I'm getting this wrong, let me know, but pointed to lowering of heart rate and maybe oversleeping.
So just curious if you see like how do we intelligently use sadness without just like hanging out in there and wallowing in there. I love that nuance question 'cause it's so important. Okay. So anytime you excessively express or excessively suppress an emotion, it's going to lead to symptoms. So if you excessively express sadness, yeah.
It's also going to negatively impact sleep in a very different way. Sure. 'cause a lot of people that experience a lot of sadness. Um, well, I mean, just to go back to the core of sadness, what it does is it decreases your heart rate and it prepares you for this acceptance of this experience that's about to happen.
Mm-hmm. Uh, more extreme analogy might be, imagine that you're kind of caught in the clutches of a, a, a bear or something like that. Yeah. And you're trying to survive. Sadness is the emotion that accepts your fate. It puts you in a state of learned helplessness. Your heart rate decreases. The pain of what's about to happen becomes a little less severe because you state and then you go into a state of wanting to rest.
So what happens when the tigers and bearers of your life start to become too big to handle and you feel that way all the time? Well, then you start to wanna sleep all the time. Mm-hmm. If you wanna sleep all the time, you have people who are depressed, that are sleeping like nine to 12 hours. Sometimes they're just not getting out of bed.
Um, you might think, well, hey, they've got sleep master year. Right? But not really. Right. Really what's happening is, is with their sleep, they are getting the lower quality sleep over time because they're overdoing it. And another thing that's happening when you don't. Have enough fear and anger, which pops up opposite to sadness.
Sure. Then you don't take enough action during the day, and so if you're only in restoration mode because life is too big, then you never exert energy and you end up with excess energy. At night again. Mm. And now you're depressed and you can't sleep. You get insomnia. You wake up at 5:00 PM who knows what, and you're caught in the cycle and that makes you even more sad.
So sadness also has its pitfalls as well, especially with a lot of people. And another good takeaway with this is, um, a lot of people with social anxiety can struggle with sleep. Not just because fear is constantly keeping their heart rate up, but because they're not going out enough and experiencing social interactions, talking to people, their anxiety can sometimes keep them stuck in their house that no longer allows them to express or get their energy out, or who knows what.
Yeah. So if you're not participating in your world throughout the day, you're gonna have excess energy at night and wonder why you can't sleep. I'm so glad you touched on that too. You really bring up some great topics. We saw that certainly during covid, so loneliness and sleep disruptions, and it really did seem to point to just from, as a societal kind of moving towards more isolation, more.
Feeling like maybe potentially false sense of connection by online kind of sources and, oh, I talked to tons of people, of course, but then not necessarily in real life and getting those true, those emotions out as you're pointing to. So is that part of what you do with people? It's trying to really. Parse out, is it that they're isolated and that they're not being with people and having a sense of community?
Are they hanging out maybe in one emotion too much, or not expressing other things? So is it kind of a multi-step process? You got it. Welcome to the team. No, no, that's exactly right. It's an assessment process. 'cause a lot of times you have the basic principles, which is the stars analogy we went over. Yep.
And also you have the unique concerns, which is more tied to what's your unique alchemy that's leading to difficulties with sleep. Yeah. And once you figure that out, then the, the rest of the battle is just the psychological work. How do we get you outta that stuck place? How do we get you to acknowledge the shadow side, which you might be judging?
Maybe there's a shadow in you that feels like anger is always bad. Then we have to resolve that in therapy. Let's talk about the good side of anger. You know, so there's, there's a lot there. Then you just watch inside out too, and then you're good to go. Just kidding. Ly, so good. No, I love that you're, you're starting to feel like this spokesperson for me for some of these emotions that maybe we've wanted to kind of keep at bay or push away or just kind of get through and you're helping to show the positive side the, the needs for these things.
So it's really beautiful. Before we start shifting over into how you're managing your own sleep, I know this is a huge topic of. Emotions and sleep and navigating all this. Is there anything that we wanna make sure we kind of put a bow on or dive into a little bit deeper before we transition to you and your sleep?
Yeah, I think, um. Something that's really important for people to note is the impact of the, um, amygdala when it comes to sleep. Yes. Um, the amygdala is our fight or flight response. It's responsible for telling us when we are about to die. So when we are about to die, our amygdala signals to us, Hey, you're about to die by making us feel like we're gonna die, which doesn't feel good.
But if we didn't have that, we would not have survived as a species. Right. Um, I. If you are not getting enough sleep, it's going to start to feel like you're living half a life at least. Mm-hmm. Sleep is required for you to restore, but not only that, if you're not getting enough sleep, then you're starting to feel like you're living life in a battlefield, a war zone.
Yeah. And why? Well, the, the reason why that that happens is because if you don't get enough sleep. Then your prefrontal cortex is not working properly. And thankfully our body makes up for that because it says, well, hey, uh, Jacob's, uh, prefrontal cortex is not working good enough. So you know what? Let's strengthen his amygdala.
Let's make him feel like there's more threats in his world so he can survive. Yeah. So what happens when your amygdala is fighting even harder when you have less sleep? Well, that's why you become more irritable. Anger is more on guard. Yep. You feel more depressed. That's sadness is more on guard and you feel more hypervigilant.
You feel like you, because if you're not feeling that way with your amygdala, then you're slowly going to be a little less reactive to your environment when you're sleep deprived. So if you don't get enough sleep. Then your amygdala is more hyperactive and it just makes life feel like a battlefield, even if everything in your environment is perfect.
I mean, like me and my wife were just having a wonderful day and I got like four hours of sleep back to back because of this weird thing that happened and everything was perfect in life, and yet it felt like I was in a battlefield. And that's why it's your body's coping mechanism. Yeah. Because the rest of your prefrontal cortexes and all that stuff's not operating very well at the moment.
Okay. And so for. People listen. 'cause this is where it's been so interesting, and this is one of the things I'm gonna try to be more mindful of in the future as I'm getting out content is because I'll have, for the group that is not prioritizing their sleep or hasn't been thinking about it, or you know, they've just got all these other things that they're dealing with or work or kids, whatever.
But then as they start to prioritize it, then life is like transformed because now they're trying to sleep more and it's just amazing. And then for back to that group that is really struggling to fall asleep or stay asleep, then they'll sometimes hear about the amygdala and what's going on, and then they're like, oh no, how do I get outta this?
Because now my body's like working against me and what do I, how do I manage this? Is this where we just always go back to no matter what we hear or learn about? Sleep and its importance that it's part of going back to expressing these emotions, getting to the source of what's kind of that unrest. And even if you have been in that state of kind of hypervigilance, it's, there's hope, you know, to make sure that people have that sense.
Is that what you would kind of speak to for them? We can calm that amygdala, even if it's been a stretch of the four hours and what have you. Yes, 100%. There's so much hope, and I mean, one of the reasons that I start off with that a lot of times in therapy is because a lot of people undervalue sleep. So sometimes the barrier isn't just, I can't sleep, but more so you have this mindset of like, I.
I'm capable, I can do all things. Yeah. And we had a huge push with more military culture of like, I can go three hours of sleep. People would be trained to, to navigate life with just three hours of sleep. But with all that being said, yeah, with that barrier, you really wanna push through and say you need sleep and that's gonna make life easier.
And yet. To the other people that are struggling with sleep and they're like, I've been working on this all my life, and it feels, I think my amygdala is telling me my life's not worth it, and it's just hard. Yeah, there is hope because sleep is like, you always say a skill and. It's very tough to work with the amygdala, but we do it as psychologists all the time.
Even when you're dealing with PTSD and trauma, it's the same response. A lot of veterans who deal with this have a lot of sleep issues, and yet we have so many evidence-based treatments that get people on their feet very, very quickly. Mm. Um, and for the other group, as you're learning the skill, you know, you just wanna apply those principles and make sure that you're prioritizing it and not, uh, ignoring these things.
So there is hope and there's a lot of resources for you. And also, don't undervalue sleep. So good, so thoughtful. And for the people that are dealing, I'm glad you mentioned the PTSD and trauma for groups like that or people with just struggling and they've, they've had it, that they're bad sleepers or what have you, then are some of the things that you might point to them, do you go to like.
MD hypnosis, some of these different modalities or no, more just like really it's getting in there and getting at the source of those repressed emotions or, or I think really, um, truly in or, um, push people a whole lot to the, to the EMDR and all that. I mean, that's just not my specialty, but I've heard good things about it.
Okay. Yeah. Um, what, we'll do more cognitive processing work, but there are all sorts of evidence-based practices that can be helpful to people. Um. Totally. And, and what, what we'll do in therapy is first just normalize, like what's happening with PTSD, right? So with with PTSD, you have likely experienced an environment where your hyper vigilance was not hyper vigilance, it was vigilance.
Mm-hmm. And it would be weird if you could get a good night, a good night's sleep in the middle of a war, because then you might not have made it back home. Right. So your body's basically just remembering the old strategy. So you don't wanna, you don't wanna discourage your body's function. And so if there's one.
Underlying principle that I like to communicate to people is this, that your emotions are telling you something very important. Mm-hmm. Helpful to invalidate them and say, I just hate that my body is so stupid that it, it, it wakes up at the sound of somebody closing a dumpster next to me. Right. And like, well that kept you alive for a long time when you were at war.
So it's really important to accept the reactions and then shift them to say, Hey, well there's a new thing waiting for you. Let's work towards new experiences. And I have a hundred analogies for how to get out of that. But, um, think of time. I won't go into detail. Yes. Okay. And definitely, I usually say this for the end, but I highly suggest that people follow you or make sure we have all the links to your social and beyond.
'cause you do such a great job at helping to provide, you know, all of that information in a engaging and outta the box way. So, fantastic. I. So, okay. So shifting gears then to, 'cause clearly you've thought deeply about these topics and of course sleep. So excited to hear how you're managing your own sleep.
So our first question is, what does your nightly sleep routine look like right now? Yeah. Well, I'll say that my nightly sleep routine starts in the morning. Okay. Yes, exactly. I make sure that I wake up between 6:00 AM to six 30. My wife makes fun of me 'cause she's like, you're like a military person. I say, well, it's your fault.
Because she kicks me out of bed in the morning when my alarm goes off. Love it. And I make sure that no matter what, I wake up between 6:00 AM to six 30, maybe I'll give myself a week, and every now and then here and there if I'm like, we, we had a great time. We had a wonderful date night, and we just wanna kind of wake up together.
Yep. But yeah, usually it starts in the morning and the first thing that I do is, is I make sure I get some exposure to some kind of light. Mm-hmm. Ideally it could be sunlight, but uh, I'd be falling into the category of some of those people that are like, oh dude, you're obsessed, kind of. But, but I, I make sure I turn on like my heat lamp in my bathroom when I wake up.
Yeah. That, that helps out a whole lot. And I'm just exposing myself to sunlight and I really like warm showers. Mm. So I go ahead and I go into my warm shower, open my window, so that gives me a little sunlight too. Great. I'm already being intentional about waking up as early as possible and getting some sunlight.
Mm. Um, one of the things that's really helpful, a lot of people will say, well, it's hard to wake up early and I don't know how you get motivated to do it. Well, I will say this, that once you realize that those behaviors are making you dead tired at night, it's a little bit more motivating. Yeah. Also, I'm someone that, um, with, um, someone who's, who has a hard time really falling asleep at night.
I, I, um, at least in the past. Yeah, sure. These strategies have saved me so much sleep that it feels just like this is, I, I'd rather struggle waking up early than struggle staring at the ceiling at night. Oh my gosh. I so relate to that. 'cause that was definitely my issue too, the falling asleep part for the most part.
And that was part of what I found is. The consistency and while it can sound like cruel and unusual punishment in the beginning, if people are struggling or they had a rough night or whatever, over time becomes your best friend in this journey, because then everything just kinda works. It's just all automated.
I love that. I love that you started with the mornings. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, did I pass, get a plus on that one? Oh yeah, totally. Yes. Well, and it brings us to that second part of the questions are always what does your morning sleep routine look like with the idea that how we start our day impacts our sleep. But on either end, did we miss anything like your, the evening wind down piece, the morning, anything we left out?
Yeah, totally. It's really important to make sure. Well, I'll do this. I, I'll make sure that I try to wind down right around like 8:00 PM. Um, ideally it would be earlier. My bedtime also includes trying not to eat too much before I go to bed because, um, huge fan of Aura. The aura ring. Yeah. I have noticed a trend on there that if you don't, if you eat a whole lot before bed, your body's heart rate increases.
'cause it has to digest that food. Yeah. So another part of my routine is trying my best, at least on weekdays, to not really eat a whole lot at like right before bed. I. Um, and then I'll just go through the routine of making sure that I spend some time in bed without much light on. I have like a, a little red light that, uh, me and my wife have by the dresser.
Yes. And so that, that just is not too much light, but it allows us enough to still kind of have like human interaction and feel like we're doing our thing. Yes. Love that. I try to make sure I use the same pillows every night. Same posture, same position. That way, I'm getting those signals over and over again of like, this is, this is happening in sleep time.
This is what Jacob usually does when he is gonna sleep. I make it, I try to make it as easy as possible for my body to detect. Oh, that's great. I love that. Perfect. And more to that point, what might we visually see in your environment, like on your nightstand or beyond anything we left out? Yeah, white noise machines is okay.
Something that life likes a lot. She's also someone using mouth tape. I know people kind of can make fun of that, but I'm like, I don't know. Doesn't work. I don't know. We'll try it. I'm a mouth tape user as well? Yes. Oh, cool. Great. Cool. You're both on board, so we often talk about the book, breathe by James Nestor being a nice resource if people wanna learn more about some of those potential benefits or if you want more of an academic leaning resource.
Jaws despite the name. But, uh, jaws is a really great in-depth look at some of the impacts of our, uh, how we're breathing and how to support more nasal breathing, especially during sleep with the caveat that. If there is undiagnosed or untreated sleep apnea, then that can be a situation that you can actually make it more pronounced and worse with mouth tapes.
So that's kind of one of the call. Its in kind the sleep community. 'cause you know, so many people are like, yeah, mouth tape for everyone. Which it can be great for many people, but if they haven't discovered some of those issues with their breathing, that can create some other problems too. Wow. You know your stuff.
Wow, that's good. I didn't know that. Interesting. Wild, right? Yeah. Such a, so many details you got in that brain. Well, it must have been all that overthinking, you know? Uh, working on, working on it. Something else that I wanted to make sure I threw out there too is with, uh, A DHD, you know, it's something that's not enough about with sleep.
Um, I agree. I mean, with a DHD, it's, it's really, really the case that you're. Difficulties with sleep become that much harder. And so as you're preparing your bedtime routine, it's really important that you don't have what I call triggers that can pull you into something. Yeah. So you don't wanna have, I like one of your videos that you, you put up, which is you don't wanna have difficult conversations at night.
Um, with A DHD is so hard not to chew on the bone of something stimulating, whether it's positive or negative. Yeah. So if somebody is talking about something that brings you into a state of like, we gotta talk about this tonight. Yeah. Like with a adhd, you're not gonna wanna let go of that bone. Yeah. So at night, if you have a DHD, it is very important that you try to save all of your stimulating tasks, whether positive or negative for the morning rather than at night.
That's true for everyone, but even more so with A DHD 'cause you are more likely to not be able to let go of that bone. You're more likely to be the people that have been up till 3:00 AM having an argument or playing a video game. You're the same people that have a hard time with not getting that dopamine from eating right before bed.
And so I would say for people with a DHD, something to keep in mind is that sleep is even more so a skill. Yes. Oh, I love that. So well said. And more to that snowball effect because then the group that then is finding themselves playing the video games at 3:00 AM et cetera, and then their sleep is suffering, then we often see the symptom severity going up around A DHD and a lot of questions, kids and what have you.
So that's a, it's a really important call. I'm so glad you mentioned that. Ah, so good. Well, that brings us to the last question, which would be so far to date. What would you say has made the biggest change to your sleep game or said another way, maybe biggest aha moment in managing your sleep? I love that question.
I would say the biggest aha moment was that sleep can happen to you and you can't make it happen for you. At night. Yeah. Rather than, than some people will prepare in the morning. Once I realized that and digested it, yeah. Once I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep, I approached it very differently.
I was like, well, there's nothing that I can really, truly do. Yeah. That can make wildest different in this moment except accept my fate. So that, that's one thing. Acceptance and being present. Um, I think the other aha moment was the connection between sadness and your heart rate decreasing. I think that's just.
Fantastic to really reflect on that. There's not a whole lot of people that are, um, sad in the moment that are trying to sleep and looking at the ceiling. It's usually they're frustrated. So, um, hey, that's such. And so with that realization too, is that something that you speak to when you're working with people and they're struggling with the 3:00 AM wake up, 4:00 AM wake up, or what have you, just this idea of, okay, accept your fate now from maybe a hopefully temporary standpoint, and then know that there's all these things that you can do to support yourself by day.
Whether it's, uh, you know, releasing those emotions, getting that sunlight, the, the acronym you spoke to, and then potentially if it's more layered than kind of getting up under some of those traumas or other things, but that by day we can make a difference. And at night we're practicing acceptance. I.
Precisely. Precisely. Okay. You don't want to show up to the, uh, workout meet or the lifting contest and eat a steak on that day and feel like that's gonna save you. You have to eat throughout the day, and in fact, your performance is gonna increase if you stop focusing on your performance in the moment.
So exposure is usually a treatment used by psychologists to get people to perform better on something. Yeah. Body naturally has to do for of them. So you can't in the moment train your body to not physiologically sweat when you're giving a presentation. Yeah. Unless you learn to fail at presenting or perceive yourself as a failure.
Create some acceptance around that. That's why we use exposure. We'll tell people, Hey, do a presentation present and intentionally make a bad joke and let the silence sit and then allow people to not laugh at you and it be awkward, and just do that a hundred times and realize that the stakes are low.
Hmm. And that's what we're looking for as psychologists. It's not success at first, but more so that the stakes feel lower. Hmm. 'cause that's you in a state of play, in a state of acceptance because that's gonna make you perform better. So translating that to sleep, I. If you wake up in the middle of night at 3:00 PM and then you're starting to dread that in the stakes high, that's gonna make it much harder to not wake up at that same time the next day.
So what you wanna do is, is if you wake up at three p 3:00 AM you wanna see, I wanna lay down here and enjoy just looking at the ceiling for the next hour. If I sleep before that, I failed. Got it. I love that. Yeah. Kind of paradoxical intent. So good now. I so appreciate, I mean, clearly you have thought deeply about these topics and help support your people that are struggling in varied different ways to find what works for them.
So I just so appreciate the work you're doing and I'm clear that people listening are gonna wanna follow you, work with you, you know, be a part of your world. So what are the best ways for them to do that? Sure. I mean, give me a follow on Instagram. I'm sure that Mollie, you're gonna put something somewhere for that.
Yes. Absolutely. Um, also, our, my website is on my Instagram page, so if you click my bio, you can see restore psychology in that link. And you'll also have access to other talks that I've done with, uh, uh, Dr. Vincent Barbieri, who I also truly highly esteem as a great psychologist. So, uh, we have a lot of videos together on, uh, attachment styles.
We're doing one on a DHD this upcoming Monday. We also have a video on narcissism and people dealing with narcissistic relationships, things like that. Shame. We have a couple of hour episodes just online, so if you want access to anything, you can go to my Instagram page. Click the bio, find my TikTok, and then you'll also see Dr.
Vincent Barbiere, um, posted in a whole lot of my, uh, content so he's easy to find too. That's amazing. Well, I love the work you're doing. Thank making such a difference and really just, you know, it's so, also, so important how this gets communicated and you're doing it such a fresh and new way and it just makes such a difference for people for to land impactfully and so that people can move on these things.
So thank you. And more to come. Yeah. Thank you for having me. This has been awesome. You've been listening to The Sleep As A Skill Podcast, the top podcast for people who wanna take their sleep skills to the next level. Every Monday, I send out the Sleep Obsessions newsletter, which aims to be one of the most obsessive newsletters on the planet.
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