杏吧原创

IT鈥橲 enough to keep sleep scientists awake at night: counting sheep won鈥檛
help you drop off after all. But there鈥檚 consolation for insomniacs. Conjuring
up a pleasant and relaxing scene will have you nodding off in no time.

You know the routine鈥攍ying back, staring into space trying not to think
about that deadline tomorrow and the weight you put on over Christmas. However
hard you try, you just can鈥檛 get any shut-eye. What you need is something to
distract you from your worries. And some distractions work better than others, a
team at Oxford University has found. 鈥淧icturing an engaging scene takes up more
brain space than the same dirty old sheep,鈥� says Allison Harvey. 鈥淧lus it鈥檚
easier to stay with it because it鈥檚 more interesting,鈥� she adds.

Harvey and her colleague Suzanna Payne asked 50 insomniacs to try different
distraction techniques on certain nights, to see which helped them fall asleep
more quickly. One group conjured up a tranquil and relaxing scene such as a
waterfall or being on holiday, while a second were asked to think of a
distraction such as counting sheep. A third group were left to their own
devices.

On average, those picturing a relaxing scene fell asleep over 20 minutes
earlier than on nights they didn鈥檛 try the technique. But both the
sheep-counters and the controls took slightly longer than normal to fall asleep
on the nights of the experiment. 鈥淐ounting sheep is just too mundane to
effectively keep worries away,鈥� says Harvey.

In another study, Harvey looked at a different technique for dealing with
intrusive thoughts, called 鈥渢hought suppression鈥�. The idea is to nip an anxious
or negative thought in the bud by burying it as soon as it pops up. This is
similar to a traditional treatment for insomnia that psychologists often
try.

This time Harvey asked half the subjects to 鈥渟uppress鈥� their pre-sleep
worries and half to follow their normal routine. The 鈥渟uppression鈥� group took
about 10 minutes longer to get to sleep, Harvey will report in a future issue of
Cognitive Therapy Research.

Harvey鈥檚 results mirror those of a classic study known as the 鈥減olar bear
test鈥�. Telling someone not to think about a polar bear only encourages them to
think about it even more鈥攁 finding that appears to have gone unnoticed by
psychologists using the suppression technique to treat insomnia. It simply
doesn鈥檛 banish your worries.

Harvey鈥檚 research will appeal to more than just the academics. One in ten
people suffer from chronic insomnia, and scientists estimate that lost sleep
costs the US economy $35 billion a year in sick days and accidents.

鈥淭hese studies represent an innovative approach to the management of
insomnia,鈥� says Charles Morin, a sleep researcher at Laval University, Quebec.
But he is not surprised by Harvey鈥檚 second finding. 鈥淭he more you fight those
intrusive thoughts, the more they want to come back.鈥� Dealing with the
underlying source of worries is the only long-term answer to restless nights, he
adds.