When “Sleeping It Off” Helps, & When It Harms

At 10almonds, we’re often encouraging our readers to get more sleep, and especially in the context of the common myth that older people require less sleep; the reality is that sleeping less and not dying of it does not equate to needing less.

See also: Sleep: Yes, You Really Do Still Need It! and How Sleep-Deprived Are You, Really?

As well as ensuring to get in a good quantity of Zs, we also urge you to get good quality, too—see: The 6 Dimensions Of Sleep (And Why They Matter) ← duration is just one dimension out of the six!

Sleep & stress (or rather: stress & sleep)

❝Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.❞

~ William Shakespeare (Macbeth, Act 2 Sc. 2)

It’s very reasonable that after stressful events have exhausted us, whatever their nature or cause, we will at some point crash (energywise), and want to sleep.

But watch out! Because that can turn out to be a bad idea, sometimes. More on that later.

First, let’s examine the situation before the sleep: stress can both disrupt and promote sleep; the outcome depends on stress type, context, and timing.

Sometimes, some kinds of stress will keep us at night and thus prevent us from getting restorative rest. That’s usually a bad thing. See: What’s Really Keeping You Awake? The Brain’s Role in Sleepless Nights ← in other words: when things might well be “all in your head”, and/but that’s the worst place for things to be when you’re trying to sleep

Sometimes, on the other hand, other types of stress (including psychological or purely physical stressors, such as emotional or immune issues, respectively) can lead to sleep that helps us to recover and build resilience. This isn’t a vague wishy-washy thing or a nod to the broadly restorative effect of sleep; it has to do with specific brain-things we can point to, in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and lateral habenula; we’ll link to the science for this shortly.

Notably, stress-activated sleep-promoting neurons reduce anxiety, too; this has to do with GABA-signalling; see: A Neurotransmitter Less Talked-About: GABA Against Stress/Anxiety

Practical tip: it’s important to try to get good, healthy, complete sleep cycles in after stress, because both REM and non-REM sleep have important parts to play;

• Non-REM sleep: for physiological repair while autonomic nervous system activity is reduced
• REM sleep: for emotional processing and memory consolidation.

You can read all about these things here: Sleep and the recovery from stress ← whose short title belies the fact that it’s a very comprehensive review of many kinds of evidence from human and animal studies; we particularly recommend checking out figure 3 for a graphical representation, too

Now comes the “but watch out”….

The researchers note that improving sleep after stress (per CBT, sleep hygiene, etc) can reduce our vulnerability to anxiety, depression, or PTSD. They also note that poor sleep after stress can (and often will) worsen these conditions.

However, paradoxically: immediate sleep deprivation after trauma can reduce formation of traumatic memories—meaning that there is nuance to how we must go about this, as sometimes it can do more harm than good, when trying to “sleep it off” can effectively do the opposite, and engrain a traumatic experience permanently.

This goes for PTSD-inducing events of the kind that might come to mind when PTSD is mentioned, but it’s also another point in favor of the common marital advice to “never go to bed on an argument“, too. It’s better to process those kinds of things healthily before sleeping, rather than let your brain decide that you need a permanent easy-access record of such unpleasantries, to regularly replay it in your mind later—which is usually neither fun nor beneficial.

Learn more: How Your Brain Chooses What To Remember ← this is about the neurophysiology of sleep and memory consolidation

Want to learn more?

Here are some resources that might help with this, depending on your individual situation, of course:

• Ruminating (Bad) vs Processing (Good), & How To Tell The Difference
• How To Stop Revisiting Those Unwanted Memories ← a powerful tool to keep yourself from accessing certain memories accidentally
• The Off-Button For Your Brain (sometimes this is what’s needed, in the moment)

Take care!