Therapy, as essential as it is for personal wellbeing, can be emotionally draining — so we totally understand if you want to spend the entire day in bed in comfy loungewear after your session. Moving on from an emotional hangover is a valid enough reason to curl up in bed in cozy co-ords and press pause, but there are scientific reasons why a post-therapy nap is actually a relief to your mind.
Sleep deprivation has been shown in studies to elevate stress and make people more likely to develop psychiatric disorders, so it stands to reason that getting more sleep in comfortable cotton clothing can improve your mood.
Seeing a mental health professional is an evidence-based method for dealing with challenges and improving your mood, whether you're dealing with difficult circumstances or have been diagnosed with clinical anxiety or depression. However, it turns out that sleep may play an interesting role in preparing your mind to include all of the valuable lessons you learned during your last session.
Experts believe post-therapy naps could optimize adherence to treatment, or whether you implement how much you've managed to learn in therapy in your everyday life. “ A 2017 study from the University of California, Berkeley" discovered that a person's sleeping patterns "the night before and after a cognitive-behavioral therapy session for insomnia can improve treatment efficacy. People in the study "who slept the most between sessions understood their treatment better," implying that sleeping in casual loungewear better helps learners understand and stick to their treatment plan.
According to the notion, a memory gets updated or changed anytime it is recalled because it is in an unstable or dynamic condition. "You can have a corrected emotional experience, which updates and modifies the interpretation of the memory."
Where does sleep fit in? It's believed that memory reconsolidation takes place while we sleep. "Different kinds of memories seem to get consolidated during different portions of the sleep cycle, but REM, when most dreaming occurs, is when evidence suggests emotional memories are updated," says Dr. David A. Goldman.
It's crucial to realize, Dr. Lane notes, that what you do following your counseling session can have a major impact on the results you get from it. Physically or mentally demanding situations, such as a strenuous workout, can also make matters miserable by "identifying" a memory as powerful. The author claims we don't consider our actions after a session, but they may have an impact on how our memories are updated.
