#95 - Behavioural Experiments for Insomnia
The audience comprised mainly woman, dressed in their best suits and jewelry.
The presenter of the workshop announced:
“Take off one of your shoes.”
No one did this.
Instead, they all looked around at each other - waiting for someone else to make the first move. Eventually, one woman did, slipping off her high heel shoe. Like sheep, the rest followed.
The presenter then announced:
“I want you to lick the bottom of your shoe - now”.
Nervous laughter rolled across the audience like a Mexican wave. Followed by a second wave of silence and dread.
“Go on. Lick your shoe.”
Again, everyone looked around at each other. Waiting for someone to make the first move - but feeling absolutely certain that they would not be the first one to lick their shoe!
The presenter then put their minds at ease, enlightening them with the ‘teaching moment’ they’d just experienced:
“You’re all here to learn about how to help your clients with their OCD. And in doing so, you’re going to ask your clients at some stage to do something horrific to them. Not to lick their own shoe, but other things - like touch a bin and refraining from immediately washing their hands. But in doing so, they will feel exactly how you just felt.”
What Is A Behavioural Experiment?
Before describing what a behavioural experiment is, it is important to address why they exist.
They exist because of the types of thoughts that go through our mind.
All of us - now and then - have irrational thoughts that pass through our minds. It’s actually normal for this to happen.
Yet, when our emotional health starts to become imbalanced, our irrational thoughts begin to increase in their frequency and severity.
Probably a better way to think of our irrational thoughts is to think of them as unhelpful thoughts. Thoughts that get in the way of us doing the usual things we do each day…
…and night. Like sleeping!
And thus, another way to think of unhelpful thoughts - those that pass through our mind like traffic at a busy intersection when we are trying to fall asleep at night - are ‘worry’ and ‘rumination’.
We’d love to tell you more about how worry and rumination work when it comes to insomnia - and more importantly - how behavioural experiments can help to lessen such ways of thinking.
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Prof MG