Sleep Problems - Can't Sleep - The Over Tired Myth

Sleep problems, the inability to sleep or to get a good and refreshing night's rest, plague millions of people in the United States and many more millions around the world. Children as well as adults are affected by insomnia, in fact, even infants may have sleep problems.

One term that is often used is overtired, or over tired. This is a misleading description, to say the least. Is it really possible to be too tired to sleep? Let's think about that for a minute. First of all, if you were too tired to sleep, if it was really possible to get too tired to sleep, then once you reached that point, it would be impossible to ever fall asleep again.

If being a little tired helps you to sleep, and being a little more tired than that helps you to sleep even more, why wouldn't being very tired help you to sleep? Of course, the answer is that it does. Many times children are labeled as over-tired, but what they really are is over stimulated, or just plain stimulated and therefore, find it hard to relax.

While relaxation and sleep are two different things, it is necessary to relax in order to sleep. It is one of the stages to sleep. Therefore, in order to go to sleep, an adult or child, even an infant, must relax. One part of the relaxation process is physical and one part is emotional or intellectual.

By physically relaxing, it is possible to trigger powerful neurotransmitters that relax the mind. By relaxing the mind, or slowing it down, it is possible to drift off to sleep. That is why relaxation techniques are so beneficial for people who experience sleep problems

Relaxation techniques for adults often focus the attention on different parts of the body or engage the mind in repetitive tasks. Children's bed time stories work well especially those that make use of subliminal suggestions that gently guide a child into sleep.

Whatever method is used to gently guide the mind and body into natural sleep, there is no such thing as being over tired or too tired to sleep. It is possible to be stimulated and therefore unable to relax, but that can be dealt with using proven methods.