Therapy is crucial for mental health, but let’s be real, it can be exhausting. Besides recovering from an emotional hangover, there are some legitimate (even scientific) reasons why a post-therapy power nap might be worth considering.
If you’ve ever dealt with anxiety or depression, you’ve probably heard that sleep plays a big role in managing your worries or low mood. Research shows that lack of sleep can make stress worse in general, and sleep-deprived folks are more likely to develop psychiatric disorders. So, it only makes sense that improving your sleep quality can have a positive impact on your mood.
It’s important to note that experts say lifestyle tweaks like sleeping more aren’t always a cure-all for managing every type of stress and mental illness. If you’re navigating tough circumstances or have been diagnosed with clinical anxiety or depression, then seeing a psychotherapist is an evidence-based method for coping with difficulties and boosting your mood. But sleep, as it turns out, may actually play an interesting part in equipping your brain to incorporate all the important lessons you gathered in your last therapy session.
How is a Post-therapy Nap Helpful?
Researchers have found that a nap after therapy could promote treatment adherence (it involves keeping with a formal plan or prescription that has been agreed upon with a healthcare provider) or whether or not you simply apply what you’ve learned in therapy to your daily life. One study from the University of California, Berkeley found a person’s quality of sleep the night before and after a cognitive-behavioral therapy session for insomnia can promote better treatment outcomes. In the study, the people who slept the most between sessions understood their treatment better, which suggests that more sleep can help people learn and better stick to their treatment plans.
According to Dr. Richard Lane, a professor of psychiatry, psychology, and neuroscience at the University of Arizona, prioritizing sleep could be an important part of personal growth. Therapy and sleep share a common process called memory reconsolidation, a psychological process that helps therapists reactivate memories to make them susceptible to change.
Memories play a significant role in shaping our thoughts and feelings. When we work through negative thoughts or emotions with a therapist, we have the opportunity to change those memories to better align with reality. “The theory is that whenever a memory is recalled, it’s in a labile or flexible state, so it can be updated or changed,” Dr. Lane tells Instyle. “You can have a corrective emotional experience, so the meaning of the memory is updated and modified.”
It may seem complicated, but it’s actually pretty simple. Let’s say you’re in therapy and you bring up a childhood memory that makes you feel insecure around your partner or at work. When your therapist helps you reframe your thinking about that situation, your brain can create a new memory that replaces the old one. As a result, you start feeling more confident about your self-worth.
According to Dr. Lane, any type of psychotherapy can help reconsolidate memories.”The key is to juxtapose the old learning with the new and updated learning.” As long as your therapist helps you learn new things that “overwrite” old thoughts and beliefs, your memories and emotions can change. In other words, when you’re learning and growing with your therapist, your mind and feelings can transform.
Where Does Sleep Come in Exactly?
It’s also believed that memory reconsolidation occurs during sleep, so getting some shut-eye plays a crucial role in its process. “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. Lane.
Although there’s no hard evidence yet about when exactly you should catch up on sleep after therapy, Dr. Lane thinks it’s best to take a nap within a few hours of your session. Apparently, during this time, your memories are most flexible for up to six hours after you recall them. However, this timeline might be a little tricky because a short nap of about 20-30 minutes probably won’t get you into REM sleep (unless you have clinical depression, in which case you might reach REM sleep faster than others). On the other hand, a longer nap with REM sleep – the kind that leaves you feeling like a zombie afterward – could interrupt your nighttime sleep. And that’s not ideal since a lack of sleep can actually make you feel worse.
The Final Takeaway
What you do after your therapy session can have a direct impact on what you gain from it. According to the experts, physically or emotionally stimulating experiences, such as a vigorous workout, might actually intensify a memory, so it’s important to be mindful of how you spend your time afterward. “We don’t think about what we do after a session, but what happens could influence the memory updating process,” Lane says.
While there aren’t any current studies that completely prove the link between memory reconsolidation, sleep, and therapy, Dr. Lane thinks researchers should investigate it more. He also suggests giving it a shot and taking a nap after a solid psychotherapy session to see if it helps.
