Dr Sophie Bostock: “I think about rest as protection” Sleep, stress and feeling safe

When did you last look at the sky? Sleep expert Dr Sophie Bostock takes Fearne from her windowless studio onto the streets of London to remind her what daylight looks like, before they delve into how we get good quality rest. Fearne unpacks her own longstanding battle with switching off her racing thoughts and getting good sleep, and gets some tips from Sophie on how to quieten a busy mind, and stop fighting sleep. Plus, Sophie shares her upcoming adventure - rowing unsupported across the Atlantic Ocean. A journey of 3,000 miles which will see her having to sleep in 2 hour intervals, something which will undo years of work establishing a sleep routine. So what will she learn about sleep as she faces the waves? You can follow Sophie’s incredible journey across the Atlantic here https://growatlantic.team/. If you have questions about Melatonin, NICE has published guidance for both adults https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/insomnia/prescribing-information/prolonged-release-melatonin/ and children https://bnfc.nice.org.uk/drugs/melatonin/. We'd love to hear from you - email Fearne at [email protected] If you liked this episode of Happy Place, you might also like: Adam Kay https://pod.fo/e/43c1ec Dr Nicole LePera https://pod.fo/e/40cd32 Poorna Bell https://pod.fo/e/394770 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Fearne Cotton?

  Hello, I'm Fern Cotton and this is Happy Place, the show that empowers you to live life better. Today, I'm chatting to Dr Sophie Bostock.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  For me, there's this other element which is often missing from sleep advice, which I call your sleep identity. And it's the core set of beliefs that you have about your sleep and whether you have the trust in your sleep.

• 0:30Fearne Cotton?

  Sophie is a sleep expert and researcher, thank goodness, but she's also an incredible rower. And in December, she's going to row 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean, completely unsupported. And we talked about the impact that definitely will have on her sleep. If you're a shit sleeper like me, you have to stay tuned. This is the chat for you because we, I use this as a personal therapy session, okay? I am a bad sleeper. I have the odd good night. Last week, I managed to sleep. I managed to fall asleep without taking a melatonin, without taking any anxiety medication. I literally fell asleep and it is a miracle. And I don't know what I did to ensure that that happened.

• 1:14Fearne Cotton?

  So I needed to seriously dig deep with this one and ask Sophie all the burning questions. So what we cover in this chat is what rest actually is. I don't know. I don't know how to rest anymore. I've completely forgotten. We also talk about taking your needs seriously, which basically none of us do. We obviously talk about sleep and the stress response, which is really important. And stepping out into natural daylight in the daytime to ensure that you sleep well. Sophie actually dragged me out of my little windowless studio halfway through the day just to stand in the middle of central London and look at the sky to let some natural light into my retina. It's all those little things that make a big difference.

• 1:58Fearne Cotton?

  We also talk about parenting and how that affects sleep shift work, how that affects sleep perimenopause and how that affects sleep. I mean, I'm ticking two of those off the list already. And CBT as a really brilliant way of using therapy to help you sleep better.

• 2:50Speaker 02

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• 3:09Speaker 03

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• 3:20Speaker 03

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• 3:23Speaker 04

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• 4:40Fearne Cotton?

  Sophie, first of all, thank you for just forcing me to go out onto the streets of London to look at the sky.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Just to get a little bit of natural light, to take a breather, to pause. None of us do that enough.

• 4:52Fearne Cotton?

  I mean, we don't. We are, we're going to get on to sleep in a deeper way in a moment. But talking about rest, which is perhaps one of the key ingredients to sleeping, we culturally are so bad at it. Like, we don't, we don't, we certainly don't prioritize it, but we sort of don't know what it is. I don't know what it means anymore. Like, if you said, okay, you've got tomorrow off, rest, I would think, uh, watch a box set. Like, I don't know. Like, what is it? I don't know.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Rest is what enables us to be us. You know, most of the things that we do, the demands on our time and our energy, they kind of sap away at us. And rest is anything that just helps us to rebound and bring us back to being us. But the way that I often talk about sleep as like the pinnacle example of rest is that when we get it right, when we get that balance of sort of stress and strain and demand and we match it with the right amount and the quality of sleep, we don't just come back to baseline. We've become an even better version of us. And in sport, you call it super compensation. You need to go to the gym and you lift some weights and you temporarily get weaker and then you recover and you get stronger.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  But I think of life like that. You know, we have these stresses and strains. But when we give ourselves the opportunity to recover, we come back stronger, we adapt. Or different, maybe not stronger, but just different.

• 6:18Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, I think this is so important to talk about now because I think even in the last five years, I've noticed in my own work life and everyone's work life will obviously vastly differ. But if it was like in the last five years, we're sort of meant to be contactable all the time. We're always on call, always on email, always on the end of a phone to receive information. And that includes social media. But the demand on like things just being like the velocities ramped up, like things need to be quicker. Even if you look at, I don't know, like writing books. Back, back in the day, authors would write like a book every five years, probably at best.

• 7:01Fearne Cotton?

  There were some prolific writers, obviously, but I don't think the demand was there for anything more. Whereas now it's like, we want one a year. And I think it's the same with everything, like podcasting. We want two episodes a week, whatever it is. And that might not be applicable to everyone's jobs. But I think we're feeling it in terms of the culture of more, quicker, with no recovery. Just keep going, bloom all year round without ever, ever stopping.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  I'm laughing because my answer to this is to head off and row the Atlantic shortly. It's a little bit extreme, but I absolutely agree with you. You know, we feel like we're on this treadmill and I think technology is of course a huge part of it. Because at any time of day or night, we can check our phones and we can see what other people are doing all around, around the world. And we can get that email and that demand and that reminder that actually in the old days, we probably just would have forgotten about. But as it is, our heads are full, our calendars are full. And anywhere we look, we're just being bombarded with new information, new options. Our brains are just sort of being saturated all the time.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  And we can't really expect that environment to change. Let's be honest.

• 8:12Fearne Cotton?

  It's not going to.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  The genie's out of the bottle, well and truly, like AI is growing and growing. It's, it's going to be everywhere. Everything's going to be technological. So we internally have got to find ways to deal with that because we can't expect the environment to change. We've just got to develop the tools to be able to protect ourselves. And I do think about rest as protection. And I think, we're actually a very similar age. I think I've probably not managed my rest quite so well in the rest of my life. I seem to be a bit older, but

• 8:47Fearne Cotton?

  What are you on about?

• 8:48Speaker 01

  We're the same age. And, and I feel like the last five years or so, it's not just the external demands, but internally, you know, our bodies change. And even if we can't see anything, touch anything, feeling, under the skin, our biology is also changing. And we've got these crazy like hormonal roller coasters going on, which also unsettle our ability to be resilient and to deal with all of those stresses. So it's outside, it's inside, and, and that's really tough.

• 9:21Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah. And I think also as women, we're sort of subliminally told, do not rest. Put everyone else before you, be a good friend, partner, mother, daughter, sister, whatever. And you're right at the bottom of the pile and that's where you belong. Like, we're sort of subliminally, it's a historic thing that we've been dealt with for years. And I think we're maybe trying to now question that slightly and go, can I move myself up the ladder a bit? And that, I think for women, means rest. It means saying to other people, I can't do that favor. I can't meet up socially. I can't do that thing for you. I need to be. I mean, for me, a very personal sort of version of that is I have to be on my own. I need to be on my own at least once a week for like more than an hour.

• 10:06Fearne Cotton?

  Otherwise, I start to actually go mad. Like, I feel like I'm going mad. Like, I need that time where I'm just totally me without projecting my personality onto other people. That feels essential.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  And I would suggest that maybe that's not even enough.

• 10:23Fearne Cotton?

  It's not.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  And I think that we've probably all identified that we have these needs. But then the worst thing, the guilt. Because we experiment with, okay, I'm going to protect my time. But then the guilt kind of drags you down. And yeah, I think for me, like when I try and squeeze all, all these things in, the work stuff, the training.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  It's relationships that I end up actually batting away and then I feel guilty and that makes me feel even worse. So I'm really trying to work on, do you know what, like, the guilt's really unhelpful.

• 10:57Fearne Cotton?

  Doesn't do anything. It's pointless. A lot of my therapy more recently has been around taking my needs seriously. That is the exact phrase because I'll just go, oh, no, I don't need to do that. I'm capable. I can push myself further. But actually, I do have needs and one of them is being on my own quite a bit and I need to make more time for that. And maybe I just need to start seeing that as part of like my little rest package. That is what is going to float my boat. I really want to get on to sleep because.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  But this is all linked.

• 11:26Fearne Cotton?

  It is so linked.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  All the feelings that we have about I don't have time for this and do I deserve it, you know, the moment that we start to protect our rest during the day, stepping outside and taking two minutes to have a bit of sunlight, it's not just the sunlight in that moment, it's also the mental recognition that you have just done something that is actually going to be good for your sleep.

• 11:52Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  You've, you've managed to flick the switch just for a moment. I'm going to stop on the treadmill. I'm going to get outside and have a moment of pause. And this brings, does bring us into sleep because if you can learn to do that during the day, the brain is way better at night going, okay, yeah, it's time to switch off now. I know that.

• 12:10Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  I did that before.

• 12:12Fearne Cotton?

  So linking everything we do in the day to that moment where we get, where we climb into bed and we're hoping, I mean, like, I don't want to sound desperate, but please help me. Um, please help. I have, since the age of about thirty four, so not, you know, like you say on your website, we're all born with the ability to sleep. Modern life gets in the way. That for me was where it started to get in the way for all sorts of reasons. But before that, I could sleep anywhere, anywhere. Like me and Reggie would fly to the States and he would always laugh that we'd get on the plane and I'd be asleep before it took off. Like I could just sleep anywhere. And at thirty four, when I started really

• 12:52Fearne Cotton?

  feeling anxious and panic attacks coming into play, my sleep went off on this tangent and I've never quite fully got it back on track. I've had really good moments. I would say the start of this year, I was doing really well and I was like, I'm, I'm like sleeping the best I have in ages. And then literally this last seven days, it's taken a horrible turn. And I get into bed, yes, I am using this as a personal consultation with you right now, Sophie. If I get into bed, the thoughts start racing, then I start feeling unsafe because my brain is going to like all of these unsafe thoughts. And then the

• 13:33Fearne Cotton?

  adrenaline starts and then my heart starts racing. I'm in the exact opposite state that I want to be in to relax and sleep. And that is what I need to now get out of.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  Great. Well, you've come to the right place.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  But the great thing about sleep is, and I don't want to um make it overly simple, but you just need a map. You just need a guide. You need a framework that says, okay, all right, these are all the things that could be influencing my sleep. Let's just kind of work our way through them and see which ones are a bit skew if. And more often than not, if I kind of work through your daily schedule, you know, are you getting enough light? Are you waking up at the same time? That's the kind of circadian rhythm biology bit. Um, and then there's the sort of the time aspect. Are you actually allowing enough time for sleep? Are you using caffeine to get through the day or anything that's kind of messing with your sleep pressure? But then the next pillar is about exactly what you said, safety.

• 14:34Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  If we think about sleep from an evolutionary perspective, which I think is really helpful, which of our ancestors survived? You know, the ones that slept deeply, could sleep anywhere at the drop of a hat, or the ones who actually were pretty good at waking up every hour and a half or so, just to check that everything was going to be okay. So if there is anything in your external environment, but even in your internal environment that is pushing the body into a state of stress, that kind of threat response, then you're going to find it harder to fall asleep and you're more likely to wake up perhaps multiple times during the night.

• 15:14Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, I do that too.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  So that kind of um threat response is not a bad thing. It's there to serve a function. But what I try and encourage people to do is learn this stress recovery agility. So I'm never going to expect that you're not going to get stressed. But what I do want you to do is to practise as much as possible, flipping the switch, getting into that sort of safety state. And the more you do it during the day, the better it is at night.

• 15:42Fearne Cotton?

  What's a quick way of, of dealing with that then? Because like you say, you know, we'll be stuck in traffic in the day or someone sends us a shitty email or whatever it is. And you feel that, that rush of adrenaline or that threat. Or maybe for me, you know, I had, I've had, you know, a couple of things in my life over the years that have, well, been a threat, I would actually say, in, in certain ways. And there are echoes of that that I then feel out of the blue. Anything could trigger it. Yeah. And then I find it very hard to do the recovery bit.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Okay. So the first thing is recognizing it.

• 16:16Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  And so we're not going to squash it. We're just going to recognize it. And I always think about that, a way of reframing, you know, the beating heart, that this is not anxiety exactly, it's just my body mobilizing to deal with stuff. You know, this is a very functional body that I've got here and it's ready to deal with whatever life throws at it. So acknowledge it first, but then kind of go, is this useful right here, right now? No, this is not very useful. I'm in bed. I actually should feel safe. Um, and so then, well, the quickest, easiest is slow breaths. You know, I'm, you know, all about breathwork.

• 16:50Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  But this very simple fact that when we breathe out, our heart rate slows down. When we breathe in, our heart rate speeds up a little bit. And so our breath is kind of constantly um sending messages to our central nervous system. So if you simply take a breath in, fill the belly and slowly breathe out.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  You're immediately sending the message to your brain that there are no saber tooth tigers here. You are safe. And a few rounds of slow breathing can just take the edge off a little bit. And then, you know, you may then still have a tsunami of thoughts and there's lots of kind of cognitive tools that you can use to deal with those. Um, but I think fundamentally, it is about this practice of recognizing when you feel that lack of safety and finding ways, multiple ways to sort of switch into safe mode.

• 17:53Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, I think that, that for me, and there'll be people listening to this that I'm sure have that feeling of I'm not safe. That one, I definitely feel like is not temporary. I've been through phases of it before and I know I can get out of it. But the racing thoughts one, I would say is kind of my permanent state. I just have a lot of thoughts all the time. And like, because I knew I was chatting to you today, I was thinking, right, when I get into bed this last night, let's see what comes up. And it was, as you say, a tsunami. It was thinking about my day to day. And then that turned into thinking about every moment of what's to come this week and like trying to logistically plot it out. Then I had a song in my head. I had this stupid song that we're going to use on Instagram

• 18:38Fearne Cotton?

  reels for happy place.

• 18:41Fearne Cotton?

  Ding dong, bala bala bing bong, whatever the hell it is, that in my head, going around in circles. Why? Get out.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for sharing that because there will be so many people listening to this.

• 18:51Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Why?

• 18:52Fearne Cotton?

  Stupid shit. A song, a million thoughts. Then I might go into the territory of worrying about something that's out of my control. What the hell? I think most people find that is a, a big barrier when it comes to getting to sleep. What do we do about that?

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Okay. So these, all of this tsunami, is this hitting you when you're in bed?

• 19:12Fearne Cotton?

  It's literally right. So I get in bed and I read for about half an hour and I love reading in bed. Please don't tell me it's bad. Okay, fine, great. I'm reading a really good book at the moment. And that, I'm really peaceful. I'm really calm. And then I put my book down, go for a wee, earplugs, eye mask, put my head down.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  And then bam. Okay.

• 19:31Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  So you know all about journaling.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  And the practice of regular journaling, I think this is something that sometimes people pick up and then they put down again. But when we do it regularly.

• 19:46Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  And what I normally recommend to people is that they do it after dinner, like not right before bed. There needs to be this time, and it could be much earlier in the day, but there needs to be this mental download time where you just have this page and you're just like, right, splurge, doesn't matter what it is, let's go, let's download it. And you do that once and it's probably going to make no difference whatsoever. When I work with clients, I often found that two weeks, if you do that every single day for two weeks, if you just download the crazy thoughts that are in your head onto the page, and then crucially, you've got to have a sort of ritual of like,

• 20:25Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  close the book, you know, that's, that's it. That's where they are for tomorrow.

• 20:30Fearne Cotton?

  So, do you know what's so nuts is for years I prolifically journaled. I'm talking like every night between the ages of like 14 to probably my early 30s.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  So all that time that you had really good sleep.

• 20:45Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. What, this is what's.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Who knew?

• 20:47Fearne Cotton?

  Every, the, the dots are connecting as I'm talking to you. I'm like, I used to do this. I used to do it. And then, I mean, I had stuff happen that I wasn't happy about and I burned all of them because I kept them all and I burned them all and it felt really necessary and I don't have any regrets. But it also then totally halted me doing it and it shouldn't be connected to anything. I should just get back to it because I definitely know that then, of course, you've written all of that shit down. So when you put your head in the pillow, you've done it. You've already done all of that stuff.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Can I pick up on a word that you used there?

• 21:20Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  You said, of course I should do this.

• 21:24Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, right, yeah.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. I just once had that advice to try and avoid using the word should about myself.

• 21:31Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  So you could do this.

• 21:33Fearne Cotton?

  I could do it.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  I'm not telling you that you should do this. I'm just saying this is something you could do.

• 21:38Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  And some people find it really helpful.

• 21:40Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  And the expectation about it being a automatic, um, switch off my thoughts, that's, that's not quite right. But yes, this is a skill that you can get better at, this kind of downloading. And the fact that you've got a history of having done this in the past and it's worked, that gives me a lot of confidence that maybe we're in the right direction here.

• 21:59Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Um, because some people will be like, oh, give me something easier. I will tell you my other personal favourite for the tsunami particular problem. Um, and some people might have heard me talking about this before, but it works, so I'm going to share it again.

• 22:13Fearne Cotton?

  Please tell everyone.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  But there's this lovely technique called cognitive shuffling.

• 22:16Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  And this emerged from research where they got a bunch of really good sleepers, you know, the people who didn't worry about sleep at all. And they compared them to another group who really struggled routinely with sleep. And they asked both groups, what happens when you switch out the light? And first of all, with the group who slept well, they were kind of like, I don't know, you know, maybe might have some, uh, scenes from the day, shapes, lights, I'm not really sure. They just couldn't put their finger on what happened when they actually closed their eyes.

• 22:49Fearne Cotton?

  The dream.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  But then they spoke to the other group and Fern, they said basically what you said, you know, I solve problems, I think of all the stuff I've got to do, rah, rah, rah, sometimes crazy songs come up. And what they realised is that the poor sleepers typically were thinking about logical, rational thoughts and planning. And what we need to do is shift out of that mode of thinking into a much more loose, creative state.

• 23:15Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  And so the idea of cognitive shuffling, you simply think of a word, something that you can see, preferably with more than six letters.

• 23:24Fearne Cotton?

  Okay.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  Uh, anything spring into mind?

• 23:27Fearne Cotton?

  Um.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Some kind of object or animal, vegetable, mineral?

• 23:31Fearne Cotton?

  Bicycle.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Bicycle, lovely. Okay. So you visualise a bicycle, some bicycles, could be the Tour de France, doesn't really matter, just visualise something that springs into your mind. As soon as you've held that image, you work through the letters of the word bicycle. So next would be I, so think of something that begins with an I. Uh, ice. I literally go for igloo every single time. Well done. Um, and so then you can see, uh, maybe some Eskimos or some people skating on the ice, maybe a memory of Somerset House and going skating. I don't know, doesn't matter, but works through each letter of the word, allowing a different scene to come into your mind. And I find that if you use a particularly long word, I am genuinely usually asleep

• 24:17Speaker 01

  before I get to the end of it.

• 24:18Fearne Cotton?

  Discombobulated, let's go.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  It's a really, it's a really nice technique and I think it's the simplicity is, it's not going to work if you've filled yourself full of caffeine or you've got a really irregular routine or, you know, something really serious is happening in your life. But actually, if you're very tired anyway and you just want to get out of logical, rational worry mind and into a freer, sleep-friendly state, it's a really useful tool.

• 24:48Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, that's such a good one. I love that. I'm absolutely going to start journaling, not because I should, but because I want to.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Because you could.

• 24:55Fearne Cotton?

  Because I could. And I'm going to do the cognitive.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Cognitive shuffling.

• 24:59Fearne Cotton?

  I just like that, it's a great phrase.

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• 25:40Speaker 02

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of the best one yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalised AI for the way we work.

• 25:58Speaker 03

  That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 26:10Speaker 03

  That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 26:12Speaker 06

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• 26:56Speaker 06

  To learn more, go to mod.com. Fill out your intake form, meet with a licensed provider and if approved, Modaler ships straight to your door. Go to mod.com to get started. That's M O D dot com.

• 27:11Speaker 07

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• 27:41Fearne Cotton?

  So you are going through something. Lots of our listeners will be going through breakups, divorce, uh, grief, loss, redundancy, whatever, big stuff happening all the time. What do we do then when we've just, we can't get that out of our heads?

• 28:04Speaker 01

  I think the first thing is to say that disrupted sleep is a totally normal response to an enormously stressful event, something that truly disrupts your sort of state of being. And so if you are in a scenario where you feel really out of control, things are happening to you, perhaps that threaten you or your family, your status, things like unemployment, extremely stressful for the body. Um, we can expect sleep to be disrupted and that is normal.

• 28:39Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  And I often will speak to people perhaps who are grieving and poor sleep really is a really normal response. So don't necessarily jump to, gosh, I need sleeping pills, gosh, I'm broken, but just accept that that is one of the ways that the brain and body are going to respond. But you don't have to stop there. You then start with, okay, what can I do to get things back on track? And this is about just the small, simple things that you can do that are going to move you towards being in a state that is ready for sleep so that when sleep is ready to come back, you know, you've laid the groundwork.

• 29:15Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  I often think about, um, Dealing with sleep as a bit like looking after a rebellious teenager.

• 29:23Fearne Cotton?

  I'm doing that too.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah. So, so what you can do is you can lay the conditions, you can set some boundaries, but you can't force it.

• 29:30Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  You can't make sleep happen, but all we can do is try and put the right steps in place, the right environment, the right sort of habits throughout the day. But then you kind of have to let go and just sort of, you know, see what happens.

• 29:45Fearne Cotton?

  That's a good metaphor, because I think often I, and I think other people who sleep badly will blame themselves.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Well, blame themselves and try and control everything. And then you go, right, okay, so I've got this routine. And it hasn't worked. I've got to do this ru- routine absolutely rigidly. And if I miss something by five minutes, you know, my sleep is broken. And that's not the idea at all.

• 30:05Fearne Cotton?

  No.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  We can help sleep by providing a sense of predictability. Um, so my background, I did a PhD in a field called psychobiology, which is all about the interactions between how we think and feel on our internal biology. And the thing that really stayed me wi- with me from that is what are the things that sort of activate our cortisol stress response? And reliably, if you get someone in the lab, if you really wanna stress them out, you want to give them a, a threat to their safety or status or that of their family. You wanna make something unpredictable. You wanna put them in a situation which is unfamiliar or just new, some kind of novel environment or situation that they've never dealt with before.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  All of those things will push your body into a state of kind of activation. Your ma- mind is like ready for action. So when we think about preparing for sleep, it's like, okay, well, let's just create a sense of familiarity and predictability. Not rigid, because the more rigid it is, the more likely you are to then feel like, oh, I missed a step, I screwed up. But actually, just a pattern, a bedtime routine is really just a pattern of behaviours that makes your brain go, huh, I know what happens next. I have a shower, I brush my teeth, I get into bed, I read a book, I switch out the light and then sleep. And, and it really should be as simple as that.

• 31:32Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, I think overcomplicating it and putting all of these rigid rules into anything, whether it's under like the wellness label or in a more specific way, sleep, just makes you, what makes me think, oh, I can't, I can't be bothered. Uh, it's too much palaver, I'll just carry on as I am. But keeping things simple and doable, I think that's, that's where, that's where it's at.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and if you really want the most simple thing is just to get out of bed at the same time every day. I'm sure people have heard this advice, but it's so important.

• 32:01Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Probably the most profound change in our understanding of sleep over the last twenty years has been all around about these circadian rhythms, these internal rhythms which control not just sleep and wake, but actually every single physiological process in the body. And if you were to count up the number of clocks that you've actually got in your body, it would probably tot up to around thirty seven trillion. We have one in every cell. So when you get out of bed at the same time each day, you're basically just syncing them all. You're putting them on the same time zone. You're avoiding any of that kind of social jet lag that comes with haphazard routines. And you're giving your body the best chance to work efficiently and to be ready for sleep eighteen or so hours later.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  So just anchoring your wake up time, and even if you can't do that, because maybe you're waking at three sometimes and five and seven, but try and get out of bed the same time every day and getting some light exposure when you wake up, because that's really the key for getting those body clocks aligned.

• 33:02Fearne Cotton?

  What about if you're doing night shifts? I've got a mate, I constantly quiz her, I'm like, how do you do it? She's an NHS nurse. She does, I don't know how many, how many night shifts she's doing at the moment. And I'm like, I don't, I don't understand. And I've got, one of my besties is an air steward, so she'll be, you know, she was in Ghana last week, she'll be in New York next week. I don't understand how they are walking.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  It's, it's extraordinary. The, the human body is incredible. We are capable of defying these internal rhythms. But what it means is that we are operating at times when our internal operating system is telling us not to. And therefore, what it does is it causes sort of stress on the body. I once did a, a study with airline pilots where we looked at different shift patterns. And they had come to us as researchers going, do you know what? They give us the same number of days off after an early shift, where we have to wake up at four thirty in the morning, as a late shift, when we have to wake up at nine o'clock. And we feel knackered and miserable on the early shift days. So we looked at their mood and we also looked at their cortisol levels.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  And it turns out that when those pilots woke up at four thirty in the morning, to compensate for the fact that they were waking up so early, they got this enormous cortisol spike. Now, we all have cortisol as we wake up in the mornings, what gets us going. But actually, they overcompensated. The body responded with a huge stress response and their cortisol stayed significantly higher all day. So it's not that we can't do it, but it takes its toll.

• 34:35Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  And therefore, if you are a night shift worker or you're, uh, flying, travelling a lot, you've just got to be aware that other things that add to that stress bucket might almost have more of an impact. So there, you've got to really focus on nutrition and exercise and stress management to protect your body, because sleep is not as reliable and it's not gonna be able to kind of restore you to the same extent as it would if you could have consistent sleep weight patterns.

• 35:06Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, so you've got to take even better care of yourself in every way.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  Really protect rest.

• 35:10Fearne Cotton?

  Really protect rest. And then let's look at parenting, because a, a lot of my listeners will either have, or anything from a newborn baby to teenagers who are going out and you can't sleep because you don't know when they're coming in, are they safe and the worry that would come with that. So from a newborn baby all the way through to that, sleep is questionable and is, uh, it's an uncertainty. Am I gonna get any? Who knows? How would you suggest parents go about looking at a good night's sleep?

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Okay, I would never pretend to give every parent advice. I think the only catchall for every single parent is if you're already worried about whether you're getting enough sleep or the right type of sleep,

• 35:54Speaker 01

  you're probably worrying about sleep too much.

• 35:56Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  All I mean by that is the people who really need to worry about getting more sleep aren't thinking about it at all. The ones who are worried are probably the ones who it might almost be counterproductive. Because of course, the more we worry about it, we try and control it, the more tense we get, the more anxious.

• 36:14Fearne Cotton?

  That's me.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  If it doesn't go perfectly right, all we're doing is amping up that sort of, uh, reactivity. We call it hyperarousal. So a lot of what I do, I have a very simple job, is really about reassuring people. You know, get the rest that you can, when you can.

• 36:34Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  If it doesn't go to plan, don't worry, be aware that you're gonna be a bit more irritable and a bit less patient. And probably you're gonna feel a, a little bit more anxious the following day. So just recognise that and get back on track when you can.

• 36:50Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  There are so many things that are outside your control as a parent. And the last thing in the world that you need is something else to worry about, that thing being sleep.

• 37:00Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  So, you know, take the steps, but think about like the parenting the teenager. You, you put the steps in place, but at some point you just have to kind of let go and trust that it's gonna, it's gonna do what it's supposed to.

• 37:13Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah. So when I'm going through a bad patch, like I'm at the moment, one thing I know.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Sorry about that, by the way.

• 37:20Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, do you know what? It will pass. And I know it will, because I've had it before. And, and that's what gives me great hope is, because I think initially when I started having panic attacks again, and not as bad as they were back in the day, but even having one, I was like, what? I thought I'd done all that. I've done all the therapy to, to tackle that. Why am I going backwards? And I've had lots of, not only great friends, but people that are professionally trained in this area to go, no, this is a sideways, this is an ice skater step. They go side to side, not forward back, don't need to worry about it. And I was like, okay, cool, this is just a blip and we'll get through it and whatever.

• 38:00Fearne Cotton?

  But what I do rely on is melatonin in those times. And I know that it's almost entirely psychosomatic. Because sometimes I take it and then I fall asleep immediately. Because I'm like, oh, now I, I've got permission to sleep now. I can, I can just do it now. I can switch off. And, and I know that, but I sometimes get very stuck in a cycle of, I have to have one by my bed just in case. Then I can spin out into, oh, I once heard something on a podcast saying it's terrible, you should never ever take it. And now I've taken it, and what if I end up with Alzheimer's? And I'm spiralling again.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  All right.

• 38:34Fearne Cotton?

  So what is the truth about melatonin?

• 38:38Speaker 01

  Um, I'm gonna come on to melatonin very shortly, but I think just going back briefly to women in midlife.

• 38:44Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  And hormones doing the little dance that they're doing under the surface. Like, it's so, so common

• 38:50Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  in your forties, if you're lucky enough to make it to your fifties without this happening, I'd probably be surprised. Like, sleep disruption is often one of the very earliest signs of perimenopause. Like, it hits before anything else hits. And lots of people report that, oh, I was always a good sleeper. And then, and now I'm, now I'm not. I'm waking up at three o'clock in the morning. What is going on here? And it is not the case that hormones are always to blame. But with a woman in midlife, it's always something that I'm gonna ask about.

• 39:17Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  And just see, okay, have you got any other symptoms that might suggest that something's going on there? Um, for me, one night before I was falling asleep, I thought I heard a sort of a buzzing, like the electrical sockets were kind of faulty. And I got up and I looked around my room and I was like, oh, it's nothing, nothing buzzing. And then I realised it was in my head and that I developed tinnitus completely out of the blue. And I'm supposed to be a sleep expert. I'm like, I can't have this, you know, sleep problem. Um, and I did a bit of reading about it. It took a little while before I realised that tinnitus can be linked to perimenopause.

• 39:55Fearne Cotton?

  Hmm.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  And I got on HRT and actually for me, that did sort things out. But you asked me about melatonin, so I do wanna come on to that. So, um, everybody's heard of melatonin. And if you've been to America, you would have seen like aisles full of supermarkets. Yeah, massive, great, super doses of melatonin. And melatonin is a hormone that's produced naturally by the brain. And as we get older, we naturally produce less of it. And if we have a regular routine, we'll start to produce melatonin about two hours before our normal bedtime. But melatonin is also called the hormone of darkness. So if you have very bright light, it can interfere with your natural production of melatonin.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  But you mentioned like, you know, is it psychosomatic, is it really having an impact on me? It's not a very strong hormone. It's very good for setting your clock, so it will influence these circadian rhythms, these body clocks of ours. Um, so if you take melatonin a couple of hours before bed, it can help with that signalling to the rest of your brain and body that it's time for sleep. But if your system is chock full of like hyper arousal and cortisol, melatonin is pretty feeble. It's probably not gonna have that much of an effect. So in this country in the UK, melatonin is only prescribed for insomnia for adults over the age of fifty five. And that's partly because they produce less of it naturally.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Um, it's got a pretty safe safety profile, so there's not many negative side effects. But it's not really prescribed usually for younger adults because it just doesn't work very well. It's not that, it's not we're trying to hide it from people. If it really worked, you know, doctors would be using it. But actually, the evidence is that it's not a strong, it's not a sedative, it doesn't force you to sleep. So what's really interesting is your, already your recognition that actually it's, it's having something.

• 41:51Fearne Cotton?

  It is.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  It's the belief that you're gonna sleep well.

• 41:54Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  And the other sort of pillar in the map of how you sleep, so I mentioned circadian rhythms. Sleep pressure, which builds up the longer you've been awake, and then we've got our kind of stress recovery balance. But for me, there's this other element which is often missing from sleep advice, which I call your sleep identity. And it's the core set of beliefs that you have about your sleep. And whether you have the trust in your sleep, that you're gonna sleep well.

• 42:26Fearne Cotton?

  I don't, I have none at the moment.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  And so if you find someone that doesn't have that and you give them a smarty, and I say, Fern, take the smarty, you're gonna have the best night's sleep ever.

• 42:35Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, I believe it.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  You are probably gonna fall asleep ten minutes faster and stay asleep for twenty minutes longer because I've given you that sense of trust in your sleep.

• 42:43Fearne Cotton?

  So how do we change our sleep identity? Cause that is my, like you saying that, I'm like, that is my issue, is that I identify currently as someone that, that actually what I trust is that I'm gonna get into bed and feel panicked. That's where my head's at, is like, I'm gonna get into bed and I'm gonna have to go through all of that stress and I'm finding it hard to get out of that sleep identity.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. So there's a couple of things there, like some of these thoughts are happening when you're in bed right now. Now, I would like you to have this most delicious relationship with your bed.

• 43:17Fearne Cotton?

  Where I've got a great bed.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  You've got a great bed.

• 43:19Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, it's lovely.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  And I want you to kind of walk into your bedroom and go, oh, yes. Come on, bring it on. And be really excited about your bed. So if you are in bed and the tsunami's hit and actually nothing is working, you've cognitive shuffled and you can't get out of it and you've done some breath work and you're still feeling like, oh, tonight's gonna be awful. I want you to get out of bed.

• 43:40Fearne Cotton?

  Really?

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Really want you to get out of bed because all that you do when you lie there in bed for hours at a time going, oh, my sleep's so awful. Is you train your brain to see your bed as this place where you worry about sleep. So nip it in the bud. No more worry about sleep or anything else in bed. Um, you can read in bed, absolutely. Um, you could even sort of listen to, some people find it really helpful to do relaxation techniques in bed.

• 44:06Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Maybe some mindfulness, but none of, none of the other stuff. Don't take work into bed.

• 44:12Fearne Cotton?

  No.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  And if you feel, if you're in that state where you're like, tonight's gonna be awful, you know, sleep is not coming. Get out of bed, go somewhere else in your home, gently distract yourself. You can watch TV, you can uh, listen to music, read a magazine, you could do the ironing, no work. Don't, I don't think that's a good idea.

• 44:34Fearne Cotton?

  And keep the lights low?

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Keep the lights low, but you're not trying to feel sleepy, you're just trying to stop trying to sleep.

• 44:42Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  It's just avoiding that sleep effort. And at some point, you will get to the point where your eyelids are feeling quite heavy and they're like, right, that's the time to go back into bed. And when you first start trying to develop this, you might have to get up more than once. But this is not forever. This is for a few weeks. This is just to change the narrative in your head so that your bed is genuinely this cue of beautiful sleep and not like, this is where I panic.

• 45:13Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah. So when I was going through a particularly stressful part of this year, I was prescribed sleeping pills because I was really, I was not sleeping at all. And I think I only used them twice and they definitely worked, but I, I don't know if I felt great the next day. I've, I had a bit of like memory loss in the morning. I was like, I can't remember what I've done. And I also thought, I don't want this to be a, a crutch to lean on. So I took them on two bad nights and they've remained in a drawer. And I don't know how I feel about them. They're just sort of sat there in a drawer. But it definitely didn't feel like I had a really restful night's sleep, but I was glad that at least my brain shut off.

• 45:56Fearne Cotton?

  There are of course people listening to this who will use them regularly because they are in such dire straits. I'm certainly casting no judgment. I'm, I've had lots of periods of shit sleep. But, but what do we say about sleeping pills, people that are worried they're dependent on them? And how do they get out of that cycle?

• 46:13Speaker 01

  The good news is there is, there is almost always a way out. Um, and whatever's brought you into it in the first place, like your doctor's not gonna prescribe sleeping pills unless he knows that you really need help.

• 46:24Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  They're not usually seen as the first line of treatment. Hopefully there's an option to get cognitive behavioural therapy or another kind of more behavioural approach. But sometimes the two can work together really well. The, the nice guidance is to only use short courses of these hypnotic sleeping pills because they can be associated with dependence. So you're right to be a little bit wary, but then there'll also be people out there who genuinely kind of feel like they need them.

• 46:52Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  And they might not know whether that's a physiological dependence or a psychological one. It's a little bit like when you've kind of mentioned melatonin, we feel like we need something. And so in that scenario, it's really important to just taper down the dose. I'm not suggesting to anybody that they should suddenly go cold turkey. Um, because actually you can get this thing called rebound insomnia where you sleep worse when you stop taking them. So it's really very much a gradual process, talk it through with your doctor, plan it. Um, and hopefully get the other support in place as well. You know, how do we develop a positive sleep identity? We do it through developing confidence that we know what influences our sleep.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  And we're all a little bit different, so you might have to experiment.

• 47:40Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  You know, you might find that actually just so long as you get up and go for a twenty minute walk in the morning, like that sets up your day. And you're probably gonna find it easier to feel energised through the day, take more breaks and then you sleep well. But for somebody else, it might be something different.

• 47:59Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, I mean, talking to you even just today, I think CBT is screaming at me, like that feels like I've never done it. I, I know enough about it to know how it can work and I'm intrigued by the method. And I know that, I know there's nothing wrong with me physically in terms of sleep. I know that it's all psychological and that these are not only sort of habits I'm in, but this identity thing.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  But there could be some physiological stuff, like I said.

• 48:26Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, the hormone piece, sure.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  And I, and I think sometimes when you can't put your finger, finger on it, particularly for women in midlife, I'd be going, okay, well, let's just kind of look at that as well.

• 48:35Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  In the whole picture. So if you feel like your sleep's gone down the drain, you know, you're not imagining it. And there's gotta be an explanation, but it's kind of, as I said, going through the whole map and going, hmm, okay, like all of these things are in place. And I'd absolutely suggest like try the CBT approach because you're not gonna lose anything.

• 48:56Fearne Cotton?

  No, god, no.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  By kind of having another toolkit to kind of deal with thoughts.

• 49:00Fearne Cotton?

  Absolutely.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  It's, the benefits can be huge. I mean, we know that people who are on, I was involved in a study a long time ago where we had a hundred NHS patients who were on the waiting list for anxiety or depression and also had poor sleep. And so we gave them access to this online CBT programme. And six weeks later, you know, sixty eight percent, I think, had moved to recovery from anxiety or depression. So sleep is not just a symptom of poorer sort of mental health. It definitely goes together with experiences of anxiety and low mood. But actually, if you can get the sleep sorted, we now know, we've got kind of sixty five randomised control trials that tell you

• 49:45Speaker 01

  that you improve someone's sleep, you improve their life.

• 49:47Fearne Cotton?

  Oh my god, we've all felt that.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  You worry less, you feel more energised. And, and I think that's why I'm so passionate about it is that sometimes it's the open door. You know, and everything feels like it's falling apart around you. If you can just start to take control of the things that influence your sleep. And everything else will start to fall into place.

• 50:07Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, without a doubt. I had a really good night's sleep a couple of weeks back. And that morning, I felt like I could literally take over the world, like everything was fucking great. Cause I slept. It was like, that's, it's that simple.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Okay, all right though, Fern. Right, now I'm gonna CBT you. So, but we also don't wanna become so reliant on it.

• 50:28Fearne Cotton?

  No, no, no, no.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Like, how many great days have you had when you've had a shocking night's sleep?

• 50:32Fearne Cotton?

  Absolutely. Do you know what?

• 50:33Speaker 01

  So it's also like.

• 50:35Fearne Cotton?

  You're so right.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Kind of recognizing both things can be true. Sleep can be awesome, but your days can be awesome without it.

• 50:42Fearne Cotton?

  You're so right, because that is something I've had to tell myself time and time again at night is, remember last week when you had three hours sleep and then actually that day you had a right laugh with someone, you were good at work, you managed to parent pretty well, like it is possible and that actually helps relax me. So I'm not panicking about, oh, tomorrow's a write-off because it's not a write-off. It's not.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Really remember that, internalise that, that's building that sleep identity of, yes, I value sleep, but if it doesn't work for me, I'm not gonna fall apart. I've got this.

• 51:13Fearne Cotton?

  No, exactly. It's so important.

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• 51:36Speaker 04

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• 53:31Fearne Cotton?

  Interestingly, you're about to almost delve into your own experiment with this race that you're doing. You row at an elite level, you do. And you're about to take part in it. Is it called the world's toughest race? Is that the official title?

• 53:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:49Fearne Cotton?

  Okay, great. Sounds really fun. But you're doing this, this rowing race and the sleep hours are two hours on, two hours off.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably. So these are crazy, crazy people. And I do count myself as one of these. I mean, when I first heard about this race, I was like, this is insane. So it's a race from La Gomera in the Canaries, just near Tenerife, 3,000 miles across the Atlantic to Antigua. So a nice place to go to.

• 54:17Fearne Cotton?

  Lovely.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  And the typical way that ocean rowers manage this race is to row for two hours at a time and then rest for two hours at a time, 24 hours a day for 40, 50, 60 days, depending on how long it takes you. And when I first heard about the race, I just delivered a talk about sleep and I talked about the importance of circadian rhythms. You know, humans are not machines. We ought to be resting at night and being active during the day. And this girl came up to me and said, oh, it's so interesting what you said about circadian rhythms because I've just rowed across the Atlantic. And I was like, you what? I mean, that's insane. Why would you do that to yourself? And it just lit this spark of curiosity.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  This was eight years ago. I'd never rowed. But the challenge just sounded so immense. And I thought, humans can do this. Like, the body is capable of such extraordinary things. I wonder if I could do it. So I took up rowing and it's taken a few years to get to the point where I'm like, okay, I'm ready. And so, yeah, I set off in 80 days' time.

• 55:21Fearne Cotton?

  Ah, and in terms of totally screwing your circadian rhythm and doing this two hours on, two hours off, is that something you're having to practice beforehand?

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a really tricky one because some people say, oh, do you, you know, get into that rhythm beforehand? In my mind, behaving like that is going to spike your cortisol. It's going to exhaust you. And what I want to do is go into it the most resilient, strongest that I can possibly be. But you need some level of at least sort of psychological preparation, I think, because I will be more stressed if I feel like I don't think I can do it. So there are definitely rehearsals. We're going to be doing some practices and we've had quite a lot of training over the summer. I'm rowing with another girl, Vicky Anstey. We're going to try and set a new world record.

• 56:06Fearne Cotton?

  Come on.

• 56:08Speaker 01

  We'll do our best for the female pair. And, but yeah, for me, it's about, this whole challenge in a way is about curiosity, not just, am I capable of getting to the start? Also, can I, you know, raise the money and can we fundraise for charity? But what happens if I make that my priority? If I put my health first? And we've talked about, you know, we have so many demands on our time. But what happens if I go, do you know what? For this period of time, my health is the most important thing. And it doesn't always work, but it's such an amazing opportunity to look at your priorities and go, okay, just for an experiment, let's try. And I'm stronger, you know, I'm faster.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  I eat a lot of eggs now. There's been lots of changes, not all for the better. I've also had to sort of squeeze relationships and things in a way that makes me feel guilty sometimes. But it is an incredible adventure. And I think for me as a sleep specialist to go through that, A, why am I doing it? Well, one reason is to demonstrate that I care so much about sleep and helping people sleep better. But why? So that they can live fuller lives. And I'm protecting my sleep now so that I can be in this state where actually a bit of an assault on my sleep is something that I can deal with. I'm still going to feel very grumpy.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  But, you know, I think too much when the narrative is about optimize your sleep, max your sleep.

• 57:41Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, I hate the word optimize. Bennett.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Everything maxi.

• 57:44Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  We forget that why are we doing it? So that we can, yeah, live great lives. You know, we should be sleeping to live well, not just kind of constructing our lives so that we get good sleep.

• 57:56Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, that is exactly the approach I think we should be taking. I'm so sick of like, I mean, it is mainly a male-based conversation that I hear when it's that self-optimization stuff. And I just think, what, what, what, what is that about? That is not life.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  I'm guilty of it as well. You know, I, I talk about sleeping for peak performance and trying to help people be the best they can be. But I think as I go through this myself, and I'm literally trying to be the best I can be. But what I really feel more deeply is that when we sleep well, it just changes our perception of our days.

• 58:31Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  We feel more positive. And for some people, that means being a better parent. For some people, it means rowing faster on a rowing machine. Whatever it means to you, that's why sleep is important.

• 58:42Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, without a doubt. How, when you're in that two hours on, two hours off thing, if you are feeling mentally a bit battered, do you have something in place to mitigate it or to at least row alongside that feeling?

• 58:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, jelly babies. I think one thing, the reason that training has been so important is so that Vicky and I, who's rowing with me, learn to deal with each other.

• 59:09Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  You know, it's almost a bit like being in a marriage. You see each other at your worst.

• 59:14Fearne Cotton?

  Of course.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  Particularly in our last training row, we both got quite seasick and that was fairly vile. But to go through that and see, okay, this is how you respond when you're really stressed. How can I support you? How can I also look after myself? I think it's a lot more, it's almost more about anticipation and, and being really patient with the other person. Because how much worse would it be if I'm suffering, you're suffering?

• 59:37Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 59:38Speaker 01

  But I snap at you because that's what the sleep-deprived brain wants to do. You know, when we're tired and sleep-deprived, our stress response systems basically get more sensitive and we're snappy and we're irritable and impatient. But if I recognize that and take a breath, and sometimes it's more about, I'm not going to say anything right now. I'm going to calm down, you're going to calm down, and then we're going to be okay.

• 59:59Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, yeah, without a doubt. I want to pick up on something you said a minute ago because I've got 8,000 tabs open in my brain. But isn't it weird how when we say that we're going to, if we've ever said it, prioritize our health, that that might seem as something a little bit self-indulgent or a little bit weird to do? Surely that is one of the main reasons for us getting out of bed in the morning is for us to feel as well as we can. And how weird that you, you know, that you have to sort of do a disclaimer of like, oh, just for this period, I'm going to prioritize my health.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. And I'm not proud of that. Like, I have spent, I've spent my life like doing a few extreme things to just break out of the, I suppose, the, the cycle of expectation. I was quite lucky, I now think of myself as very lucky. Back in, in 2018, I was working very hard. Probably had 15, 16 years of climbing the ladder at work. I was literally living, I'd say, for my holidays. And like a lot of people, you know, life was very full, but I had holidays, so I was okay. And then I fell off a cliff, literally fell off a cliff, not an actual kind of burnout cliff. I think it would have been burnout, but I went climbing and I had a fall

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  and I broke my ankle, spent some time in hospital. I then had probably about six months of being on crutches.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  And my life, which had been so full and so busy, suddenly had to slow down. And I lived on my own, so I was also quite isolated. I couldn't drive. And I think a lot of my friends, you know, I'm like, oh gosh, you know, what's gonna happen to Sophie? Cause she's one of those brushing around people. And it was this incredible gift that I was able to slow down and and I slept. And instead of carrying on on that kind of corporate ladder, that was actually when I took the decision to leave and do my own thing and and and do what I do now, because I realised that having been forced to take this break and to focus on my health, there was literally nothing else to focus on except healing my ankle.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  They told me you won't be able to run, you won't be able to do this and that. You know, they wanted to give me help with chronic pain. They anticipated that I wouldn't have a great recovery. And I was just so determined to kind of prove them wrong, that I really focused on my health. And life slowed down and it became richer. And then my ankle healed and I got back into being busy in a different way, but I think I had that experience. Almost forced on me at that point, but since then, I've tried to take these interludes from the busyness, just to remind myself what it's like when you take a step back. And I know that we can't all do that, and I do not want people to fall off cliffs, just so that they can prioritise sleep.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  I do what I do because I want to help people find that space to sleep well without.

• 1:03:09Fearne Cotton?

  Oh my god, like, it's exactly what I need to hear, because I am classically like guilty, like so many people out there of going, I haven't got time, I've got kids, I'm a single parent, I'm juggling all this stuff and I feel so, like my life is so full. And then I think, oh, I need to, like, I'll go on Instagram and I'll see someone's moved to the countryside and they've got chickens. And I think that's what I should do, I should give everything up, I'm like very all or nothing. And actually, I know that that is ridiculous, because I'd find all my problems on the farm with the chickens, they'd still be in my head. But finding those little moments, I had a similar thing to you, where I had an operation two Christmases ago. And I was off work for a month and it was the longest break I'd had from work.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  And how did you feel?

• 1:03:53Fearne Cotton?

  Ever. Um, I fucking loved it and I watched loads of TV that I felt like I never had time to watch, that everyone was talking about. And I saw friends that'd come and visit me at home, also convalescing at home. And because I had been told I had to rest, I was doing it. But for me to allow myself that without being forced to, that's the tricky bit of, oh, but I, you know, I could do this or I could do that, or I could fill my time doing this. The only thing, the only sort of um hobby that I love, that I know makes me feel so calm, yet it is still productive, so fits into my mind of like I'm doing something, is painting.

• 1:04:38Fearne Cotton?

  I feel really, when I'm doing it and I'm in the flow, like everything in the world is okay, like everything is great. And but I've still been producing, like creating something. But I do think I need a more radical rest option and I don't quite know what that looks like.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  Do you know, I always thought you were gonna say yoga. I thought you might, might say yoga. And the reason that I I mention yoga is, is because that was one of the things that I feel like I've done that gives me sometimes that same sense of sort of timelessness. And it's not about the yoga. What I've realised is it's not the, you know, holding positions and sweating. It's actually the ten minutes at the end where you get to lie down in shavasana. And and so I was so intrigued with this. I went to go and um become a yoga instructor, just to to sort of learn more deeply. And when you learn to become an instructor, they sort of explain that, you know, that that is not just something tagged on at the end when you've forgotten the final moves.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  Like, in a way, that's the whole point. And the reason it's so delicious and delightful is because you've had fifty minutes of like pushing yourself, that that pushing has kind of been the stress. And then the shavasana is your recovery. And for me, that's like a micro dose of this is what life almost ought to be like. That we stress and strain and push, cause it's exciting and we test ourselves, but we have to balance it with recovery. And so painting for you is one of those recovery activities. And thank goodness you have that. But I imagine it may be the first thing to go when you feel busy.

• 1:06:13Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, it it has, you know, I'm then like, oh, I'll just do a very quick like workout online, because I've only got twenty minutes and that will feel like I've done something. I'm definitely guilty of that at the moment. I feel like time poor in the day, so I'm like the quickest exercise I can do to get it done and out of the way. And not going, actually, I could probably, you know, in the evening, do some yin yoga or something more relaxing. It's it's so interesting. I was having this chat with a mate the other day, because I was feeling like so overwhelmed by my life, like so many women do. And her um perspective was so interesting, that so many women these days, because we've been shown this new path in the last like fifty years of, oh, women can

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  Do everything.

• 1:06:58Fearne Cotton?

  Do everything, like have a career and all of it. We're trying to fit into like a very patriarchal machine that's been existing for a long, long time of like, this is how the world works, because men have like the industrial revolution and then this is how we work and this is how things move. But we're still, we're doing that as women with like women's bodies, but we're also trying to still like be

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  Be the mother.

• 1:07:21Fearne Cotton?

  The mother and the nurturer and the great friend and have softness and all this other stuff that we're supposed to embody.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  We haven't taken anything out.

• 1:07:29Fearne Cotton?

  No.

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  That is, that is a huge problem.

• 1:07:32Fearne Cotton?

  Yes.

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  And and I think, like, ultimately, we only have so much time. And and a part of being kind to ourselves and finding this time for recovery is is, we've gotta just find the stuff that we can take out as well. And I suppose I'm here saying, I recognise that, I see it. But there are certain things that you can do that actually give you more time, that give you a richer sense of time. And I I was reading a a paper this month and I knew you liked painting, it really stuck with me, but it was a a study where they'd taken some these young, healthy students and they showed them twelve abstract paintings.

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  And they asked them to rate them in terms of their creativity and skill, how much they liked them. The first time they showed them the paintings, they were well slept. They'd had a nine hour sleep opportunity. Then they showed them some different photos when they'd only had, I think, sort of five and a half hours of sleep. Same paintings. And there was no difference in the ratings of creativity or artist skill. But what did change was how much they liked the paintings and enjoyed looking at them. So when you're well slept, you just find more joy in the same things.

• 1:08:51Speaker 01

  So I know that we're overloaded with all of this stuff, but if you're gonna cut something out, don't make it the sleep opportunity.

• 1:08:58Fearne Cotton?

  All the rest in the day. I think that's the bit that many of us are really, we're not prioritising it at all. We're like, I could always clean out that cupboard. I mean, last week I got a skip and cleaned the loft out. I didn't need to do that. The shit's in the loft, I can't even see it. But I was like, no, I must do a thing on that one morning that I'm not working. It's like, what am I doing? It's nuts.

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  It is a bit nuts. And and, you know, if we're, if we're very lucky, could we pay someone else to do that?

• 1:09:25Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  I I know not everybody has.

• 1:09:27Fearne Cotton?

  Just leave it in the loft. No one gives a shit. Leave it up there.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  Leave it there, delegate, ask for help, you know, we're all crap at asking.

• 1:09:35Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, we're awful at it. We're so bad at it. We're so bad at it.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  We're not gonna solve it today.

• 1:09:40Fearne Cotton?

  No, we're not, but this is a really good chat that I needed, so I'm I'm really, really grateful. And I I wanna wish you all the luck on this madcap race that you're doing. I can't wait to hear about the results, which will be after Christmas time.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, so think of us on uh Christmas Day, on New Year's Day, we'll still be rowing.

• 1:09:59Fearne Cotton?

  Oh my god.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  Won't have had a shower in a very long time, sometime towards the end of January, hopefully. Um, around about thirty eight days after we start, we will get to Antigua.

• 1:10:10Fearne Cotton?

  Oh my god, we're gonna be cheering you on like you wouldn't believe. Before we finish, this might be quite an interesting one. We're making a happy place playlist. Say you're, I don't know, halfway through that row and you need a song just to like cheer you up and see you on your merry way, what do you wanna hear?

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  Is it um Pharrell Williams, Happier?

• 1:10:30Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, we can have that. Happy, yeah, happy's going on there.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  That's definitely gonna be there.

• 1:10:35Fearne Cotton?

  And where is your happy place?

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  I thought about this before I came and I would have used, I probably would have said the C before the last sort of few weeks. I think now I really appreciate that happy is in my mind and it's a sense of space. I think I could be anywhere, but if I feel a sense of space, of sort of timelessness, that's what gives me happiness.

• 1:11:00Fearne Cotton?

  Oh, me too. That's what I sometimes am craving is that exact feeling. There must be a Japanese word for that feeling somewhere. We need to look it up.

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  I'm sure. You know, people find it in forests and other places. I'm hoping that this is the last ocean that I have to row to find it, but I'm, I'm looking for the secrets to that spaciousness.

• 1:11:20Fearne Cotton?

  Yeah, I love it. Well, look, good luck with all of it. Sophie, thank you so much.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  Thank you very much.

• 1:11:25Fearne Cotton?

  Sophie, I cannot thank you more from the bottom of my heart for every bit of wisdom, all of the tips. And do you know what Sophie did after we finished recording, which was like genuinely the sweetest thing ever? She gave me a sleep journal because as we heard in that chat, just getting down your thoughts on paper at the end of the day, like I used to back in the day, clears your head. So you don't go to bed with all those racing thoughts and lists of things to do. So she gave me a journal and also, this is going to break your heart, she gave me a teddy bear. She gave me a teddy bear. Cause often I feel unsafe at night, like, oh my God, am I safe? Like, that's the primal fear that I've got going on. So just to hug a little teddy bear makes you feel a bit safer.

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  So cute. I can't cope.

• 1:12:12Fearne Cotton?

  Um, so thank you, Sophie, for your generosity and also just all those incredibly practical and brilliant tips. I hope that if you're a bad sleeper out there, that you got a lot from that. And also you can read more about Sophie's incredible endurance challenge, the world's toughest row 2026 in the episode's show notes. And you can follow their journey on Instagram, which I will eagerly be doing because it is no mean feat. Honestly, it is an insane challenge and we all at Happy Place wish Sophie just so much love and luck. So again, a massive load of thanks to Sophie for joining us on Happy Place and to you for listening. Sleep well, my lovelies.

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