Psychologist explains five types of sleep languages.

The Importance of Quality Sleep

Sleep is crucial for our overall health and well-being. It affects our memory, life expectancy, and much more. However, getting quality sleep can be challenging. It’s not always easy to find the right hacks to unlock your sleep potential and get the rest your body needs.

The Five Sleep Languages

Shelby Harris, a clinical sleep psychologist, has partnered with the popular meditation app and mental health brand Calm to crack the code of quality sleep. Together, they have published a working understanding of the “five sleep languages” – a sectioning off of a few different sleeping patterns (or lack thereof) to give people more actionable steps to achieve better sleep.

Harris came up with the five different sleep languages after considering differences among her patients over her 20 years of experience and noticing that there are a handful of categories that they tended to fall into. “It helps to guide where they want to go with what they can start with,” she said.

The Five Sleep Languages:

1. The ‘Gifted’ Sleeper: If you’re a gifted sleeper, you probably appear to the people around you just as that – gifted, in the name of sleep. Maybe you can fall asleep anywhere, no matter the noise or background light, or you have no problem napping. Any way you slice it, the gifted sleeper typically doesn’t have a problem falling or staying asleep.
2. The ‘Words of Worry’ Sleeper: If you’re a “words of worry” sleeper, your brain is loud at night, clouded with the “what ifs” of the day, and what you have to get done tomorrow. Whether it be the past or the present, a words of worry sleeper is focused on another time other than the present and the physical focus at hand: sleep.
3. The ‘Routine Perfectionist’ Sleeper: If you’re a perfectionist sleeper, you may have followed sleep advice a little too hard to the detriment of your happiness, and sometimes, your sleep. You may be a perfectionist sleeper if you find yourself missing out on fun events, or other special occasions that may be important to you, over fear of having one night of poor sleep.
4. The ‘Too Hot to Handle’ Sleeper: Menopause, perimenopause, other health conditions, or even a mismatched bed partner with a different internal temperature can make you too hot to handle.
5. The ‘Light as a Feather’ Sleeper: Light sleepers wake up easily from noise, light, or even a strong smell. If you’re light as a feather, you might wake up in the morning after a solid seven or eight hours on the pillow still feeling unrested or sleepy.

The Connection Between Mental Health and Sleep

The pandemic has exacerbated symptoms of anxiety, eating disorders, and other mental health conditions. Mental health can be improved or harmed by someone’s sleep patterns. Sleep deprivation, in particular, can affect your ability to stay in control of your emotions or come up with solutions to seemingly not-so-complicated problems that can feel like the end of the world when you’re sleep-deprived.

“With sleep deprivation in general, we find higher rates of anxiety, higher rates of depression, higher rates of stress,” Harris said. “And we find their stress tolerance and ability to cope with daily stressors becomes much more difficult.”

The Bottom Line on Good Sleep

Despite the number of times we preach the health benefits of sleep, there’s a thread in society that may be pushing back against the idea that healthy sleep trumps all. But according to Harris, “No pun intended, you’re living in a dream world a little bit,” if you’re trying to check off everything else on the wellness list before you start prioritizing sleep. Centering sleep will help you stabilize and prioritize all the other tasks you have during the day.

“We have to stop the hamster wheel somewhere, and if you stop it by prioritizing sleep, it makes the daytime run smoother.”