Jeremy Bartz, PhD

Clinical Psychologist

Dr. Jeremy Bartz is a Clinical Psychologist in private practice based in Los Angeles, California. Dr. Bartz specializes in treating depression, anxiety, OCD, mind-body syndromes, chronic pain, insomnia, relationship difficulties, attachment trauma, and resolving the effects of narcissistic trauma. He received a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Brigham Young University and completed a fellowship In Pain Psychology at Stanford's premier pain management clinic.

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Forum Comments (2)

help me sleep pls!
First, I think the wind down period before you go to sleep is hugely important. I always tell people that before you even do your wind down, prep for the wind down. What I mean by that is get everything in order so that you are ready to just fall into bed and go to sleep when it’s time. This means prepping your bed, putting your pajamas on, taking a shower, washing your face, brushing your teeth, taking any medication or vitamins you need – anything you need to do before bed.

Next, keep your bedtime flexible. You can have a general sleep time, but if you get drowsy earlier, don’t try to fight until your bedtime and feel free to go right to bed. Alternatively, if it’s your bedtime and you aren’t drowsy, don’t force yourself to go to bed. Wait until you start to get drowsy and allow yourself to carry the drowsiness right into bed. You want to make that latency period between the time your head hits the pillow and the time you go unconscious as short as possible. With that being said, avoid lying awake in bed for too long. Give yourself 15 minutes, and if it doesn’t seem like you’re going to be able to fall asleep, get up and out of bed because we don’t want to create an association of wakefulness and your bed. Go back to doing something until you’re drowsy, then go back to bed. Along with that, don’t try to go to sleep. If you’re in bed and aren’t passing out, don’t try to force it. Fantasize about something, meditate, or do a body scan, and shift your focus to something relaxing, and the sleep will just come as a byproduct. That’s why we say “fall asleep”, because it should be effortless.

I’d also recommend getting up at the same time every morning and not napping throughout the day. Even if you had a hard time sleeping, don't sleep in or nap. If you sleep in, it's like giving yourself jet lag. If you take a nap during the day, you're going to throw your circadian rhythms off.

And finally, use blue light-blocking glasses when you're exposing yourself to screens after sunset. And don't hesitate to reach out to a sleep specialist if you feel like you’ve tried everything and nothing is working.
I keep falling asleep in class!! How do you stay awake?
One great way to get better quality sleep is to avoid blue light before bedtime. You don't have to avoid all screens before bed, because those are some of the best ways to clear your mind, but you can filter out blue light using digital filters or blue light filtering glasses. You just want to make sure you get one that filters out 98 or 99% of the blue light. And once you've done that, you've eliminated half of the problem. The other half of the problem is the content.

If you're playing video games, or if you're watching something that keeps you on the edge of your seat, or something scary and anxiety-provoking, that's going to screw up your sleep. You want the content to be something relatively chill, like a documentary or something. One of my favorite things to watch if I'm trying to get relaxed before bed is something like Planet Earth. Reading a book is fine. Meditating is fine if you're a skilled meditator, but if you're not, I think it's anxiety-provoking. It gets people thinking about all the things that are bothering them because they're trying to clear their mind and in the process, all the stuff that they need to deal with starts to surface, so they get really upset right before they go to bed.

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Co-authored Articles (12)

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