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Not getting enough sleep can feel as though you’re backsliding in life or committing some awful crime against yourself.

The thing is, high levels of stress can impair our sleep massively. So freaking out or obsessing over sleep patterns probably isn’t going to help the situation. “There’s so much information in the media about how if you don’t sleep you’ll die or ‘go mad’ that [sleep] has now become a performance sport,” says Dr Neil Stanley, an independent sleep expert and author of How To Sleep Well. “We’ve got gadgets and wearables that tell us how we sleep and these things are totally useless… Worrying about your sleep is probably the biggest saboteur of sleep.”

Dr David Lee, clinical director at Sleep Unlimited and author of Teaching The World To Sleep, agrees that sleep anxiety will never be conducive to actually sleeping. “When someone’s not sleeping well, then that anxiety is exacerbating the problem,” he says.