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

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.

0:10Dr. Sophie Bostock: Sophie Bostock. 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. 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.

1:11Fearne Cotton: I don't know what I did to ensure that that happened. 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.

1:56Fearne Cotton: It's all those little things that make a big difference. 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.

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4:38Fearne Cotton: Sophie, first of all, thank you for just forcing me to go out onto the streets of London to look at the sky.

4:44Dr. Sophie Bostock: just to get a little bit of natural light to take a breather to pause yeah none of us do that enough

4:50Fearne Cotton: I mean we don't we we are we're going to get on to sleep in a deep 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, watch a box set. Like, I don't know. Like, what is it? I don't know.

5:18Dr. Sophie Bostock: I think 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 go to the gym and you lift some weights and you temporarily get weaker and then you recover and you get stronger.

6:03Dr. Sophie Bostock: 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 yeah I think this is

6:18Fearne Cotton: 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 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 in the day, authors would write like a book every five years, probably at best.

6:59Fearne Cotton: I mean, 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

7:21Dr. Sophie Bostock: round without ever ever stopping I'm laughing because um 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 the world. And we can get that email and that demand and that reminder that actually in the old days, we probably just sort of 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.

8:01Dr. Sophie Bostock: Our brains are just sort of being saturated all the time. And we can't really expect that environment to change. Let's be honest. It's not going to. The genie's out of the bottle, well and truly, like AI is growing and growing. 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.

8:43Dr. Sophie Bostock: I seem to be a bit older but 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 yeah our bodies change yes 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 stressors. So it's outside, it's inside, and that's really tough. Yeah.

9:19Fearne Cotton: 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.

9:59Fearne Cotton: I need to be on my own at least once a week for like more than an hour. 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

10:16Dr. Sophie Bostock: essential I would suggest that maybe that's not even enough it's not and I think that we've probably all identified that we have these needs but then the worst thing the guilt the guilt um 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 these things in, the work stuff, the training, 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? The guilt's really unhelpful. Doesn't do anything.

10:56Fearne Cotton: 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...

11:23Dr. Sophie Bostock: But this is all linked. It is so linked. 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. You've managed to flick the switch just for a moment. I'm going going to stop on the treadmill. I'm going to get outside and have a moment of pause. And this 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.

12:08Dr. Sophie Bostock: I know that. Yeah. I did that before.

12:09Fearne Cotton: So linking everything we do in the day to that moment where we climb into bed and we're hoping, I mean, I don't want to sound desperate, but please help me. Please help. I have, since the age of about 34. 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.

12:48Fearne Cotton: And at 34, when I started really 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, oh, 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. 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.

13:30Fearne Cotton: And then the 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. Great.

13:44Dr. Sophie Bostock: Well, you've come to the right place. But the great thing about sleep is, and I don't want to 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 skewiff. 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. And then there's the sort of the time aspect.

14:19Dr. Sophie Bostock: 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. 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.

15:12Fearne Cotton: Yeah, I do that too.

15:12Dr. Sophie Bostock: So that kind of 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 practice 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.

15:40Fearne Cotton: What's a quick way 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 rush of adrenaline or that threat. Or maybe for me, you know, I've had a couple of things in my life over the years that have been a threat, I would actually say, in certain ways. And there are echoes of that that I then feel out of the blue. Anything could trigger it. And then I find it very hard to do the recovery bit.

16:12Dr. Sophie Bostock: Okay, so the first thing is recognizing it. Yeah. 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. And so then one of the quickest, easiest is slow breaths.

16:45Dr. Sophie Bostock: You know all about breath work. 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 sending messages to our central nervous system. So if you simply take a breath in, fill the belly and slowly breathe out.

17:14Dr. Sophie Bostock: you're immediately sending the message to your brain that there are no saber-toothed 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 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.

17:51Fearne 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.

18:28Fearne Cotton: Then I had a song in my head. I had this stupid song that we're going to use on Instagram reels for Happy Place ee ee ee ee ee ding dong balla balla bing bong whatever the hell it is that in my head going around in circles why get out

18:45Dr. Sophie Bostock: thank you so much for sharing that because there will be so many people listening to this just stupid shit yeah

18:49Fearne Cotton: why can't I just switch my brain off 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 big barrier when it comes to getting to sleep. What do we do about that?

19:05Dr. Sophie Bostock: Okay. So all of this tsunami, is this hitting you when you're in bed?

19:09Fearne 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.

19:26Dr. Sophie Bostock: and then bam okay yeah so you know all about journaling 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 yeah 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.

20:08Dr. Sophie Bostock: When I work with clients, I've 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, close the book. You know, that's it. That's where they are for tomorrow.

20:28Fearne 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. So all that time that you had really good sleep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who knew? The dots are connecting as I'm talking to you. I'm like, but 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.

21:07Fearne Cotton: 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.

21:16Dr. Sophie Bostock: Can I pick up on a word that you used there?

21:18Fearne Cotton: Yes.

21:18Dr. Sophie Bostock: You said, of course I should do this.

21:22Fearne Cotton: Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah.

21:23Dr. Sophie Bostock: I just once had that advice to try and avoid using the word should about myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you could do this. I could do it. I'm not telling you that you should do this. I'm just saying this is something you could do. Yeah. Some people find it really helpful. Yeah. And the expectation about it being automatic, switch off my thoughts, 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.

21:57Dr. Sophie Bostock: Because some people will be like, oh, give me something easier. I will tell you my other personal favorite for the tsunami particular problem. And some people might have heard me talking about this before, but it works. So I'm going to share it again. Please tell everyone. There's this lovely technique called cognitive shuffling. 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?

22:30Dr. Sophie Bostock: 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 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. But then they spoke to the other group and Fern, they said basically what you said, you know, I can solve problems. I think of all the stuff I've got to do. Sometimes crazy songs come up. And what they realized 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.

23:13Dr. Sophie Bostock: And so the idea of cognitive shuffling, you simply think of a word, something that you can see, preferably with more than six letters.

23:22Fearne Cotton: Okay.

23:23Dr. Sophie Bostock: Anything spring into mind? Some kind of object or animal, vegetable, mineral? Bicycle. Bicycle. Lovely. Okay. So you visualize a bicycle. Some bicycles could be the Tour de France. Doesn't really matter. Just visualize 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. Ice. I literally go for igloo every single time. Well done. And so then you can see 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.

24:03Dr. Sophie Bostock: But work 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 before I get to the end of it. Discombobulated. Let's go. 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.

24:46Fearne 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. Because you could. Because I could. And I'm going to do the cognitive shuffling. I just like that. It's a great phrase.

25:07Dr. Sophie Bostock: I've got big news.

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26:42Fearne Cotton: Say you are going through something. Lots of our listeners will be going through breakups, divorce, grief, loss, redundancy, whatever. Big stuff happening all the time. What do we do then when we just we can't get that out of our heads?

26:58Dr. Sophie Bostock: 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, we can expect sleep to be disrupted. And that is normal. Yeah. 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.

27:44Dr. Sophie Bostock: 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. I often think about dealing with sleep as a bit like looking after a rebellious teenager. I'm doing that too. Okay, yeah. So what you can do is you can lay the conditions, you can set some boundaries, but you can't force it.

28:24Dr. Sophie Bostock: Yes. 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.

28:38Fearne Cotton: That's a good metaphor because I think often I, and I think other people who sleep badly, will blame themselves and enforce it.

28:46Dr. Sophie Bostock: Will 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 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. No. We can help sleep by providing a sense of predictability. So my background, I did a PhD in a field called psychobiology, which is all about the interactions between how we think and feel and our internal biology. And the thing that really stayed with me from that is what are the things that sort of activate our cortisol stress response?

29:23Dr. Sophie Bostock: And reliably, if you get someone in the lab, if you really want to stress them out, you want to give them a threat to their safety or status or that of their family. You want to make something unpredictable. You want to 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. All of those things will push your body into a state of kind of activation. Your 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.

30:05Dr. Sophie Bostock: I screwed up. But actually just a pattern, a bedtime routine is really just a pattern of behaviors 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 it really should be as simple as that. Yeah.

30:26Fearne Cotton: 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 be bothered. It's too much palaver. I'll just carry on as I am. But keeping things simple and doable, I think that's where it's at.

30:48Dr. Sophie Bostock: 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. Probably the most profound change in our understanding of sleep over the last 20 years has been all 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 37 trillion we have one in every cell so when you get out of bed at the same time each day you're basically just sinking 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 18 or so hours later.

31:39Dr. Sophie Bostock: 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.

31:56Fearne 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 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.

32:16Dr. Sophie Bostock: It's extraordinary. 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 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 4.30 in the morning as a late shift and we have to wake up at nine o 'clock. And we feel knackered and miserable on the early shift days.

32:58Dr. Sophie Bostock: So we looked at their mood and we also looked at their cortisol levels. And it turns out that when those pilots woke up at 4.30 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 morning is 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. And therefore, If you are a night shift worker or you're flying, traveling 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.

33:42Dr. Sophie Bostock: 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 going to be able to kind of restore you to the same extent as it would if you could have consistent sleep weight patterns.

33:59Fearne Cotton: Yeah, so you've got to take even better care of yourself in every way.

34:03Dr. Sophie Bostock: Really protect rest.

34:04Fearne Cotton: Really protect rest. And then let's look at parenting because a lot of my listeners will either have, well, 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 it's an uncertainty. Am I going to get any? Who knows? How would you suggest parents go about looking at a good night's sleep?

34:34Dr. Sophie Bostock: Okay, I would never pretend to give every parent advice. I think the only catch-all for every single parent is if you're already worried about whether you're getting enough sleep or the right type of sleep, you're probably worrying about sleep too much. And 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 and we try and control it, the more tense we get, the more anxious. If it doesn't go perfectly right, all we're doing is amping up that sort of reactivity.

35:14Dr. Sophie Bostock: We call it hyper arousal. 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 if it doesn't go to plan don't worry be aware that you're going to be a bit more irritable and a bit less patient and probably you're going to feel a little bit more anxious the following day so just recognize that and get back on track when you can but 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. So, you know, take the steps, but think about like parenting the teenager.

35:58Dr. Sophie Bostock: You put the steps in place, but at some point you just have to kind of let go and trust that it's going to do what it's supposed to.

36:07Fearne Cotton: Yeah. So when I'm going through a bad patch, like I'm at the moment, one thing I know. I'm sorry about that, by the way. Oh, do you know what? It will pass and I know it will. Because I've had it before. 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 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.

36:44Fearne Cotton: 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. 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, now I've got permission to sleep now. I can just do it now. I can switch off. 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 or and I'm spiraling again all right so what is the truth about melatonin um I'm going to come on to melatonin very shortly

37:34Dr. Sophie Bostock: but I think just going back briefly to women in midlife yes and hormones doing the little dance that they're doing under the surface like it's so so common yeah in your 40s if you're lucky enough have to make it to your 50s without this happening. I'd probably be surprised. Sleep disruption is often one of the very earliest signs of perimenopause. It hits before anything else hits. And lots of people report that, oh, I was always a good sleeper. And 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 going to ask about.

38:11Dr. Sophie Bostock: Yeah. And you see, okay, have you got any other symptoms that might suggest that something's going on there. 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, well, it's nothing, nothing buzzing. And then I realized 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. And I did a bit of reading about it. It took a little while before I realized that tinnitus can be linked to perimenopause.

38:49Dr. Sophie Bostock: And I got on HRT and actually for me that did sort things out. But you asked me about melatonin. So I do want to come on to that. So everybody's heard of melatonin. And if you've been to America, you would have seen like aisles. Yeah, I buy it all and bring it back. 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.

39:30Dr. Sophie Bostock: 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 so if you take melatonin a couple of hours before bed it can help with that signaling 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 going to 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 55.

40:13Dr. Sophie Bostock: And that's partly because they produce less of it naturally. 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 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 it is it's the belief that you're gonna sleep well yes 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 going to sleep I don't I have none at the moment.

41:21Dr. Sophie Bostock: 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 going to have the best night's sleep ever. You are probably going to fall asleep 10 minutes faster and stay asleep for 20 minutes longer because I've given you that sense of trust in your sleep.

41:37Fearne Cotton: So how do we change our sleep identity? Because 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 going to get into bed and feel panicked. That's where my head's at. is like I'm going to get into bed and I'm going to have to go through all of that stress and I'm finding it hard to get out of that sleep identity.

42:00Dr. Sophie Bostock: 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 where I've got a great bed. You've got a great bed. Oh it's lovely. I want you to kind of walk into your bedroom and go oh yes. 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 going to be awful.

42:32Dr. Sophie Bostock: I want you to get out of bed. Really? 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 yeah maybe some mindfulness but none of none of the other stuff don't take work into bed no and if you feel if you're in that state where you're like tonight's going to 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 listen to music read a magazine you could do the ironing no work don't i don't think that's a good idea and keep the lights low keep the lights low but you're not trying to feel sleepy you're just trying to stop trying to sleep Yeah, yeah, yeah.

43:37Dr. Sophie Bostock: 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. Because 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. Yeah.

44:08Fearne Cotton: 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 don't know if I felt great the next day. I had a bit of 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 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.

44:46Fearne Cotton: But I was glad that at least my brain shut off. 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've had lots of periods of shit sleep. 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?

45:07Dr. Sophie Bostock: The good news is there is almost always a way out. And whatever's brought you into it in the first place, your doctor's not going to prescribe sleeping pills unless he knows that you really need help. They're not usually seen as the first line of treatment. hopefully there's an option to get cognitive behavioral therapy or another kind of more behavioral 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 yeah and they might not know whether that's a physiological dependence or a psychological one.

45:51Dr. Sophie Bostock: 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 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, 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.

46:31Dr. Sophie Bostock: And we're all a little bit different. So you might have to experiment. You know, you might find that actually just so long as you get up and go for a 20 minute walk in the morning, like that sets up your day and you're probably going to find it easier to feel energized through the day, take more breaks and then you sleep well. But for somebody else, it might be something different.

46:53Fearne 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 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

47:17Dr. Sophie Bostock: thing could be some physiological stuff like I said yeah the hormone piece sure 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 yeah yeah in the whole picture so agreed If you feel like your sleep's gone down the drain, you know, you're not imagining it. No. And there's got to 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 going to lose anything.

47:50Dr. Sophie Bostock: No, God, no. By kind of having another toolkit to kind of deal with thought. Absolutely. 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 100 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 program. And six weeks later, you know, 68%, I think, had moved to recovery from anxiety or depression. so sleep is not just a symptom of poorer sort of mental health that 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 65 randomized controlled trials that tell you that you improve someone's sleep you improve their life oh my god we've all felt that you worry less you feel energized and and i think that's why i'm so passionate about it is that sometimes it's the open door you know when everything feels like it's falling apart around you, if you can just start to take control of the things that influence your sleep, then everything else will start to fall into place.

49:01Fearne 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. Because I slept.

49:13Dr. Sophie Bostock: It was like, it's that simple. Okay. All right, though, Fern. Right, now I'm going to CBT you. but we also don't want to become so reliant on it no no no how many great days have you had when you've had a shocking night's sleep absolutely do you know what so it's also like you're so right kind of recognizing both things can be true yes sleep can be awesome but your

49:34Fearne Cotton: days can be awesome without it 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 And 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 tomorrow's a write off because it's not a write off. It's not.

49:58Dr. Sophie Bostock: Really remember that. Internalize that. That's building that sleep identity. Yes. Yes, I value sleep. But if it doesn't work for me, I'm not going to fall apart. I've got this.

50:07Fearne Cotton: No, no, exactly. It's so important.

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51:45Fearne Cotton: interestingly you're about to almost delve into your own experiment with this race that you're doing you row at a elite level you do and you're about to take part in is it called the world's toughest race is that the official title yeah okay great sounds really fun um but you're doing this rowing race and the sleep hours are two hours on, two hours off?

52:10Dr. Sophie Bostock: 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 Lagomera in the Canaries, just near Tenerife, 3 ,000 miles across the Atlantic to Antigua. So a nice place to go to. Lovely. 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.

52:52Dr. Sophie Bostock: 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 rode 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. This was eight years ago. I'd never rode, 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.

53:31Dr. Sophie Bostock: And so yeah, set off in 80 days time.

53:35Fearne Cotton: 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?

53:43Dr. Sophie Bostock: 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 running with another girl Vicky Anstey we're going to try and set a new world record come on we'll do our best come on Sophie and um 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 a 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 I eat a lot of eggs now.

55:08Dr. Sophie Bostock: 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.

55:49Dr. Sophie Bostock: But, you know, I think too much when the narrative is about optimise your sleep, max your sleep. Oh, I hate the word optimise. Bin it. Everything maxi. Yeah. We forget that why are we doing it? So that we can 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.

56:09Fearne 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 I hear when it's that self optimization stuff. I just think, what is that about?

56:24Dr. Sophie Bostock: That is not life. But I mean, I'm guilty of it as well. 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. 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.

56:55Fearne Cotton: Yeah, without a doubt. 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?

57:11Dr. Sophie Bostock: 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. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a bit like being in a marriage. You see each other at your worst. Of course. Particularly in our last training where 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 being really patient with the other person.

57:48Dr. Sophie Bostock: Because how much worse would it be if I'm suffering, you're suffering, 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.

58:13Fearne 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, prioritise 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 prioritise my health.

58:47Dr. Sophie Bostock: 100%. And I'm not proud of that. Like I have spent my life, like doing a few extreme things to just break out of the, I suppose, the cycle of expectation. I was quite lucky. I now think of myself very lucky. Back in 2018, I was working very hard. I probably had 15, 16 years of climbing the ladder at work. I was literally living, I'd say, from 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 and I broke my ankle, spent some time in hospital.

59:36Dr. Sophie Bostock: I then had probably about six months of being on crutches 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 oh gosh you know what's gonna happen to Sophie because 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 do what I do now because I realized 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.

1:00:28Dr. Sophie Bostock: They told me you won't be able to run, you won't be able to do this and that. They wanted to give me help with chronic pain. They anticipated that I wouldn't have a great recovery. 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 prioritize sleep no I do what I do because I want to help people find that space to sleep well without going too far oh my god like it's exactly

1:01:23Fearne Cotton: what I need to hear because I am classically like guilty like so many people out there are going I I haven't got time. I've got kids. I'm a single parent. I'm juggling all this stuff. And I feel 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.

1:02:05Dr. Sophie Bostock: And how did you feel? Ever.

1:02:07Fearne Cotton: 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. I was 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 could do this or I could do that or I could fill my time doing this. The only thing, the only sort of 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.

1:02:51Fearne 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.

1:03:11Dr. Sophie Bostock: Do you know I always thought you were gonna say yoga I thought you might might say yoga and the reason that I mention yoga 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 realized is it's not the, you know, holding positions and sweating. It's actually the 10 minutes at the end where you get to lie down in Shavasana. And so I was so intrigued with this. I went to go and become a yoga instructor just to sort of learn more deeply. And when you learn to become an instructor, they sort of explain that, you know, that is not just something tagged on at the end when you've forgotten the final moves.

1:03:51Dr. Sophie Bostock: Like in a way, that's the whole point. And the reason it's so delicious and delightful is because you've had 50 minutes of like pushing yourself, 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 because 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 yeah it has you know I'm then like

1:04:28Fearne Cotton: oh I'll just do a very quick like workout online because I've only got 20 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 perspective was so interesting that so many women these days because we've been shown this new path in the last like

1:05:08Dr. Sophie Bostock: 50 years of well women can do everything do everything like have a career and all of it

1:05:13Fearne Cotton: 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 be the mother the mother and the nurturer and the great friend and have softness and all this other stuff that we're supposed to embody we

1:05:41Dr. Sophie Bostock: haven't taken anything out no that is that is a huge problem yes 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 we've got to just find the stuff that we can take out as well. And I suppose I'm here saying I recognize 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 was reading a paper this month and I knew you liked painting. It really stuck with me, but it was a study where they'd taken some these young healthy students and they showed them 12 abstract paintings 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 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.

1:07:11Fearne Cotton: All the rest in the day. I think that's the bit that many of us are really, we're not prioritizing 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, nope, I must do a thing on that one morning that I'm not working. It's like, what am I doing? It's nuts.

1:07:32Dr. Sophie Bostock: It is a bit nuts. And, you know, if we're very lucky could we pay someone else to do that yeah i know not everybody has just leave it in the loft no one gives a shit leave it up there either leave it there delegate ask for help you know

1:07:47Fearne Cotton: we're all asking oh we're awful at it we're so bad at it we're so bad at it um we're not going to solve it today 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 want to 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. Yeah.

1:08:08Dr. Sophie Bostock: So think of us on Christmas day, on New Year's day, we'll still be rowing. Oh my God. Still won't have had a shower in a very long time. Sometime towards the end of January, hopefully around about 38 days after we start, we will get to Antigua.

1:08:24Fearne Cotton: Oh my God. We're going to 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 want to hear is it um Pharrell Williams happier

1:08:43Dr. Sophie Bostock: yeah we can have that happy yeah happy's going on there um that's definitely going to be there and where is your happy place I thought about this before I came and and I would have used I probably would have said the sea um before uh the last sort of few weeks I think now I really 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.

1:09:13Fearne 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.

1:09:22Dr. Sophie Bostock: 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 looking for the secrets to that spaciousness.

1:09:33Fearne Cotton: Yeah, I love it.

1:09:34Dr. Sophie Bostock: Well, look, good luck with all of it.

1:09:35Fearne Cotton: Sophie, thank you so much. Thank you very much. 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 do 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 because 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 so cute i can't cope 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 road 2026 in the episodes show notes and you can follow their journey on Instagram, which I will eagerly be doing because it is no mean feat.

1:10:51Fearne Cotton: 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.

1:11:16Thank you.

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