Can’t Sleep? How Exhaustion Is Quietly Wrecking Your Relationship

Chrissy Lawler: Anybody in a relationship has realized the source of a squabble was, “Actually, I’m overreacting ’cause I’m really tired.”

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: When communication goes sideways, when people aren’t being kind to each other, when intimacy is out the window, it can be so easy to point the finger at all kinds of different culprits, but really miss the fact that one or maybe both of you is absolutely running on empty.

Chrissy Lawler: Truly, when we are not getting good sleep, everything feels bigger emotionally. Your rational, logical thinking processes do not operate smoothly. We are far more likely to take offense. We are far more likely to live in self-doubt, insecurity, depression, anxiety.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: If your relationship has been feeling extra hard lately, there could be a hidden saboteur making everything so much harder that you might not have even considered before, and that is the quality of your sleep.

Chrissy Lawler: Hey, everybody. If we can just figure out sleep, everything else is going to feel manageable.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: And sleep is frequently the hidden culprit behind a lot of not just relationship issues, even mental health issues, and it is vital that we are bringing visibility into this, understanding what that can do to us and our relationships when we’re not sleeping well. But also talking about how to course-correct and get this on track so that we can start feeling better mentally and emotionally, but also start enjoying our relationships again. And that is what we’re doing today with a very special guest, Chrissy Lawler. She is a fellow LMFT. She’s the founder of The Peaceful Sleeper.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: I am Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby. I’m your host. This is Love, Happiness, and Success. My own background — I am a licensed psychologist, a marriage and family therapist, a board-certified coach, and the founder of Growing Self. And every single week on the show, twice a week now, we are bringing you the very best of what to do differently in order to have better relationships, a better life, a better relationship with yourself, a better career, and just, you know, feel good and have a good time.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Now, before we dive into this, a little birdie told me that there are a lot of therapists listening to this show lately. And if you’re a therapist, first of all, thank you for your service. And did you know that I have this whole other show that is just for us, Love, Happiness, and Success for Therapists? Behind the scenes shop talk with a lot of guests. Dr. Bill Doherty coming in and talking about how to handle it as a therapist if you’re getting triggered by your clients’ political perspectives. Dick Schwartz coming in to talk about why you, therapists, need to do your own work if you wanna be really good at parts therapy. And all kinds of stuff around our occupational hazards, burnout, vicarious trauma, all the fun stuff.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: All right. So thank you for indulging me. And now let’s turn to our topic today, how to not let your sleep issues destroy your relationship, with Chrissy Lawler, licensed marriage and family therapist with over 15 years of clinical experience. She is the founder of The Peaceful Sleeper and the author of a new book, The Peaceful Sleeper: An Intuitive Approach to Baby Sleep. She’s been on Good Morning America, Newsweek, Better Homes and Gardens — all the places — and now she’s here today to share her wisdom with us.

Chrissy Lawler: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to chat.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: I am too. Your work is incredible. And, you know, and as I mentioned at the top of this, just transparently — and maybe we can turn this into my own personal therapy session here today, Chrissy — I got maybe four and a half hours of sleep last night. It is just such a struggle, and I know it’s not just me. So many people are in this place, and we need you. So, like, where do we start? Where did you start?

Chrissy Lawler: Yeah. You know, honestly, that’s why I got into this field in the first place. I am probably like you, a busy, high-achieving perfectionist that go, go, go. I fill every minute of my day, and then as soon as I lay down at night, it’s like think, think, think, think, think.

Chrissy Lawler: And so it was kind of serendipitous one day. I just got one of those mailers that we get, all of us therapists, for continuing education, and my license was about to be due for renewal, and it was all about cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. And I had already realized that so many of my clients in my clinical practice that were stuck weren’t sleeping well, and I hated that I was just kind of like, “Uh, yeah, me either. I don’t know. Sleep is tough.”

Chrissy Lawler: And so it kinda just all came together and I realized, A, it was the number of continuing education credits I needed. I thought it could help my clients. I thought it could help me. And then lo and behold, you know, 15 years later, here we are, where I’ve kind of made it my mission to help the world sleep better. Because like you said, it is the core foundation of our mental and physical health, our relationships, our wellbeing. Sleep is central to everything.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: It really is. So I’m curious to know — you took this class, you started learning about cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. What did you recognize in yourself or in your own life where you were like, “Oh, this might actually just be my life’s mission”?

Chrissy Lawler: So I think the sleep aspect was really inspiring for adults, and the studies — it’s so cool how quickly we can reset a sleep system for adults and how a 20-year problem can be resolved in four to six weeks. But it really wasn’t until I had babies and I realized that I’ve always been incredibly confident and optimistic and naively thought, “I can’t get depression or anxiety because I’m a therapist and I have all the tools.” And so when I did experience postpartum depression and anxiety, it felt so big.

Chrissy Lawler: Fortunately, I did have that internal therapist on my shoulder that was just like, “Hey, if you could get more sleep, I think you might be okay, and we can figure out where the rest of the dust settles.” And so I think that’s what drove my passion for sleep even deeper — recognizing that the biggest gift I can give to new moms in motherhood and new families as we transition into parenthood is, “Hey, everybody, if we can just figure out sleep, everything else is going to feel manageable.”

Chrissy Lawler: I always go back to kind of the basics that a lot of us learned in early undergraduate psychology classes, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. When our core needs are not met, we can’t get to those higher level operations.

Chrissy Lawler: A lot of times as well-meaning therapists, we blaze right on past the core things of like, how much water have you been drinking? Have you moved your body meaningfully lately? Have you had a vegetable this week? And none of that is the fun, buzzy stuff to uncover. But truly, when we are not getting good sleep, everything feels bigger emotionally. Your rational, logical thinking processes do not operate smoothly. We are far more likely to take offense, live in self-doubt, insecurity, depression, anxiety.

Chrissy Lawler: Anybody in a relationship has realized maybe a couple of times that the source of a squabble was, “Actually, I’m overreacting ’cause I’m really tired,” or, “Actually, I’m overreacting ’cause I’m really hungry.”

Chrissy Lawler: You add in the transition to parenthood and some of these really vulnerable life transitions where we are in survival mode, and very often we either think that sleep deprivation is just something we have to deal with, it’s the new normal — and we’re not looking at the systemic impact when you maybe aren’t feeling as warm and fuzzy about your baby or your partner. And then there’s so much out there about what could be the cause and the solution and division of labor and mental load. All of that stuff is real and needs time and attention. And also — any division of labor inequity is going to feel so much bigger if you are exhausted.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: I love everything that you’re saying. We’re living at an interesting place in time in our culture where everybody has an opinion about the origin of our dissatisfaction. And I think it is much sexier to talk about the wounds and the inequality versus somebody like me and you coming in and being like, “Okay, so physical stuff first always. That is the foundation.” And sometimes it’s just not part of the conversation.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: My undergraduate degree was in biology, which for a while I was like, “Oh, that’s so boring.” But now, later in my profession, I appreciate it so much because I think so much of how we think and feel and behave is deeply tied to our physiology a lot more than people often think. People can spend years in therapy peeling onions, and there’s metabolic processes that need to be sorted out, or sleeping. I have had personal experiences with clients where I’ve tried more traditional therapeutic approaches and missed the fact that they were dealing with a physical thing. They treated the physical thing, and it was like flipping a switch.

Chrissy Lawler: Yeah, that’s a great question because I have these two different worlds. I’m so ingrained in the sleep world, and infant sleep, and maternal mental health, and everything that I do online and with the book, and then I also have a regular clinical practice where a lot of my clients don’t know that I’m a sleep expert.

Chrissy Lawler: Truly, optimizing sleep is the low-hanging fruit for everything else. But you’re right, it’s not that sexy, and so it’s something that I just circle back to. The baseline prescription for wellbeing is getting deep restorative sleep. You gotta drink water. You have to have purposeful movement. We gotta look at nutrition. If we do not have that, we cannot expect that dopamine and serotonin are just gonna flow so easily. Everybody’s also here for peeling back the onion, figuring out the trauma. And so I have to kind of skate both — “I know that you want this other thing, but it’s gonna work better if we get this buttoned up first.”

Chrissy Lawler: One of the narratives that I’m trying hard to fight against is this idea that a loving mother sacrifices every ounce of herself for the wellbeing of her children — letting everybody know, that might work for a little while, and you might feel like a really great mom your first couple of years, but you can’t pour from an empty cup. You can’t draw water from an empty well. That does not work big picture.

Chrissy Lawler: So much of my clinical practice focuses on when we play the tape forward 15 years and you’ve lost your identity along the way, now your kids are teenagers, they don’t respect you, they talk back, you aren’t connected to your partner anymore, and your life does feel like it’s on fire. What are the small, impactful changes and investments that we could have all made earlier to prevent this chaos down the road? My approach is about baby sleep, but really that’s just my foot in the door to be like, let’s talk about family functioning and investing in self, investing in wellbeing, investing in relationship and attachment in small, simple ways early on, because that investment pays off in dividends.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: What a great theme — that you’re not doing anybody any favors when you are just going and depleting yourself, especially for extended periods of time. Especially in American culture, that can be our orientation towards sleep. Oh, sleep is for mortals. It’ll be fine. Drink more coffee. I’m gonna keep going. And then that takes a toll. Let’s talk about how to notice that and start changing this for the better. What does it look like when people have not been paying attention to sleep, either personally or with their kids?

Chrissy Lawler: Unfortunately, I think it often comes too late when the big things happen. We get diseases, we have major health challenges, we have breakdowns, we have relational breakdowns. A lot of times when we don’t preserve our wellbeing early, we get to a point where we look back with a lot of shoulda, coulda, woulda’s. That’s one thing I wanna raise the red flag about — we cannot keep going running on empty. It does not work.

Chrissy Lawler: The mindset that gets in the way — I’ll put myself in this category, I fall prey to this — but the hustle culture, the achievement is worth, value is based on productivity. You have to earn love, respect, safety, admiration. I think that has done us a disservice as we continue to turn up the dial generation after generation. Especially our American hustle culture. My husband and I went on a trip to Nepal for our 10-year anniversary, and it was so inspiring to see people just sitting on their porch.

Chrissy Lawler: I think the antidote is really sitting and reflecting on what is the legacy that I want to leave. When my life is over, what do I want to have done? Randomly — I’m 38 years old, I’ve had three heart attacks. So it was really humbling to recognize that I have no idea what my future holds and how much time I actually have left on this earth. I don’t know if I want my legacy with my four kids to be that I was the mom that was always going and never fully present. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people have the wake-up call when the big scary thing happens, and I wish it didn’t have to come to that.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: That understandably, as traumatizing as that must have been, turned into this memento mori type of perspective. Like, we are all actually going to die. Nobody’s getting out of here alive. So, so what does this mean for me today in terms of how I wanna show up? I’m guessing you started paying more attention to your physical health. Is that the right way to say it?

Chrissy Lawler: If my husband was on the call right now, he would be like, “Wait a second. You did not necessarily slow down that much.” But it’s something that I am trying to be aware of and unwinding. What is it within me, within us that feels like, “No, go, go, go, go, go”? And truly, is that the meaning of life? Is that what we are here for? I think all of us would say no, it’s not. We don’t have to fill every second of every day with productivity. And why is basic functioning, like sleep, undervalued? What is actually happening?

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Maybe any time you’re starting to feel down or anxious or stressed or burned out or like things are hard, get curious, perhaps even suspicious, about whether or not sleep might be one of the things to look at first. So somebody says, “Yeah, this is probably impacting the way that I’m thinking and feeling and showing up with my partner, with my kids, at the job, and I would like to change this.” Let’s start with just individual adults. Where does one begin?

Chrissy Lawler: Yeah. So, this is where it’s difficult because the solutions are not sexy. They’re all the things that we’ve heard before that we do a little bit of like, “La, la, la, la, la, cool story, Chrissy. I don’t wanna hear any of that.” But yes, I will tell you anyway.

Chrissy Lawler: Some of the most important things to do, first and foremost, reorient yourself to sleep being a top value. I joke all the time that sleep is a family value, and there’s some programming and reprogramming that you have to do. Like, I’m a fun-loving, outgoing person, and to climb into bed at 8:30 on a Friday night and know, “Oh, it’s gonna feel so good to get sleep” — you reprogram that dopamine in so that you build the reward system for really great sleep, and have that be something incredible instead of, “I’m such a loser. I’m going to bed at 8:30 on a Friday night.”

Chrissy Lawler: So, that’s part of it — recognizing that sleep is a core value and that it is so worth it.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: And pleasure. Like, “I love this. There’s nowhere else I would rather be right now. I can’t wait.”

Chrissy Lawler: Another really important thing is stop doing other stuff in bed. I have been guilty for years of having my laptop in bed, checking emails. A lot of us scroll before we go to sleep. Get your phone out of your bed. Get your laptop out of your bed. Don’t eat in bed. Don’t chat on the phone with your sister in bed. Keep the bed reserved for sleep and sex, and do everything else somewhere else. Maybe the most important and hardest one to do is get out of bed if you’re not sleeping.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: That’s where — you know what? I did that last night. I could not sleep, and I was like, “Ugh,” and I got back up. But okay, why? Why is that so important as opposed to just laying there being like, “Oh my gosh, I’m still not sleeping”?

Chrissy Lawler: I encourage you to do a little test with yourself. I am willing to bet that because you got out of bed last night and didn’t let yourself just stay there in bed, you’re probably gonna sleep better tonight. Resting in bed is kind of like junk food for our sleep system. It kinda counts for something. If I’m starving and I grab a bag of Funyuns, I’m not gonna be starving, but will my body appreciate that? I don’t think so.

Chrissy Lawler: Our sleep system thinks that it counts for something, but it also programs your brain that the bed is the place where I lie awake at night thinking, strategizing, planning, overthinking, planning that conversation, doing all the things. And so it’s kind of like Pavlov’s dogs. When we lay in bed either praying for sleep or doing all of the thinking and overthinking, we are reinforcing, “I’m a bad sleeper. I wish I could sleep, but I can’t sleep.” And then the bed is the place where your brain amps up instead of winding down. It’s unpleasant, but it’s short-term.

Chrissy Lawler: Get up out of bed if you’re not sleeping, and then come back to bed when you have enough sleep pressure to fall asleep quickly. It’s kind of like the idea of having a picky eater — “Hey, if you don’t want broccoli, then you can try having breakfast tomorrow.” If there is a little bit more desperation, a little bit more pressure, then your body is primed to take what it can get, and you’re kinda calling the bluff on your sleep system.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: How long is long enough? Like, how long do you lay there and be like, “Okay, I’m gonna get up”?

Chrissy Lawler: Okay, so it’s about 30 minutes, but you’re gonna shoot yourself in the foot if you start watching the clock and you’re like, “It’s 25 minutes. I only have five more minutes.” So for those anxious perfectionists listening, focus more on your body. I think when we’re being honest with ourselves, we kinda know what a middle of the night wake up is gonna look like. There are the times that you wake up and you’re like, “Yeah, I bet I’ll fall back asleep.” And there are the times that you wake up and you’re like, “This is probably gonna be two hours before I fall back to sleep.” So if you know, “I think I’m in it for the long haul,” get out of bed, go meal plan, go build an IKEA table, go do a puzzle out in the living room. I don’t even care if you watch TV in the living room. Do whatever you can that’s not in bed, and come back when you have enough sleep pressure to fall back asleep.

Chrissy Lawler: That might not be tonight, but one of our favorite sayings in CBTI is, “If not tonight, then probably tomorrow night. If not tomorrow night, then most assuredly the night after that.” We do not usually string together more than three nights in a row of garbage sleep.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: When you call the bluff, you are increasing sleep pressure. And the analogy is that that’s almost like a hunger — if you are eating something when you’re hungry, broccoli tastes really good. If you allow the sleep pressure to rise, it will make it much easier to just lay down and go to sleep.

Chrissy Lawler: I do have a caveat for the busy moms, the high achieving women, the ADD active anxious brains. This is not official CBTI recommendation, but anecdotally, and it’s what I do — I recommend that you find something to listen to. If you have a brain that just will not shut off, and laying in bed is like, “Yeah, it would be great to not think, think, think, think, think, but I don’t know how to turn my active brain off” — I say find a podcast, an audiobook to listen to. Turn it on the sleep timer so you don’t have to be paying attention to like, “Am I, has it been 15 minutes? Has it been 30?” Pick something that is engaging enough so your mind won’t wander, but not so interesting that you’re going to want to stay awake and keep listening to it. So self-help books. For some reason I really like economics podcasts. I’m not an economics girly, but a lot of the good podcasts are entertaining enough. Find something to just give you that boost of “I don’t need to think about eight million things. I’m going to think about just one thing and then drift back off.”

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: That is such an amazing strategy. Economics podcasts, here I come. Before we move on, this is a personal thing I have discovered that I think was probably part of the culprit for me yesterday. I have to be really careful about how much caffeine I can consume during the day. Probably a few months ago, I switched brands of coffee, and I didn’t even think I was drinking that much coffee earlier in the day, but I could not sleep for the life of me. Everything that you’re talking about is so appropriate, but there are also stimulant consumption factors. Just have it on your radar.

Chrissy Lawler: 100%. I think afternoon coffee is going to bite you in the butt at 3:00 AM, and your evening wind-down glass of wine is also gonna shoot you in the foot. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it just doesn’t help.

Chrissy Lawler: First and foremost, I think it’s in the little things. I love that idea of a love bank, that we have deposits and we have withdrawals, and so much of sleep deprivation will impact those little, tiny withdrawals or diminishing those relationship deposits. So we don’t notice the good, kind things that our partner has done. We might not notice the bids for connection or when somebody was trying to make conversation with you. Resentments feel bigger. We do notice when your partner didn’t load the dishes in the dishwasher, and so our perception starts to get skewed towards the negative.

Chrissy Lawler: We don’t have as good of a filter when we are exhausted and upset. So instead of, “Hey sweetheart, can you please put your dishes in the dishwasher next time?” You might have more of a, “Hi, dishes, dishwasher would be nice.” So it’s those little tiny micro interactions that really suffer the most.

Chrissy Lawler: There’s a whole other conversation we can have about intimacy, but if we’re looking stereotypically, what is the number one reason that women do not connect intimately? “I’m tired.” So when we have increase in misperception, we are increasingly attuned to the negative. We are increasingly feeling like a victim ’cause we’re not attuned to the positive. We have blown conversations out of proportion. We also don’t have the energy or bandwidth to do connecting activities like going on a walk together, playing a sport together, going out on a date, connecting intimately. So there’s so much resentment that starts to build and the good investments in the relationship that fall by the wayside because we feel desperate and in survival. And that’s even in the best, healthiest relationships where that impact might take five or 10 years to really be felt.

Chrissy Lawler: Sometimes I work with a lot of new couples that were really happy until they had a baby and now they’re having these knockdown, drag out fights, and they’re swearing at each other, and name calling, and fighting in front of the baby, and thinking about divorce. I struggled with anxiety when I had my first baby, and everything feels really big. But so often undertreated maternal anxiety turns into nitpicking, criticism, “You’re not doing this thing right. What is wrong with you?” That can turn into maternal gatekeeping of like, “I don’t really trust you to do this thing right, so I’m gonna do everything and then, wait, I feel like I’m doing everything and you’re never helping.” And then it can devolve quickly or slowly if we let sleep deprivation erode our relationships.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Taking this all in, Chrissy. What a beautiful job of explaining all of these powerful systemic factors. The system starts to take on a life of its own. Feeling exhausted, and that it takes energy to be extra nice or playful or give some energy into a relationship. When you’re exhausted, you just don’t. And then nobody’s being intimate. And then the negativity. If you’re exhausted and you feel like you can barely cope and you’re overwhelmed, and here’s one more thing that you need to do ’cause your partner isn’t doing it, and the resentment — it all piles up.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: And that’s when people will land in a couples counselor’s office and be like, “The problem is them, and it’s because of their family, and they never learned how to communicate. And I think they might be a narcissist because they don’t even care.” Distressed relationships over time, it turns into character flaws and who you are as a person and all this stuff, when what you’re saying, Chrissy, is like, “You’re exhausted? Go to sleep.” Not to say that there isn’t also relational stuff. Everybody has stuff to work on, but, wow.

Chrissy Lawler: When you said that, it flashed me back to when we got married and, I hope it’s changed, but the advice at the time was never go to bed angry. I remember I had a professor that specifically called that out, and he was like, “What do you think the alternative is? Stay up and fight?” Please go to bed angry, sleep on it, wake up next to each other, and let’s try again when we have a full tank.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Oh my gosh, that is so true. It was not even that long ago. I was exhausted, I’d been going, going, going, and we were having a new couch delivered. My husband was like, “Well, I don’t know, maybe we could see where…” And I was like, “No, we need to put it here.” I don’t even know what was — I had this massive meltdown, and I got a good night’s sleep, and then the next morning I was like, “I don’t even know what about that was upsetting to me anymore.” It’s so real. Before we make big, sweeping judgments about our partners and our marriages and pulling the divorce trigger, take a look at this ’cause it’s so real.

Chrissy Lawler: I have four daughters, and it’s been really meaningful for me when I lose it with my kids and go back to repair — to also identify, “I didn’t handle this situation well. You had very normal kid behavior. It was frustrating to me, but it did not warrant that level of an overreaction. I think I’m tired, and that’s not your fault, that’s my fault, and I apologize.” It’s wild now having a 13-year-old who will literally come back in the morning and say, “I think I was really tired yesterday, and I majorly overreacted.”

Chrissy Lawler: When we can identify sleep as a trigger, it also empowers our children to have some self-awareness and a really solid tool in their own toolbox, which is our goal as parents, to arm our children to be able to have their own tools in the world. Even with my five-year-old, she’ll be melting down and she’ll say, “I think I’m tired.” “Okay, we can deal with that.”

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: We’re still working on it. We have a seven-year-old, almost eight, and she’ll fight with me. I’ll be like, “You know what? I think maybe you’re tired.” She’s like, “No, I’m not!” But this is so good. You have to take care of your body if you’re gonna be an emotionally safe person. Even just how you show up as an emotionally safe parent with kids and not some hair-trigger, freak-out scary person, that matters so much in terms of this foundational relationship. Their ability to learn from you — how do I regulate emotions? How do I repair after I do pop off?

Chrissy Lawler: Yes. I saw the most beautiful video. It was this cute little baby sitting in his high chair, and mom came up behind him and was happy and dancing and just being really bubbly and exuberant. And within maybe 15 seconds, he starts bobbing along, and then he’s dancing too. It was such a beautiful mirror to me that the way that we show up deeply impacts our kids. And because my bias is towards sleep — the exhausted mom ain’t dancing at breakfast. All of the micro interactions shift when we’re exhausted and we’re surviving, and you put the oatmeal in front of them, and then they throw the spoon, and you’re like, “Ah, stop,” is so different than happy, cheerful, dancing, bubbly mom.

Chrissy Lawler: All of those micro interactions deeply impact our attachment with our children and what they then start to believe about themselves and the relationship. If we can button up sleep, everything else goes better.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Amazing. I know I only have you for a couple more minutes here, but I’m realizing that we didn’t even touch on one of the core topics of your new book, The Peaceful Sleeper, which is really primarily around how to support healthy sleep habits in infants and early childhood. Is there anything else that you’d like to share?

Chrissy Lawler: Yeah. I think this whole conversation has centered around how important sleep is in all of our relationships. When you have a brand new baby, we know that they’re not necessarily gonna sleep well right out of the gate. Poor sleep is not just something that we have to radically accept. There is still a little bit of radical acceptance there that they have brand new neurology, they have a brand new brain. But good quality sleep is something that you can teach your infants like we teach every other aspect of development. First, we fully support that thing, and then we slowly release support as they gain independence.

Chrissy Lawler: There is a formula, there is a framework for that, that you can tailor to your parenting paradigm. It does not have to be this one size fits all, this full-blown cry it out or full-blown gentle parenting. It’s all about tuning in to yourself, to your baby, how they learn, how you teach, and recognizing that as important as sleep is for us as adults, it’s even more important for a brand new, fresh developing brain. Good quality sleep is the kindest, most impactful gift that you can give them.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Their development, what your family experience is like, but also your own experience if you can have a baby that sleeps well. So much here. Chrissy, this has been so interesting and helpful. Where would people go to learn more about you and your work?

Chrissy Lawler: Best place to find me is online. My website is thepeacefulsleeper.com. All social channels are the.peaceful.sleeper, and the name of the book is also the same, The Peaceful Sleeper: An Intuitive Approach to Baby Sleep.

Yes, and it is more common than almost anyone admits. When you are exhausted, your brain is quicker to take offense and slower to give your partner the benefit of the doubt. The fight is real, but the fuel is often sleep.

It can, quietly and over time. Poor sleep empties what therapists call the love bank: you miss bids for connection, resentment feels bigger, and small things turn into big ones.

A few concrete things: keep the bed for sleep and sex only, get out of bed if you are not sleeping, watch afternoon caffeine and the evening glass of wine, and if your brain will not shut off, try a podcast on a sleep timer.

Often four to six weeks of consistent changes, even for a problem that has been going on for years. You usually will not string together more than about three rough nights in a row.

Usually because your bed has become a place your brain associates with thinking and worrying rather than sleeping. Racing thoughts at bedtime, screens in bed, and irregular routines all reinforce it. CBT-I, the first-line treatment for chronic insomnia, retrains that association, often within a few weeks.

It makes you more reactive and more negative in your perception, so you notice slights and miss kindness. Research links poor sleep to more conflict and lower appreciation between partners. Over time, missed connection and growing resentment do real damage.

Yes. If you have been awake about 30 minutes and know you are not drifting off, get up and do something quiet in another room, then return when you are sleepy. Lying awake trains your brain to be alert in bed and weakens your sleep drive.

Often, yes. Trying to resolve a conflict while exhausted usually makes it worse, because sleep loss heightens emotional reactivity. Sleeping on it and revisiting the issue rested tends to lead to a calmer, more productive conversation.

A lot. Exhausted parents are more reactive and less emotionally available, and children absorb that. Repairing after you overreact, and naming tiredness as the cause, models emotional regulation and teaches kids to recognize it in themselves.

For many adults, roughly four to six weeks of consistent changes, even for long-standing problems. A helpful reminder from CBT-I: you rarely string together more than about three bad nights in a row.

Yes. Afternoon caffeine can still be in your system at 3am, and while an evening drink may help you fall asleep, it fragments sleep later in the night. Both undercut sleep quality more than most people expect.

When conflict, disconnection, or resentment persists after your sleep improves, or when patterns like criticism, contempt, defensiveness, or stonewalling have become the norm. A licensed marriage and family therapist who is also a credentialed coach can help you change the pattern, not just understand it.