Dating takes energy, patience, confidence, and emotional regulation and all of those are harder when you’re exhausted. 😴 Join me on Cadre Live as we talk about why better sleep can actually help you date more effectively. ❤️
Michelle O'Connell greets viewers, introduces herself as a dating coach and mental health professional, and explains her interest in sleep. She sets the context connecting dating and well-being.
Michelle shares her own sleep journey and references the science of sleep, highlighting how poor sleep affects cognition and emotional functioning relevant to dating.
She recommends Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep, emphasizes sleep research findings, and stresses the facts about required sleep duration.
She explains how getting under 7 hours impairs the brain, affecting dating energy, boundaries, and red-flag recognition, and urges prioritizing sleep for better dating outcomes.
Michelle shares actionable tips — removing phones, using an alarm clock, stopping late texting, breathing exercises, reading, and creating a dark cool room to improve sleep quality.
She reiterates the importance of 7+ hours of sleep for dating and life, mentions her social handles, invites topic requests, and teases a follow-up video with a sleep trick.
Hello, Cadre. Good evening. I'm usually not on this late because I'm usually getting ready for bed. No, I'm not getting ready for bed at 7pm, but it's on my mind because I'm going to be talking about sleep and eating. And so let me introduce myself, Michelle O'Connell. I'm a dating coach from Unstuck by Michelle. I started that company about five years ago and I do dating coaching. So I help support people through the dating process, whether that's helping with confidence, navigating the dating world, all that stuff.
But I'm also super, super passionate about sleep. Not only do I, I'm blessed I sleep that wasn't the case my whole life. But in the last few years, I've had the best sleep of my life. And I'm also in the mental health field. And I just know the implications of poor sleep and how that impacts you. And so when it comes to dating, we know that dating impacts your mental health. It can impact your mental health. because there's a lot that goes into dating. Time, energy, vulnerability, and those things can weigh on you.
And it takes energy to meet somebody new. It takes energy to put yourself out there. It takes cognitive abilities to set boundaries. It takes good cognition to notice red flags. There's all this stuff that our brain does for us that helps us with dating. And on the contrary, can cause us problems with dating. So I'm going to talk about sleep just so I can nerd out on sleep for a very long time. One of my favorite books, happens to be right here, is Why We Sleep. So Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker is an amazing book, 10 out of 10, highly recommend.
It is both fascinating and frightening. So I have no notes today. I'm coming in here raw talking about sleep. What we know about sleep is that people need 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night. 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night. Some people need a little more. Nobody needs a little less than 7 hours. There's a lot of people that say, oh, I can function off 6 1/2 hours of sleep. And the reality is, no, you might be able to walk through life, but your brain does not have full capabilities if you're getting under 7 hours of sleep.
If you get 6 hours of sleep for an entire week, at the end of that week, your brain and body are going to function as if you stayed up overnight. Those are facts. That is science. That's not opinion. And it's frightening. right? To think that people are running around in this world with not their whole brain because they're tired. Sleep deprivation is real and a lot of people don't get enough sleep. Now we pair that with dating, right? You're not getting enough sleep, you're working a full day work and then you're tired, right?
Or even if like you're not tired, we know that your brain doesn't have full access to the prefrontal cortex if you're not getting enough sleep. So basically, again, I could nerd out about sleep for a long time, but if you want to have better results with dating, and not just better results in the people that you're meeting, some of that is out of your control, but better results with your own experience. If you want to feel less dating burnout, if you want to have more energy to go on dates, you have to get sleep.
And it's not just sleep, it's good sleep. But we start with just getting the right hours of sleep that we need, like starting at that point. What can happen? So if you get under 7 hours of sleep, people, symptoms can mimic that of ADHD. Difficulty concentrating, being distracted, emotion instability, impulsivity, all those things. And that's a problem, right? That's very hard to be on a date when you cannot focus. So I want to know, I want to hear from you. I want you to make a commitment to yourself about how can you work towards getting over 7 hours of sleep.
Something that I do, and I started this during COVID, there was a Netflix show called The Social Dilemma, and it talks about social media, the phones, all that. Ever since watching that, I never have slept with my, I can't say never, I do not sleep with my phone in my room. If I have a very early wake time, I do because I don't trust my Amazon alarm that I got. I just have an alarm clock and it's just an old fashioned alarm clock and that is what is in my room. Otherwise, my phone is downstairs in the kitchen and my husband does the same thing.
That can assure you're not scrolling on your phone in bed. You are making a decision to go to bed And just that separation from your phone is going to help you to be able to fall asleep. So I want for you, when you think about eight hours of sleep, start thinking about like, what does that look like in the evening for you? So for me, it looks like I stop texting people back after nine. If you text me even late 50, I'm not texting you back because I'm settling down and getting ready for bed. So people know if they text me after nine, You won't get a response until the morning because I'm disconnecting.
I'm not engaging in a conversation. I'm shutting down. All right. I have a book on my bed. I like to read before bed. I don't always do it. When I lay down for bed at night, I do 4-6 breathing. I breathe in for four. I breathe out for six, deep diaphragmatic breathing. And sometimes I'll put one hand on my heart, one on my belly, and I'll feel my belly as I inhale, my belly rise, exhale, lower down. But I'll do four, six breathing before bed just to settle my mind. And we sleep with a very dark room.
I used to sleep with the eye mask on, but a dark, cold room. There's lots of things that you can do to change your relationship with sleep and unfortunately it takes willpower. That's truth. It takes willpower, desire, Dr. It's hard to make those changes. And at the same time, if you're dating, if you want a better experience with dating, if you want to not float through life, if you want to feel more energized, more engaged, if you want a long, healthy life, you have to make those changes. So I'm not going to talk much more.
I just wanted to get on here and say my dog, too, losing his mind. Lucky! Lucky! He's coming in the kitchen and we're still barking. But I just wanted to come on here to say that if you are dating, I really want you to prioritize your sleep. Get 7 plus hours of sleep, even if you're not dating. But when you start getting better sleep, you're going to make better, healthier dating choices. First Lucky, I'll show you Lucky on the way out. Lucky. Yeah, it's not interesting. All right, that is all. My name is Michelle.
You can follow me at I'm Stuck by Michelle on Instagram, on TikTok. I know I was kind of all around tonight, but maybe I should do notes. I said no notes. Next time I'll do notes. But I'm passionate about sleep, so let me know if you have things you want me to talk about. I'm here for it. I'm going to make a quick video after this about a short trick to help you fall asleep with more ease.
