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Snoozing on the couch can disrupt your sleep. These expert tips can help.

Tips for achieving restful sleep
Understanding why we can't fall asleep at night 03:33

Ever doze off on the couch while watching the game or your favorite show, only to move to your bed and lie awake? It's a frustrating sleep phenomenon that has a psychological explanation. 

Licensed psychologist Lisa Strauss told told "CBS Mornings Plus" there are a few reasons it can be difficult to get back to sleep after snoozing on the couch.

Why is it so hard to fall back asleep?

One reason is the effort it takes to make the transition from couch to bed. 

"Standing up, moving to the bedroom, having the mind reengage, brings us to wakefulness very rapidly," she said, noting that "falling asleep ... can take 10 to 20 minutes under supportive conditions. So there's this temporal asymmetry between how quickly we come to wakefulness and how long it takes us to fall back to sleep."

You can also get distracted with other things.

"People give themselves all kinds of responsibilities to fulfill," she said. "People will let the dog out and back in again. They'll be checking their email."

Even some aspects of your bedtime routine can be more stimulating than you might have realized. 

"Even those people whose main intention is just to get themselves to bed, they don't make a mere pit stop in the bathroom," Strauss said. "On the way to bed, they go into the bathroom under bright lights. They'll take their medication. They'll put in their eye drops. They're washing up, then they go into the bedroom, then they put on their pajamas. They're having a conversation with their spouse."

Tips to transition from couch to bed to sleep for the night

Preparation is key. Make sure you're already in your pajamas and have done your nightly checklist before getting cozy on the couch. 

"That way, if you fall asleep, you can quickly move to bed without needing to wake yourself up doing a bedtime routine," Strauss said.

Next, be mindful of your drowsiness. While it can be easy to drift off to dreamland when your eyelids start getting heavy, Strauss instead recommends using that as a sign to get in bed. 

"You want to catch yourself very early in the process of sleepiness. You don't want to have to sentence yourself to starting over again," she said. "So when you're starting to feel your breathing slow a little, your thinking slow, it's a little harder to focus your eyes — that's when you want to get up and you want to go to bed."

Once in bed, try not to focus too hard on sleep, as it can cause a sort of performance anxiety that keeps you up even longer worrying about why you're still awake.

"If you try to chase the squirrel of sleep, it will run away," she warned. "It's very skittish."

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