You are tired all evening, then the light goes off and your mind starts a meeting nobody asked for. If that sounds familiar, you are in good company, and there is a lot you can try.
Why the mind speeds up at night
During the day your attention is full. There are people to answer, jobs to finish, noise and light. At night all of that stops at once, and the thoughts that were waiting at the edge of the day finally get their turn. Nothing has gone wrong. Your mind is doing its filing at the worst possible time.
The harder part is what happens next. You notice you are awake, you start to worry about being awake, and that worry wakes you up further. Many of the people I see are not kept up by one big problem. They are kept up by the fear of another bad night.
So the aim is not to force sleep, which never works. It is to give those thoughts somewhere else to go, and to teach your body that bed is for sleeping, not for thinking.
Five things to try tonight
- Give your worries an appointment. At about seven in the evening, sit for fifteen minutes with a notebook and write down what is on your mind, and one small next step for each. When a thought comes at night, you can tell it, kindly, that it already has a time.
- Make the last hour slow. Dim the lights, put the phone in another room, and do something with your hands: washing up, a puzzle, a few pages of a book you have read before.
- Turn the clock round. Checking the time adds sums and worry. If you need an alarm, set it and face it away.
- Get up if you cannot sleep. After what feels like twenty minutes, go to another room with low light and do something dull until you feel sleepy, then go back.
- Keep the same getting-up time. Even after a bad night, and even at weekends. It is the single steadiest signal you can give your body.
If you wake at three in the morning
Try breathing out for longer than you breathe in: in for four, out for six, for a few minutes. Then let your attention rest on something neutral, such as the weight of the comforter or the sounds outside. You are not trying to fall asleep. You are just resting, and rest still counts.
When to ask for help
If poor sleep has lasted more than a month, or it is changing how you feel during the day, it is worth talking to someone. Talking therapy for sleep works well, and it often helps with the worries underneath too.
If you ever feel unable to keep yourself safe, please call your doctor, or 999 in an emergency. You do not have to wait for an appointment.