If sleep or lack of is troubling you, it’s worth going back to basics with your routine. Trying to get to bed at the same time each night and up at the same time each morning. Reduce distractions (consider an alarm clock and banishing phones). Keep an eye on caffeine, reduce day time naps, consider gentle exercise and try to destress before bed. If you’ve ever been involved in a small child’s nice bedtime routine maybe you could bring something of that to your own. It probably didn’t include incredibly stimulating telly. Most of us would benefit from more childlike bedtimes. Earlier, less stimulating, and with an air of predictable inevitability around it.
If you’re worrying at night your fight of flight system will be fired up, trying to protect you from danger. You’ll feel threat focussed, vigilant and tense. We’re not designed to fall asleep full of adrenaline, next to threats or predators.
There are separate posts on worry and thoughts that might be worth exploring. It is helpful to reframe worry at night as unproductive. It’s different from problem solving. You don’t do your best thinking at night and you need rest. Could you keep a pad by your bed, write it down and promise to come back to it in the morning? Bed needs to be a worry free zone. An intention not to make any decisions in bed can be helpful. It might not come naturally but you can condition your mind to do this. It works best if you’ve promised yourself you’ll come back to it – hence the pad, phone notepads are too stimulating. Then really gently bring your attention into your body, notice how it feels to be breathing, how the sheets feel. You might work through your body on each outbreath, relaxing different area of the body. There’s a progressive muscle relaxation exercise on our website that can help with this. It’s not complicated, but takes just enough attention to interrupt mental processes and worry, getting you into your parasympathetic nervous system. Your body needs soothing. Even if you can’t sleep, if you’re deliberately relaxing your body, you will be getting a lot from that. Thoughts about how much sleep you’re getting, whether it’s enough, whether you’ll cope tomorrow etc – will be more tiring. More along the lines of – ‘at least I’m lying down and no one is asking me to do anything. A nice rest is almost as good as a sleep’.
A lovely habit is to train yourself to focus fully on the first three waking breaths. Usually we’re straight off in thought – unchecked. Can we really attend to the sensation of the breath? If we can stay in our parasympathetic nervous system we’re more likely to go back to sleep if we need to. Or to start the day centred.