A little-known practice to put insomnia to rest
Do you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep? Have you mastered all of the traditional sleep hygiene practices and still can't get 7-9hrs of sleep? Does stress or rumination keep your mind spinning at odd hours? This could be the insomnia-busting habit you've been looking for.
How often do you lie in bed, wishing desperately that you could just fall asleep? You’re physically exhausted - but your mind is in overdrive. Ruminating about your long list of to-do’s, stressing about mistakes you’ve made… or are worried about making, trying to solve problems that just keep going around in circles in your head.
Perhaps you have no trouble getting to sleep, it’s the 2-4 am wake-up that you struggle with. You wake up needing to use the washroom, and when you get back into bed your monkey mind takes over, cortisol starts coursing through your veins and you’re awake for hours. You try listening to a sleep meditation on your phone (with blue light glasses on of course…) and you’re still awake. You try to count backwards from 1000 and still no luck. What do you do?
Most sleep blogs and advice point you to sleep hygiene tips:
Get natural sunlight early in the morning to set your circadian rhythm in motion optimally
No caffeine after noon
Exercise during the day, but not within 4hrs of bedtime
Try not to eat 2-3hrs before going to bed
Turn off electronic devices 1-hour before going to bed
Read fiction right before bed
Make sure your bedroom is dark and cool with no electronics nearby
Go to sleep and wake up at around the same time each day (yes… even on the weekends if possible)
Understand that alcohol is really bad for your sleep
But what if you’ve tried all this and STILL can’t get 7-8hrs of sleep reliably?
One practice that has worked for me and for many of my clients is the “worry & small step” writing exercise.
If you’ve been awake for longer than 20 minutes while trying to get to sleep or in the middle of the night, follow these steps:
Get out of bed (and out of your nice warm blankets)
Move to a different room and turn on a table lamp (less stimulating than overhead lights)
Find a piece of paper or a journal (not a device) and create two columns: the first column is “Worry”. The second column is “Small Step”
Write something you're worried about in the left column (a few words - not a paragraph)
Write one small step that you can take to begin to address the worry in the right column
Keep writing until you have written down all of your worries and the small steps you can take to address those worries
The important part of this exercise is identifying an action you can take to begin to address the worries. Without this step - you'll continue to ruminate.
You’ll likely need to do this for a few nights in the beginning. Each time you write your list will shrink until finally, you have done a complete brain dump of the worries that are keeping you up and your brain will fall asleep - or back asleep - in minutes. This will become a tool that you use during stressful periods rather than a “one-and-done” sleep aid. But it works. There’s an ancillary benefit too - you have your high-priority “to-do” list ready for the next day.
Book a free call with a coach at Valeo Leadership if you are struggling with stress or burnout and would like help to move from striving to thriving in life and at work.
For the science behind sleep, follow:
Dr. Matthew Walker (Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and Founder and Director of the Center for Human Sleep Science, https://www.sleepdiplomat.com/)
Dr. Sara Mednick (Cognitive Neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine and author of “The Hidden Power of the Downstate”, https://www.saramednick.com/about)