How to Deal With Racing Thoughts at Night
Do you find at the end of your evening, you’re physically exhausted, maybe mentally worn out but as soon as your head hits the pillow and you turn off the lights, there’s this backlash of thinking, ruminating, planning and/or worrying?
Or are you someone who crashes out quickly at the beginning of the night but in the middle of the night you wake and your brain goes from 0 to 100 in about 3.7 seconds and wants you to solve all the world’s problems at this ungodly hour?
You’re not alone. About 90% of people I work with all have these racing thoughts that either prevent them from initially falling asleep or prevent them from going back to sleep. Or both. When I was deep in my insomnia, at exactly 3:13am every night, I would wake and be jolted into ruminating over family arguments, planning my lessons (I used to be a teacher), researching/fantasizing about future holidays, worrying about my health, and getting frustrated with all the earworms that were popping into my head.
Why does this happen?
Connecting the daytime to nighttime
One of the theories as to why we tend to think or worry at night time is that we haven’t taken time to process our thoughts or worries from the day. So many of us tend to race through our days, ticking off the boxes of responsibility and life - wake up, eat, get kids ready (if you have them), work, maybe gym, dinner, maybe socialize, do chores, zone out on something and then get into bed. And then you turn off the lights. And it’s truly the only time from the moment you woke up where it’s quiet, it’s dark, free of distractions and THIS is the time where the busy brain floodgates open. Your brain has finally been given time and space to roam free and over time, your brain has also been conditioned to think about these things during the night. Our minds are very clever and pick up on patterns fairly quickly. If you’re overthinking things before bed or during the night and this has happened on a few occasions, your brain learns - Hey! My bed is a place for sleep, but my bed in the night time is also the place where I can fret and problem-solve. And your brain will be looking to repeat that pattern.
I always explain to my clients that sleep issues need to be viewed as a 24 hour problem. So much of what you do or don’t do during the night can impact your daytime energy levels and night time sleep. And if you’re not taking time to process your thoughts or feelings and wind down before sleep, they can absolutely pop up in the night when you really just want to be sleeping. And sleep and stress have this incredibly important bi-direction relationship. Sleep can help balance stress hormones and help you become more resilient in the face of stressors but stress and anxiety can make it hard to sleep. So if you’re up late worrying about that presentation you need to deliver or reviewing a hard conversation you had with a friend, it makes sense why it’s hard to get to sleep.
How to tackle racing thoughts
While there are many approaches to deal with a monkey mind, the overarching theme is that you’ve got to carve out some time during the day or in the evening to address them.
If you’re someone who has the odd night of intrusive thoughts, a simple reactive approach is to have a pen and paper next to your bed and do a simple brain dump (or if you want to type or dictate notes in your phone or even just say them aloud, that’s ok too). There is something that happens though when you write your thoughts and worries down - it’s like your brain understands that they’ve been parked for the day and it then allows your mind to be in a more conducive space for sleep. Maybe it’s a simple to-do list, maybe it’s a list of questions you want to come back to tomorrow, maybe it’s a free flow journal activity where you’re jotting down whatever comes to mind. Everyone is going to be drawn to a different approach. For some, a simple act of distraction can push those thoughts away - play geography in your head, count backwards from 1000 in 7s, listen to some guided imagery.
But for those people who tend to have those busy thoughts at night on a regular basis, I like to take a more proactive approach. As I mentioned before, your brain has learned to think, worry and plan in the night time so you’ve got to retrain your brain to do these activities at another time of day so your nights are kept free to sleep. So choose a time of day where you are making space for these thoughts. I usually don’t advise first thing in the AM (as the day builds up with other things to think about) or right before bed (as maybe that will induce some overthinking that may keep you further awake) but usually somewhere between the end of the work day and 30 min before bed is the sweet spot. Choose a quiet space to think, turn off distractions and allow yourself at least 5-15 minutes to address what’s on your mind and park your thoughts.
Worry time
If you’re someone who has anxious thoughts popping up at night, there’s a really great strategy you can try out called Constructive Worry Time. I’ve adapted it from Coleen Carney, who is an expert in the field of psychological treatments for insomnia. Anxiety at night can be especially problematic for some as remember - stress can equal difficulty sleeping. And things we tend to be anxious about are things that we have no control over and/or we’re making projections and worrying about what might happen in the future. Even though we don’t have concrete evidence that it will. It’s important to remember that thoughts are not facts!
So Constructive Worry Time goes like this:
Find a quiet time and place, free from distractions. To make it a habit, choose the same time each day. Use a notebook or other way to record.
Begin by writing your thoughts and worries down. Let’s start with an easy one. “Do I have enough milk in the fridge for my coffee tomorrow?”
Step 2 is to write your answer. Often the answer is “I don’t know.”
Step 3 is to write a solution. “Tomorrow when I wake up, I will check the fridge and if there’s no milk, I’ll pick some up on my way home from work.” Easy.
For something that’s a bit more anxiety-inducing and unknown and may play out in your brain over and over, I’ll share an example of something I used to worry about when I was a teacher. As part of our performance management, teachers would be observed by their principal or head of department three times a year. I fundamentally knew I was a great teacher but I also had performance anxiety and I would get so wound up and nervous about how it was going to go (I also have perfectionistic tendencies which made everything worse!). I would play out all the worst scenarios and even though I cognitively knew I probably wouldn’t mess it up, emotionally my mind was spinning out of control - what if I forgot important components of my lesson plan? What if there was a tricky behaviour management situation with a student? What if I didn’t remember to differentiate for all my learners? What if tech failed me and the smartboard didn’t work?
So every night for several weeks leading up to my observation, I would sit down after dinner and write the same overarching worry down - “Am I going to bomb this teaching observation?” And every night my answer was “I don’t know.” And then I continued to write a solution piece but I padded it out with some validation components and next steps. “My past performance demonstrates that I will probably not bomb this lesson. There is no evidence of this. I am a great teacher and have been improving over time and I am well-prepared. I will practice tomorrow after school for my teaching partner and get feedback. And I will continue to practice and prepare and if something does go wrong in my observation and I get points for development, I will use this as a teachable moment and an opportunity to improve and I can check in with my department head to ensure I’m on track. Not being perfect doesn’t mean I’m a failure.”
Now I want to be clear that the purpose of worry time is NOT to solve all your problems (although anxiety reduction may be a byproduct of this activity because a concrete plan in place does increase sense of control and reinforce that you’re doing all that you can) but rather to retrain your brain to think about these things at another time of day. Remember - your brain has got used to thinking about these things in bed at night so the idea of reframing these thoughts at another time of day will help your brain be in a more conducive space for sleep and will also reinforce that your bed should be a place for sleep, intimacy and relaxation.
When to seek help
Everyone has different stress levels, coping mechanisms and needs. This is one tool to help deal with racing thoughts. If you are finding that poor mood and/or anxiety is becoming difficult to manage on your own and is impacting your sleep, you may want to consider speaking to a mental health professional and a sleep specialist. While mental health conditions and sleep disturbances can be deeply connected, the good news is that there are solutions for change and professionals to help guide you.
