Overthinking in bed? Here’s how to stop

Sleep deprivation increases activation in the amygdala. The amygdala is a small almond-sized part of your brain that is responsible for your survival. You can think of your amygdala as your protector. It is what triggers the fight, flight, freeze response. But it also does a few other things like attaches emotions to memories for example and this is where we get triggers from.

When your amygdala is really active, it’s going to be setting off the fight or flight response often or continuously, so what we want to do is retrain our amygdala to be more chill, to rewire the brain so that it’s not so reactive to non-threatening things in our environment.

When you don’t get enough sleep let’s say 7 + hours of uninterrupted sleep per night, amygdala activation increases. And studies have shown the REM sleep or rapid eye movement phase of the sleep cycle is particularly correlated with amygdala activity. More REM sleep, less activation, less REM sleep, more activation.

So we really want to be getting a decent amount of REM sleep each night for our mental health and overall well-being.

You don’t really hit long phases of REM sleep until you’ve been asleep for about 4 hours, so this is why we want uninterrupted sleep so that we are getting all of those benefits from REM sleep.

And you will have noticed this at some point in your life, that when you don’t have enough sleep, you get cranky or more triggered easily and this is because your amygdala is more active during this time, meaning that is primed to react.

Okay, so you can see that sleep is a really important factor in mental health, if not one of the most important factors, let’s look now at overthinking and what’s going on there.

So most people will associate overthinking with anxiety and they have kind of become intertwined so we see them as almost the same thing.

Overthinking is actually an individuals way of managing or responding to the symptoms of anxiety. So we actually use overthinking and worrying as a way to reduce anxiety believe it or not. But overthinking is a behaviour that maybe makes you feel more alert, prepared or in control of unknown outcomes, so it’s more like a coping mechanism from the symptoms of anxiety, rather than a symptom of anxiety if that makes sense.

When you understand that this is actually a mechanism in which you are trying to reduce anxiety symptoms, you have so much more power to change how you manage anxiety symptoms.

So how can we break these patterns of overthinking?

We want to move from one type of response to broaden what we have available to us at any given point in time.

Breathing is one of the best ways to reduce activation of the amygdala, specifically diaphragmatic breathing, so your belly expanding outwards when you inhale.

And sleep is another way to have short and long term benefits in reducing amygdala activation and therefore anxiety symptoms and overthinking.

Let’s focus on how we can create effective sleep strategies that are going to ensure that you’re feeling really calm when your head hits the pillow.

One of the best quotes that have stuck with me, I can’t remember who said it, but it was good sleep starts during the day, and this is so true because when we can do all of the right things during the day, your body is primed and ready to sleep soundly.

So this specifically looks at moving your body during the day, exercise is a big part of that, and exercise is a really interesting one because studies have shown the 20 minutes of exercise during your day, alleviates anxiety symptoms and reduces amygdala activation because it’s playing out the fight or flight response, you are literally moving away from danger and being active, so it sends feedback to your amygdala to stand down.

So I highly recommend finding some form of movement that works well for you and fits with your likes and lifestyle and trying to commit to at least 20 mins each day.

Other effective strategies for sleep are keeping a worry journal or as I love to call it a bullshit journal. This is such an effective method, when you can schedule in some time whether that’s before you go to sleep or during the day, to write down all of the worries and BS that comes to your mind, it does 2 things, 1 neurologically when you write something down you are activating a different part of your brain so you are able to look at the words from a different perspective rather than them floating around in your head. And 2 it means that you eliminate the worry of forgetting something that you’re worried about. So highly recommend keeping a bullshit or worry journal and making that daily practice and giving yourself 10 minutes to just get all of those thoughts out of your head and onto paper.

Another effective sleep strategy is having rituals around bedtime, now I’m not talking about some blown-out ritual that feels super difficult, but just a sequence of events that you do before you go to bed, and you might already do this, but for example maybe you have a shower and brush your teeth, you already have a nighttime ritual. What we want to do is be really consistent with these rituals, so if you want to have a shower, brush your teeth and then journal in bed, that you do that every night until it becomes second nature and ritualistic.

This leads me into the next effective sleep strategy, and I cannot stress this enough, that you must have a consistent sleep and wake routine, and I know I can already hear the groans for this one! What about my sleep-ins, what if I don’t fall asleep! Hear me out, you are a creature of habit and if you are constantly changing the time that you fall asleep, then your brain doesn’t have anything to hold onto, you’re also messing your circadian rhythm up which is going to make it harder and harder for you to fall asleep.

So start small within the parameters of what you already do and follow through with your sleep and wake times for a while and just experiment to see if it makes a difference, you are going to struggle for a little bit because its a new habit and it takes time for your body and brain to adjust!

Other effective sleep strategies are really trying to minimise screen time and unnatural light sources for at least an hour preferably 2 hours but that’s a bit of a stretch before you go to sleep and also trying to avoid napping during the day if you can because this will impact your circadian rhythm and make it more difficult for you to fall asleep.

Okay now let’s look specifically at overthinking at bedtime, so you’ve got your worry or BS journal complete, but you’re still lying in bed with racing thoughts. What do now?

One of the best ways is to use something to jam the thoughts that we are having, it’s normal to pick up your phone and scroll or watch tv shows in bed, but what we really want to do is limit that screen time, but offer something in which we don’t have the capacity to think the thoughts.

Audiobooks are one of the best ways to do this or listening to talking in general if you absolutely can’t let go of the TV show, you can listen to it without watching, we don’t want overstimulation, we want to just focus our attention towards another pathway, and audio is a great way to do that.

Avoid listening to music because you can still think when you’re listening to music and it elicits sometimes negative emotions or associations.

While you’re listening or alternative, use relaxing breathing techniques like deep belly breathing, long inhales, long exhales.

If you can’t fall asleep after 30 mins in bed, get out of bed and do something in the dark, don’t go turning on all the lights, try to use minimal lights, so you might get up and do a yoga pose, or try to read a book or pat your animal. Spend 5-10 mins doing something else and then go back to bed.