Sleeping Well is the Best Revenge

You just might be taking it all out on the wrong person.

When you think of revenge, what’s the first thing you think of?

Getting back at someone that dissed you I bet. Relishing every moment that person is tangled in the web of your superb, and meticulously planned vengeance.

But what if the person you took revenge on was YOU? Night after night, with both the thrill of “winning” and the excruciating pain of experiencing the vengeance itself?

Is this you? You’re a busy person, getting so much (too much) done during the day. You have a job, a house, a partner perhaps, maybe kids, and a dog or cat (or an iguana) to take care of? Perhaps aging parents who want you to call or visit or have an errand for you to run for them?

You Just. Don’t. Have. Time. For. Yourself.

When bedtime rolls around, you have a hard time making your way into bed. When you finally get under the sheets you start an activity that will keep you up much longer, like binge-reading Medium articles, scrolling FaceBook, or reading many more chapters of the book you’re in the middle of …

Even though you KNOW you need to turn off the light and shut your eyes.

Even though you KNOW how much you’ll suffer in the morning when the alarm goes off.

This is a phenomenon known in the sleep science world as Revenge Bedtime Procrastination (RBP).

The term originally stemmed from a Chinese term about “stealing back one’s time” from what’s called a 996 schedule in China: working from 9 am to 9 pm six days a week.

Journalist Daphne K. Lee coined the RBP phrase and described it in a tweet as a phenomenon that occurs when “people who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early in order to regain some sense of freedom during late-night hours.”

In today’s society, women and students suffer from RBP the most

Students are overworked and feel they need to use that screen time to calm down.

Women spend much of their day taking care of others (including pets) and managing a house and a career. It feels hard, or impossible, to make time for one’s own relaxation or entertainment.

There are two categories of Revenge Bedtime Procrastination, according to the Sleep Foundation, and many of us fall into both:

• A delay in getting into bed (classic RBP)
• A delay while in bed of turning off the lights and closing one’s eyes (“while-in-bed” RBP, often having to do with electronic devices).

One significant factor in realizing that you are participating in RBP is that you are very aware that you need more sleep. You may even know some of the negative consequences, but make a conscious choice to delay getting in bed, and/or once there, delay turning off the light and actually sleeping.

The subconscious revenge part is supposed to be against society’s demands on your free time, but you are actually harming yourself as a consequence. You know that you need to stop what you’re doing and get some sleep and yet, you don’t.

You don’t turn off the light or the screen because your day is so packed with other things that you have to do, that this feels like the only time you have that’s just for you.

How RBP affects your health

One of the foundational factors in excellent health is getting good sleep. As I teach my clients, going to sleep later (say at 12:00 or 1 am) means you’re missing the short window of time when the brain cleanses itself through the glymphatic (glial lymphatic) system.

Our entire body’s hormonal systems and associated neurotransmitters and enzymatic interactions are ruled by our circadian clock which resides in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) adjacent to the hypothalamus.

Our circadian clock is affected by light. When the sun goes down in the evening the body begins to shift into wind-down mode, setting up a cascade of hormones and neurotransmitters and processes that help the body get sleepy, fall asleep and begin to repair at the cellular level. This includes brain cells.

Between 9:00 pm and 10:00 pm, the brain begins its amazing cleanse of metabolic waste and toxins in the brain cells. You may have heard of the lymph system which cleans and clears the lower body cellular systems — well the brain has its own toxic waste clearance called the glymphatic system; one of the most important factors in good brain health, memory, and cognition. During sleep, the cellular components of the brain shrink by as much as 60% to create greater interstitial space and boost the capacity to rinse toxins out of the cells and away from the cell bodies. (Just flushing garbage out of the cells isn’t sufficient; a toilet that doesn’t empty into a septic or sewage system doesn’t do anyone much good.)

The research so far indicates that the glymphatic system operates during sleep, particularly slow-wave sleep, and only during those hours when the animal would be routinely asleep.

(For a deeper dive on the glymphatic system, check out Healthy Brains Need Good Sleep by John Kruse)

If you find yourself sleeping closer to 12 or 1 am (or later) you may get only half of that brain cleanse, if that. When that window closes, the glymphatic system shuts down for the night. It’s like only remembering to take out the recycling bin that picks up late and missing the earlier morning trash truck. Those toxins and old proteins just hang around gunking up the works.

Sleep deprivation is seriously the worst — and its worse if you lose sleep on the front end

Getting less sleep than your brain and body need impacts memory and decision-making, along with affecting hormones that help get nutrients into cells, manage blood sugar, and create hunger and satiety signals.

Lack of sleep also has a big effect on other mental health issues like anxiety and depression. And we can all attest to the fact that daytime sleepiness is the enemy of productivity.

In terms of long-term health, sleep deprivation is associated with obesity, diabetes, and cardiac disease.

Front-end your sleep by adding hours in the evening instead of sleeping in late so that you can get those cleansing benefits. I promise, you’ll notice the difference.

How to beat Revenge Bedtime Procrastination

Part One

1. Awareness is everything. Even knowing that there is a name for this phenomenon should help you kick the habit. Catch yourself in RBP and get in the habit of turning off that phone, iPad or TV the moment you do. One trick to doing this is the Rocket 1–2–3 method. (Notice yourself scrolling through Instagram mindlessly when you should turn out the light? Say the words Rocket, One, Two, Three and no matter where you are, turn it off. Sounds childish, but it works!) You may, as some of my clients report, find instant relief as if you’d broken a spell.
2. Find time during the day, even 10 or 15 minutes two or three times a day, to do something that nourishes you mentally and spiritually. Take a walk outside, write in a journal, color in an adult coloring book, get on the phone with a friend, play with your dog, do breathwork or meditate with an app. Taking this time two or three times a day for yourself helps immensely with the “revenge” part of RBP.
3. Put your “Me” time in your planner/calendar as a non-negotiable appointment with yourself.
4. Getting a little “Me” time during the day goes a long way to help stop the cycle of trying to add it on late at night. I have a friend who watches her favorite show in 15-minute increments throughout the day so that she doesn’t feel she’s missing out on it at night. Sometimes she watches it during her lunchtime instead.

Once you recognize that RBP is really a serious issue and you’ve added in your “Me” time for a full week, then you're ready to tackle the nighttime part of kicking the habit.

Part Two

1. To help your brain get used to sleeping earlier, start programming your circadian clock early in the day. Your circadian clock is set first thing in the morning with the rising of the sun. Try your hardest to step outside before 8:30 am to get sunlight on your eyeballs. Look at the sky, enjoy the clouds if they are there (sunlight is still detected through clouds). Listen for birds. Sip your coffee. Hum a tune.
2. Time your caffeine, alcohol and dinner so that it doesn’t interfere with sleep. Caffeine should be consumed no later than 1 pm (you might find that you need to stop even earlier) because of it’s long half life (8 hours).
3. Alcohol slows down all metabolism of food until the liver can clear and detoxify the alcohol (which it reads as a poison), so you want to be more of a Happy Hour drinker, partaking of drinks and dranks in the late afternoon or early evening, followed by an early dinner.
4. Metabolizing food takes a lot of energy. Late dinners definitely impair the cascade of hormones that help your brain and body feel sleepy. Especially if that food is eaten in front of a screen emitting blue light — your brain is going to read all of that as “I’m getting fueled and the sun is out, must be daytime, not a time to sleep!” Try to stop eating by 7 pm.
5. Give yourself a hard-out on screen time, making a rule that all screens must be off by say 12, and begin to work backward towards 9:30. This takes time, for sure. Start with what you think is reasonable. 12? 11:30? Then each night work in 15-minute increments towards 9:30. (Don’t forget, I am not saying be in bed by 9:30, just screens are off.) Beginning the journey is everything.
6. Decide it’s worth it because changing the habits that lead to RBP is not necessarily easy. You’ll have to plan for this, and get creative about it. Explore having something else to do that is more nighttime appropriate — an epsom salt bath, a late evening call to your sister, a good but slightly boring book, writing in a gratitude journal, dreamscape meditation, knitting, coloring, etc.
7. Not convinced? Read Shawn Stevenson’s book, Sleep Smarter for a truly enjoyable deep dive into how lack of sleep affects our health and what to do about it.

Sleeping well really is the best revenge.

Give yourself the tools you need so that you can enjoy your wakeful days full of energy and with a clear, focused mind. Improve your overall health by recognizing that this Revenge Bedtime Procrastination isn’t serving you at all. Not in any way.

It may feel like a type of justified freedom to grab time for yourself late at night that you feel society doesn’t allow you to have, but in essence, you’re actually stealing time from yourself instead.

In truth, you may be shortening your life span by shortening your health span, all because you’re not giving your body the rest it really needs. Think about this next time you try to talk yourself into watching just one more show or read just one more chapter as the clock ticks on.

Give yourself the “Me” time you deserve earlier in the day. Beg, borrow or steal it if you have to. Give yourself the gift of health, energy and focus by getting good, restful sleep earlier in the evening. No matter how long it takes to put this into practice, my clients and I can attest to it all being worth it.

Your body, brain and spirit will thank you.