How to go to sleep at night with less anxiety
Train your brain to go to sleep peacefully…
If you’ve struggled with depression, nighttime may be the time a sudden and often irrational fear of death creeps into your chest.
Those moments before we can fully relax and let go of our bodies are filled with heart-pounding dread and anxiety.
But in my experience, it’s possible to get to sleep peacefully, even happily, by trying a few simple things.
However, don’t mistake simple for easy.
Making mental shifts requires consistent behavior before you reap the benefits. At two weeks you’ll notice what I call a micro change where things are different but not different enough to measure. This is the first inkling that what you’re doing is working.
After this micro change, it’ll be another 2 weeks or longer before the macro stuff starts happening. Keep with it, don’t give up.
Your mind is like a piece of music
The great trumpet player, Miles Davis was known for slinging insults at his bandmates for their inability to avoid the mundane, regular-ness of the mainstream. He’s famously quoted to have said “Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.”
To Miles the GOAT, playing the obvious was the path to mediocrity and obsolescence.
To outsiders, his bands’ playing was probably amazing, But to a man who had trained his ear to hear the underlying possibilities of the music, it was trash.
This is because to most people, playing by ear, looks like a magic trick–musicians included.
In order to do it, you have to be able to recognize the key. The problem with this is, the bass usually plays the key.
It’s steady, keeps time, and lies underneath layers and layers of melody.
And its the hardest part of the song to hear.
The melody is what we all hear first, the singable, top line or surface-level part. You can’t always trust the melody to tell you the key because it changes to keep things interesting.
It’s so dynamic, it’s hard NOT to hear.
Our emotions are like this at night. They skip around from idea to idea, one more terrifying than the next, being all reactive, all according to the underlying key or theme of your subconscious–-
— Where the anxiety stems from.
To change the surface-level emotions and get rid of the late-night fear and tension, you have to acknowledge the underlying emotions that aren’t readily obvious.
And change keys.
The combination of these 3 practices below worked for me.
Do the thing you’re avoiding
Often we feel like we’re missing out or like life is slipping through our hands because we aren’t living the life we thought we’d live.
And often we aren’t living our ideal life because we’re not making any effort towards it.
So tomorrow when you wake up (or as soon as you can physically do it) do the thing you’re avoiding — the thing you’ve been putting off. Yes, you still might need more information. You might not be emotionally ready. You probably can’t afford to but do anything that moves you in your desired direction.
Have that hard conversation…
Write that vomit draft for your book…
Throw out that junk food….
Go for a run or pick up that jump rope…
Call your mom…
Enroll (or unenroll) in that course…
The thing is, the effort doesn’t have to be grand, it just has to be consistent. For example, I’m writing this over a series of days on my cell phone while nursing a sleeping baby. My baby demands so much of my attention I have to fit it in where I can.
Any effort counts. Eventually, you’ll start to notice accumulating wins.
Use Autosuggestion
Autosuggestion is purposely telling yourself what you want to believe. Autosuggestions reframe and/or recreate your reality.
They’re affirmations but more tactical.
But they have to be believable.
To create autosuggestions that work, start by acknowledging your fears.
Maybe you feel like:
- Your life is slipping away
- You thought you’d be further along
- You’re starting over
- You should “know better” by now
- You’ll never find someone to love you
- You’ll never have close friends
- You’re too old to work on your health, start over, be beautiful, have children, etc…
- It’s too late to get your dreams
- You’re not working hard enough or fast enough
- You don’t have the skills you need to make the necessary changes in your career/life
Picking up what I’m putting down?
When you start self-programming tell yourself things that are true and believable anytime those insecurities bogarde their way into your head.
- I’m on my own path
- I’m the perfect age to do what I want
- I am making slow progress and that’s still progress
- There is nothing wrong with starting small
- I am getting better
You’re always at varying stages of progress and where you are on the map is only completely relevant to you. Write down your autosuggestions and repeat these anytime that fear or anxiety pops into your brain.
Forgive yourself
The lizard that jumped from the high iroko tree said “I will praise myself even if no one else will.”
-African Proverb
Don’t confuse the image of yourself in your head with the real you. While some of us carry a more accurate account of ourselves, our self-image is a perception and an identity that is as changeable as day-old underwear.
Often that self-image is an idealized version of yourself that only exists when conditions are perfect. And that’s almost never. Heck, how many times have you been tired when you needed to be alert? In the real world, Batman would have acid reflux and an opiate dependency.
The best you can do is show up every day with circumstances as they are.
So forgive yourself for falling short of the hero image you have in your mind.
Oooooor…
Or…
Forgive your brain for creating a hero image of where you thought you should be by now without all the information of what it actually takes to get there.
You couldn’t know that to get from A to B you have to follow 7 other micro steps.
You might’ve known it would be difficult but you couldn’t know it would be THIS hard…
Forgive yourself. Write it on paper, say it out loud to yourself in the mirror.
…I’m sorry I wasn’t who you thought I would be by now.
…I’m sorry I didn’t have more information
…I’m sorry that I kept giving up when you needed me to keep going
Then thank yourself for what you HAVE done…
- Thank you for staying up that extra hour after you put the kids to bed, I know that wasn’t easy.
- Thank you for saying no to that project and doing what’s best for me even though I know you wanted it
- Thank you for being patient and consistent even if the progress isn’t as fast as you liked
- Thank you for continuing to find a way to grow happiness even when you are facing the worst of depression
- Thank you for showing up for family/friends even when you weren’t feeling it
One last thing
You can’t be the idealized version of yourself every day.
Set boundaries for others and your mind. Other people can’t beat you up and you aren’t allowed to either.
Resilience is built in difficult moments where, instead of giving up and turning inward, we persevere. And that’s true mental health.
So to go to bed with less anxiety:
- Ask yourself: is there some emotion, thought, or realization I’m avoiding?
- Do the hard thing you’ve been putting off
- Use auto-suggestion to relax and train your mind
- Forgive yourself for not being who your mind made you out to be when it had too little information or the wrong tools to survive
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thank you for reading. I write about practical tips to overcome depression based on my own experiences. If you’re the type of person who googles “How to be happy” or “How long to boil eggs” because you keep forgetting, gimmie a follow. :)
