For those of us with high anxiety or a tendency to worry, falling asleep can be a challenge at times.
How often do you have trouble sleeping because you lie awake worrying about things? The sound outside your window, the things you need to do tomorrow, whether you’ve budgeted properly for the month – these lingering thoughts can destroy your ability to sleep.
Between the worries and the hypotheticals, it’s not uncommon to spend hours lying awake some nights.
Perhaps you think you’ll eventually just exhaust yourself, your brain will shut off, and you’ll finally fall asleep. And maybe you will, but not without first wasting all that precious time you could have already been sleeping. Worse still is if you wake up in the middle of the night with even more thoughts and fears.
Perhaps we have a solution that can help with these sleepless nights.
Instead of obsessing over things in your head all night, grab a journal and physically write them out. This way you aren’t keeping yourself awake trying to remember all these things.
Before even heading to the bedroom, take a moment to think about the things that could potentially keep you up. Instead of losing sleep over them, write them all down. Tell yourself, “I can deal with these in the morning, I can’t do anything about them now.” If it helps, remind yourself that you’ll be more prepared to tackle them after getting adequate sleep anyway.
Yes, we’re actually telling you to schedule a time for worrying. Why? Because it’ll help you avoid spending excess time on it and wrecking your sleep schedule.
The key is to leave your worries at the bedroom door. If another one comes up, go back out to your journal and add it to the list.
Once you’ve got them all written out, you’re free to go to bed, leaving that anxiety behind.
Setting aside time to write down the things that are stressing you out, means getting them out of your system. And by making your bedroom a place where worrying is forbidden, you’ll be able to enjoy a better night’s rest.
Try it for a week and see if it doesn’t help your ability to fall asleep more peacefully.
