A Psychologist Explains How to Shut Your Brain Up So You Can Finally Get to Sleep
Your ability to foresee difficulties, visualize goals, learn from mistakes, and make detailed plans probably helps you succeed as an entrepreneur. But the same busy mind that makes it possible for you to get ahead in life can also make it difficult to get to sleep at night.
That’s why many ambitious professionals find themselves wide awake in bed repetitively worrying over problems, replaying missteps, or having one-sided arguments with imagined others.
With all the noise in your brain, it’s no surprise you can’t drift off. So how can you quiet your brain so you can finally get some sleep?
Sometimes this kind of rumination is related to mental health issues that require support from a professional. But if you’re just a run-of-the-mill exhausted overthinker, psychology has quite a few suggestions you can try, including a powerful new technique known as cognitive reshuffling.
Two easy tricks to quiet your brain
When your noisy mind is keeping you awake, your first move should probably be to just breathe. Focusing on slowing and deepening your breath can distract you from your racing thoughts and encourage your body and mind to relax. To accomplish this, psychologists suggest something known as the 4-7-8 Method.
It works like this: Inhale through your nose for a count of four, hold in that full breath from a count of seven, and then slowly release it through your mouth making a whooshing sound for a count of eight. Repeat three or four times.
Andrew Weil, founder of the University of Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine and developer of the technique, calls this exercise a “natural tranquilizer for the nervous system.”
Still can’t quiet your brain? Then maybe pull out a notebook and try dumping those noisy thoughts onto the page in writing.
As clinical psychologist Michael Breus explained at Psychology Today, “Writing your thoughts in a journal can be a very effective way of processing your feelings. Not only that, but journaling can help you recognize unproductive or negative thoughts and behaviors, and help you respond to these behaviors in a more constructive way. And when you can handle life’s stresses in a positive way, it’s much easier to sleep well at night.”
The big guns: cognitive shuffling
These are sensible and effective techniques to quiet your brain before bed. But they’re not particularly new ones. I’m willing to bet that many of you who have long-standing sleep troubles have been recommended deep breathing and journaling already. Can psychology offer you anything fresher?
Actually, yes. Research from psychologist Luc Beaudoin at Canada’s Simon Fraser University suggests another powerful trick. Rather than trying to quiet your thoughts by breathing or writing them away, Beaudoin’s research suggests you can distract your mind from stressful thoughts by directing it toward lulling ones instead.
Your brain will still be chattering, but it will be chattering about light, pleasant things. And that should help you finally get to sleep.
Beaudoin’s technique for doing this is called cognitive shuffling, and it’s based on the brain’s natural tendency to loosen control and begin to make unlikely connections as it drifts off to sleep. To encourage this sort of loose, lateral thinking, start by choosing any random short word, like bird or piano.
Now look at the first letter of that word and think of all the words you can that begin with that letter. If your word is bird, you might tick through a list of beetles, BBQs, balloons, etc. When you can’t think of any more b words, move on to the next letter in your original word, in this case i. You should fall asleep long before you finish the last letter.
“We want your brain to be thinking different things because as you naturally fall asleep, that’s what the brain does,” Beaudoin told BBC Science Focus. Plus, “all the while you’re doing it, you’re not thinking as much about your mortgage.”
The right frame of mind to finally get some sleep
Cognitive shuffling works by nudging your brain into the right frame of mind for sleep. You want to loosen conscious control but still keep your mind occupied with lightly drifting between ideas and images.
Beaudoin’s technique is one simple, structured way to get you there. But any mental exercise that keeps your brain just busy enough to distract you from real-life worries can help.
“Decide before you go to bed what you’ll focus on as you lie there waiting for sleep to come,” suggest Australian psychologists Melinda Jackson and Hailey Meaklim. “Pick an engaging cognitive task with enough scope and breadth to maintain your interest and attention — without causing emotional or physical arousal. So, nothing too scary, thrilling, or stressful.”
For example, try mentally redesigning a room in your house, reciting lyrics from your favorite album, or choosing your ideal lineup for next weekend’s big game.
The idea is to block the kind of focused, stressful thoughts that keep you tossing and turning by replacing them with light, imaginative ones. Cognitive shuffling is one great, structured way to do that. But do it with whatever technique works for you, and hopefully you’ll soon be drifting off to sleep.
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