Stop ruminating and sleep deeply

So many of the clients I see come to me with sleep issues. Even if they come for something else, at some point they will add on that they want to sleep better.

It's a major epidemic in our society. Whether it is related to another condition or medication, a physical or emotional trauma, or life transition, or aging factors, sleep disturbance is nearly universal. These sleep issues range from mild sleep disturbances to more chronic sleep deprivations, and severe issues such as nightmares that create a negative anxiety feedback loop about even attempting to sleep. Sleep is such a fundamental part of health and healing that any level of interruption can have serious implications to your overall life. And what I find so curious is that regardless of the reason for the sleep disturbances, there is one easy brain hack that can interrupt the rumination cycle and allow you to drop into normal deep and REM sleep states 99% of the time.

First let's look at what happens when you get caught up in ruminating. Rumination is just a fancy word for consciously revisiting thoughts, experiences or worries that you encounter in your waking life. Questions of how you might of done something differently, or attempts to guess at how you were perceived in any given situation can keep you up at night if you don't practice good sleep hygiene. Many of us ruminate unconsciously during the day without it being overly problematic because we are awake and doing repetitive tasks that don't require focus. But when it happens at night, the usual distractions of daytime life are absent and that means your conscious mind is unencumbered to play them out over and over. It is...well, exhausting! To add insult to injury, when we are consciously ruminating over something, we are seeing issues through a very limited lens, constantly refreshing and reinforcing something that our subconscious minds might otherwise discard or work out during our much more creative REM sleep, through dreams. So it's even more critical to let your mind go through natural, healthy sleep cycles.

Maybe you've tried other distractions such as the classic counting sheep, or listing gratitudes or something similar. Sometimes these work because they give the conscious mind something else to focus on. But for real anxieties and sleep issues, these often fail because the anxious feelings are strong.

The next time you struggle to turn off your "monkey mind" consider using a simple but effective psychological cognitive diffusion technique by asking yourself:

"What am I going to think next?"

Asking this question does three things:

1. It takes your mind out the past and/or the future and makes it focus on the present moment.

2. Just as meditation intends, when you ask this question and then wait for the answer, you are effectively witnessing your thought process instead of stressing over the content of your thoughts. (Cognitive Defusion)

3. It triggers the Tetris Effect, a process where your brain is engaged enough by the question but bored enough to fall asleep.

This technique may not solve medical or nightmare induced sleeplessness, but it will help with an anxious mind. To overcome more complex sleep issues, I have some very effective Hypnosis techniques, techniques that within a few sessions have helped many people who struggled for years. Our minds are powerful and, oftentimes, mysterious but there are ways to help yourself that are simpler than you might imagine. Contact me to talk about how I can help you get back to deep and restful nightly sleep, and in the meantime, why not give this proven brain hack a try?