How I Stop Overthinking at Night to Fall Asleep Quickly
I suffered years of on and off chronic crippling insomnia. Now I fall asleep within 10 minutes and get 7–9 hours of sleep every single night.
The Solution
I visualize/think-of nothing.
Stay with me for a minute. This ‘nothing’ is subjective. It can be anything you want. For me, I visualize a black but empty canvas as my ‘nothing’.
This would be like staring at the dark night-sky except there are no clouds, moon, stars, planets or planes, just pure quiet darkness.
Whenever a thought appears, which it inevitably does, I immediately force myself to go back to visualizing nothing. I do this by mentally saying “I’ll think about that in the morning” before re-visualizing nothing.
With enough practice, switching back to visualizing nothing will feel seamless and instant. I keep cutting off new thoughts and retreating to my nothing until eventually, I fall asleep.
Is This a Joke?
No. I was and still am a generally anxious overthinking person. I’ve suffered on-and-off bouts of crippling insomnia pretty much all my life. I’ve tried almost every tip and trick to fall asleep quickly in existence. Historically, a guerrilla warfare style assault of paranoid/anxious thoughts would ruin my attempts to sleep. Even when I was calm or exhausted, I was still unable to fall asleep quickly.
I’ve been visualizing nothing when trying to sleep since 3 months ago. Miraculously, it’s allowed me to fall asleep within 10 minutes every single night since then (and hopefully long into the future).
But What if a Thought of “I Left the Iron On” Appears?
Well too bad.
If you don’t have the willpower to cut off that thought and return to visualizing nothing, this will never work for you.
I’m joking, go turn the iron off (or do that urgent thing that stops an emergency thing) then come back to bed and visualize nothing (again).
So You’re Saying This Will Definitely Make Me Fall Asleep Quickly?
No, but I hope it does. You have nothing to lose by trying this and so much to gain. Before this, to help me fall asleep quickly I tried:
- vigorous exercise during the day
- breathing techniques
- daily worry time sessions
- quiet, cool and dark rooms
- going to bed and waking up at the same time every day
- only going to sleep when my eyes are droopy
- only using the bed for sleep and intimacy
- a fixed wind-down routine of showering then reading fiction or listening to music.
and other things that are recommended by health professionals for good sleep hygiene. Maybe one of these will work for you.
If none of these work, try this. If this doesn’t work too, say after a week or 2, keep trying with something else!
Life is so much better when you get 7–9 hours of sleep every single night. DON’T GIVE UP UNTIL YOU GET IT.
Bonus Tip to Reduce Overthinking at Night
I strongly recommend doing some form of worry time long before you sleep. If you’re unfamiliar, worry time is time spent only on ‘thinking’ all those pesky thoughts that are likely to appear when you’re trying to sleep.
Some things I usually think about during worry time are:
- Did I forget to do something today?
- What am I going to do tomorrow?
I do 30 minutes of worry time everyday between 6:30 and 7 pm.
I find it’s also a good time to reflect on the day I just had. I think about what went well, what didn’t go well and what can be done better on another day. In my opinion, worry time is the optimal time to ask yourself the questions that you don’t want to answer when you’re trying to sleep or at 1 am.
What if I Forget to Do Worry Time?
Even when I occasionally forget to do my daily ‘worry-time’, I can still fall asleep quickly. Although in my experience, forgetting to do ‘worry-time’ did make falling asleep more difficult at first since more thoughts would appear.
What if I Don’t Want to Do Worry Time?
Ultimately, worry time isn’t necessary but it’s definitely helpful not just to fall asleep quickly but to reduce general stress and anxiety as well. This is because properly thinking through worrying thoughts and general problem-solving can be deferred to your scheduled worry time to free up your mind for the rest of the day.
Good luck!
Thank you for reading and I hope this works for you. If it doesn’t, I’m confident that if you keep trying with other things, you’ll eventually find something that works as I did.
Original post published at anxiouswebdev.com on December 30, 2020.
