The Night Feeds Our Worries

At night, it’s our moment of rest, a good time to relax and relieve ourselves of the worries that we carried during the last hours… or at least, in theory. Often, however, we can’t help but think of all that has happened during the day, of what we will have to do at work, or of the schedule for the next day. It’s like a reminder of all the tasks that still need to be done.

Surely you have already heard thousands of tips on how to get restful sleep, which could clear our minds of our worries and allow them to develop habits that promote sleep before bed. When everything is going well, the night is one of the most pleasant and relaxing times of the day, our moment. However, when going through complicated stages, achieving this can become a real challenge.

The lights go out, everything is silenced, and we are left alone with our thoughts. It doesn’t sound so negative, if at all these thoughts aren’t all about the worries that beset us. We let our guard down, and there is nothing we can do to appease that inner voice that reminds us of our problems. If you cannot silence that voice, know that a very long night awaits you.

Imagine the following scenario: you are watching TV, a really interesting movie, but your day has been busy at work and you fall asleep in front of it. So you take advantage of the next page of advertisements to go to bed. You brush your teeth and go to sleep, tomorrow will be a new day. However, when you close your eyes whatever disturbs you comes back to your mind, and it keeps you awake.

This scenario is very common; when our mind is occupied by a movie or a book that we are passionate about, we focus all our attention on what we are doing, but when we then find ourselves alone with our consciousness, all that we had buried in the surface comes to the surface. us during the day.

Sometimes what keeps us awake are not worries, but ideas. We are in our bed, and different planes begin to emerge in our mind. We start to think about how to develop a project, and even a whole series of ideas come to us for this novel that we have always wanted to write. Goodbye sleep. We spend hours rambling on ideas that seem fantastic to us and that the next day we will have completely forgotten.

The fact that worries assail us at night is not one of the biggest problems one can have to face, but it is certainly the impression that one has. In addition to seeming to have no solution, these problems represent something very negative for us that we do not know how to deal with. After having slept three hours, during the day, we realize that finally, it was not so bad. Thinking about it and the anxiety just played us a bad joke.

We can spend two hours rethinking that unpleasant conversation we had with a colleague at work. Analyze each silence and each word, the nuances and the tone they used. We interpret it freely and sometimes we come to unrealistic conclusions. However, the next day, everything will surely be in order.

A problem that is not considered important during the day can seem enormous to us at night. Perhaps this feeling of defenselessness and vulnerability is united with the “loneliness” that accompanies us at night. We are alone to face the problems, no one can calm us down or reduce the worry.

There are many techniques that aim to end insomnia. Sleep hygiene is one of the keys; it is about achieving optimal conditions both ambient (temperature, noise, light) and physiological (being relaxed) through good habits. But when your thoughts are your thoughts that keep you awake at night, there are specific techniques.

Here are some cognitive-behavioral techniques that aim to cognitive deactivation at bedtime:

• Paradoxical intention: this technique consists of following thoughts, getting out of bed and even writing them down on a piece of paper before going back to bed.
• Observation of thought: realizing what you are thinking about and letting it go. We can use symbolic thought and imagine that we put it in a bottle.
• Meditation: trying to clear your mind. This can be done by using a mantra or a cognitive task that requires attention but has no emotional importance. For example, saying the words backwards.
• Guided Imagination: proposed by Harvey in 2001, this technique consists of directing our mind towards a particular thought or image that is not exciting and thus avoiding activating thoughts. Imagine yourself on a paradisiacal beach, for example.

• Getting up: getting out of bed when it has taken more than 20 minutes without being able to fall asleep and watch television, which will interrupt thought.

Trying to control thoughts just with the intention of stopping thinking about it has been shown to increase the frequency of that thought: trying to stop thinking about something is not an effective technique. . Applying any of these techniques can be more helpful when it comes to clearing our minds and relaxing to sleep.