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How to Calm a Racing Mind and Finally Get to Sleep
Exactly what to do when you’re overpowered by nighttime thoughts
It seems ironic that when we are tired, our minds are often the most active. Lying in bed waiting for sleep to come, it can feel as though there’s an entity inside us, chattering away at record speed, ruminating and overthinking, and working against us — the voice of doubt and judgment that Thrive’s founder and CEO Arianna Huffington refers to as “the obnoxious roommate living in our heads.” Those nagging, negative thoughts can be overpowering. You forgot to pay the gas bill, you’ll sleep through tomorrow’s meeting and be fired … and so it goes on as our mind races.
That voice is more vocal at night, according to Fiona Barwick, Ph.D., director of the Sleep & Circadian Health Clinic at Stanford University School of Medicine’s Sleep Medicine Center, “because that’s when our emotional brain, with its negativity bias, gets unleashed, and our executive brain, which regulates our emotions and imposes reason, is off-line.” There’s science behind the racing mind, Barwick tells Thrive. “It’s normal for adults to wake up several times during the night. But what wakes us up is not what keeps us up. What keeps us lying awake is our stress response — the fight or flight instinct that gets triggered when our ‘obnoxious roommate’ won’t keep quiet,” she says.
Exactly what to do when you’re overpowered by nighttime thoughts
It seems ironic that when we are tired, our minds are often the most active. Lying in bed waiting for sleep to come, it can feel as though there’s an entity inside us, chattering away at record speed, ruminating and overthinking, and working against us — the voice of doubt and judgment that Thrive’s founder and CEO Arianna Huffington refers to as “the obnoxious roommate living in our heads.” Those nagging, negative thoughts can be overpowering. You forgot to pay the gas bill, you’ll sleep through tomorrow’s meeting and be fired … and so it goes on as our mind races.
That voice is more vocal at night, according to Fiona Barwick, Ph.D., director of the Sleep & Circadian Health Clinic at Stanford University School of Medicine’s Sleep Medicine Center, “because that’s when our emotional brain, with its negativity bias, gets unleashed, and our executive brain, which regulates our emotions and imposes reason, is off-line.” There’s science behind the racing mind, Barwick tells Thrive. “It’s normal for adults to wake up several times during the night. But what wakes us up is not what keeps us up. What keeps us lying awake is our stress response — the fight or flight instinct that gets triggered when our ‘obnoxious roommate’ won’t keep quiet,” she says.