How to Calm Sleep Anxiety
Hello,
I’m Kasryn (she/her) a licensed therapist specializing in sleep. I help exhausted adults break the cycle of sleepless nights using research-backed approaches.
A common question I get is “how do I calm sleep anxiety?”
Keep in mind that these tips are not a substitute for treatment from a qualified provider. That’s not just a disclaimer, it’s the truth. While some people can see benefits from following a few tips, many people need the full treatment protocol. Don’t give up hope if the tips don’t work for you.
I often work with clients who are smart and determined to sleep well. They’ve tried all the tips and none worked, but when they work with a qualified provider to complete the full treatment protocol, they see results. This can be shocking because they resigned to just being a “bad sleeper” so being able to sleep well came as a shock, despite how badly they wanted to sleep, it’s a surprise that it’s possible.
Healing from sleep anxiety and insomnia is like building a table. The tips are the nuts and bolts. They’re important, but it’s not going to function as a table without the tabletop and table legs. In other words, while some may benefit from tips, most people don’t heal from with just tips alone.
Tip 1: Offload your brain before bed
Why it works: If the only quiet time you get is in the middle of the night, your brain may automatically go into problem solving mode.
This creates stress when you’re remembering things and developing ideas when you’re supposed to be sleeping. It creates a conflict between getting up to write down what you want to remember and falling back asleep.
I hear rave reviews from clients about this offloading your brain strategy. They tell me it helps them feel relief knowing that they’ve wrapped up all they need to do for the day and it creates more mental space for rest.
How it works: Get a pen and paper out in front of you, then set a timer for a few minutes. I usually start with 2 minutes for the first time but you can adjust it to however long or short works for you.
Here’s the key, you’re just going to relax for those two minutes. You're not trying to force yourself to remember anything (that can backfire because the mind tends to go blank when pushed). While you’re relaxing, if something pops into your mind that you want to remember, go ahead and write it down. Then go back to relaxing. You may have other thoughts, if it’s nothing you need to take action on, you can just observe the thought and see where else your mind takes you.
Once the time is up (you can add more time if needed) look at what you’ve written down and see if you can carve out time to address those issues in the coming days or weeks.
Having dedicated time to address it can put your mind at ease if it pops up again in the night.
For example: Jane has a million things to do and always seems to remember things in the shower or in the middle of the night…when there’s nothing she can do about it.
At first, it was hard to carve out even just a few minutes to relax because she had so much to do. Before bed, she set a timer for 2 minutes and just let her mind wander. She remembered that she needs to send a birthday card to her friend, so she writes that down and goes back to relaxing. She remembers a few more things by the end of the exercise and feels more relaxed. Then she adds a note to the shopping list to pick up a birthday card.
Later that night, she thinks about the birthday card again but can relax fully, knowing that it is on the list and her mind doesn’t have to hold that information anymore. Some things she thought about during the exercise are more complex and can’t be easily solved but she knows she is taking action on what she can control.
Tip 2: Try Paradoxical Intention
There’s an old strategy coming back into fashion called paradoxical intention.
Why it works: Anxiety about getting enough sleep increases stress which (as you have likely experienced) makes it harder to sleep. Sleep is an involuntary process meaning that we cannot force ourselves to sleep on command. If we could, insomnia wouldn’t be such an issue. It is involuntary in the same way that sweating, digesting food, breathing and your heart beating are involuntary. Trying to put it in our voluntary control creates stress.
Imagine that someone is sweating because they are stressed. They say to themselves “I have GOT to stop sweating, I will try very hard to not sweat. As you’d likely imagine, that effortful action and alarming thoughts just increase stress and make the person sweat more. Sleep works in a similar way.
Paradoxical intention takes the pressure off of sleep, helps relax the body which stops the accidental self-sabotage and anxiety inducing state of trying to sleep.
How it works: Essentially, instead of “trying to sleep” you give up any effort to try to make sleep happen. You can turn out the lights, but keep your eyes open. When your eyelids feel like they want to close, say to yourself gently
“Just stay awake for another couple of minutes” Sleep will come on its own when the body is ready. Gently having the intention to stay awake allows it to come naturally.
By truly letting go of any effortful action, we allow sleep to come because it cannot be forced
Note for this tip: I often see clients who are decades into their sleep problem who didn’t get help simply because they didn’t know it existed. They read every tip they could find online but never knew there were effective treatments so they concluded that they were beyond help and were just “bad sleepers” by nature as opposed to suffering from a treatable issue.
The tips in this article can help, but sometimes a full course of treatment is necessary to get results. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia is one of the most effective treatments.
Residents of Pennsylvania and New Jersey can schedule a free sleep consultation with a qualified provider here: SCHEDULE FREE CONSULTATION
You can also find providers local to you in this directory:
https://www.behavioralsleep.org/index.php/directory
You might wonder, “How did I get to be so anxious in bed in the first place?”
Sleep anxiety can have a snowball effect. What started off as a few poor night of sleep and a little worry can escalate. After a while it is easy to spend a lot of time awake in bed just tossing and turning while worried and anxious.
After a while this worry in bed can become a habit, even when we really don't want it to. It can also lead to classical (or pavlovian) conditioning.This means that the body becomes trained to associate a threat response (anxiety) with the bed. Even when there are no stressors, the anxiety crops up at night.
For someone who meditates, takes a nice bath and is totally relaxed when winding down, it can be perplexing when they’re suddenly stressed getting into or even thinking about the bed.
Some people need treatment to reverse this process but it may be possible to prevent this process with a very counterintuitive tip:
Tip 3: Get out of the bed if you’re not sleeping.
Usually people who want to sleep well are appalled by the idea of getting out of the bed and think “What if that wakes me up more and I don’t return to sleep.” While that might happen, this tip is for the long game, not for just one night. It is an investment in future sleep. While you might not sleep as much that night. You’re breaking a “habit” or association of being stressed in bed.
Why it works: Building a strong association between the bed and sleep by not doing anything else in bed (including tossing and turning) creates a positive spiral. It becomes easier to get great sleep because there’s a conditioned response between the bed and quality sleep.
How it works: If you’re wide awake and anxious in bed, start to break that association by going to a comfortable place in the room or house to do something neutral or pleasant (reading, listening to music, doing a puzzle etc.) (Avoid bright light which can signal daytime to the body clock). When the anxiety has passed and you start to feel sleepy again, go back to bed. At first you may immediately feel anxious again (because of the conditioned response). You would then repeat the process. If you have a hard time, I’d encourage finding a qualified therapist to help support this process.