Thoughts
Thoughts
If you are not careful, your thoughts can make it very difficult to fall asleep or get back to sleep after you wake up. However, there are a number of techniques that you can use to prevent those thoughts from keeping you up at night. With planning and practice, you will soon be controlling your thoughts rather than letting them control you.
Distract from your thoughts
Distract yourself from the thoughts that keep you up at night. Replace them with thoughts that are relaxing, soothing, or just plain boring.
- Cognitive shuffle
Choose a short word (e.g., bench). For each letter come up with five words that start with that letter (e.g., 5 b words then 5 e words, and so on). Repeat until you fall asleep. - Imagery
Think of something soothing, pleasant, relatively uninteresting, and, ideally, unrealistic. Some people imagine lying under a palm tree feeling the sand in their fingers and others imagine being in a bubble gently knocking into other bubbles in outer space. Find what works for you and use it each night. For more ideas, see our Relax page. - Breathing
The most well known relaxation technique has you focus on your breathing. You are to think of all aspects about your breath as it enters and leaves your body – its feel, warmth, sound, and so on. Relax while examining all of its details. See our suggestions on the Relax page. - Body parts
An alternative to the breathing technique, you can focus on a specific body part, for example your thighs. Think about how they feel, their weight and temperature, the feel of your bed clothes on them. Relax while examining all of their details. Change to another body part as needed.
Listen to something soothing and boring
Don’t give room for your thoughts to keep you up at night by listening to something soothing and boring.
20-minute audio tracks to fall asleep to
Each of Sleepwell’s white noise recordings are ~20 minutes. If you are still awake when a recording ends, you are to get up and leave your bedroom, returning when you are ready to sleep. See the Control page for details.
Thinking traps
Don’t allow thinking traps to keep you awake. Thinking traps are overly negative ways in seeing yourself, others, and the world you are in. They are not realistic and are unfair to you. They are a common experience of people with insomnia and are a source of the racing mind when your head hits the pillow. Do you recognize any of these thinking traps? If you do, learn how to replace them with realistic thinking.
- All or nothing (black and white) thinking
Thinking in terms of extremes. Seeing things as only right or wrong, good or bad, perfect or terrible. Interpreting any mistake to be total failure. Always finding yourself and others fall short in regard to unrealistic standards or expectations. - Blaming
You focus on others as the source of your negative feelings and you deflect any responsibility for your own emotional experiences and situation. How you respond and how you act, when negative, are blamed on others. - Catastrophizing
Expecting the worst has or will happen and that you will not be able to cope with it. Becoming overly concerned about small things. Exaggerating how bad something will be. Minimizing your capacity to manage uncomfortable or difficult situations. - Emotional reasoning
Making assumptions and basing your views on an experience based on feelings rather than facts. - Fortune telling
Predicting that something bad is going to happen despite evidence to the contrary. - Labeling
Describing yourself (or others) using negative terms. Often a single negative term about yourself is used to sum up an experience or self-reflection. This is done instead of factually and reasonably describing the situation. - Mind reading
Making assumptions and jumping to conclusions about how others feel about you or a situation. Assume people are thinking negatively about you or a situation. Assuming the reasons for how a person acted without asking them. - Magnifying the negative, minimizing the positive
Focusing on the negative parts of situations and neglecting the positives. The negatives in your life or in a situation are given too much attention and weight, while the positives are ignored, trivialized, or rationalized away. - Over-estimating risk
Expecting something bad to happen when the risk is very low or negligible. - Over-generalizing
Basing your perception of a situation on a single piece of evidence or event. Thinking that a negative situation is part of a constant cycle of bad things. People who overgeneralize often use words like “always” or “never” when describing things. - Personalization
Thinking that the actions and experiences of others is somehow related to you. Blaming yourself for the negative experiences of others. - Regret orientation
Looking back at what you could have done better rather than focusing on the present and what can be done now. - “Should” statements
When you tell yourself how you should, must, or ought to feel or behave, which is in contrast to how you actually feel or behave. Routinely applying these strict rules to yourself or others. This leads to disappointment and stress about situations, other people, and with yourself. - Unfair comparison
Comparing yourself to others in terms of unrealistic standards. Finding yourself inferior compared to others.
Worry time & Realistic Thinking
Many people find it helpful to set aside some time well before going to bed to work through their thoughts and worries, like what they need to do the next day or over the next week. If you experience racing thoughts the second you hit the pillow you might want to consider setting up a time before bed to take care of your worries. By doing so you can remind yourself when in bed that you don’t need to be thinking about them now. All they will do is keep you from sleeping. There are several techniques that you can use to help you from letting worry time sneak into bed with you.
Feeling stressed or worried is normal and a necessary part of life. It is protective. However, such thoughts can lead to an exaggerated emotional response and behaviours that can create problems, such as insomnia or unneeded anxiety. Use realistic thinking to challenge thinking traps.