Clear Your Mind by Writing Down All Your Concerns and Worries - Sleep Disorder Tip #06-017

You did everything right as you prepared to go to bed. You avoided caffeine for the last 4 hours. You dimmed the lights in the bedroom as you prepared to sleep and you shut off the TV. Your sleep hygiene was perfect....Yet you still can't fall asleep. Your mind has decided to start going over your "to do" list for tomorrow or you are worried about that project that you have to complete by next week. Maybe you haven't done your taxes yet and the deadline is looming. Whatever it is your anxiety level has went way up which is making you alert.

What you need to do is clear your mind of all these random thoughts so that you can relax and go to sleep. What is happening is that your anxiety has excited your nervous system. Your nervous system then starts sending messages to your adrenal glands which start making you more alert. A rather inaccurate way to describe this is call it a mild fight or flight response. The key to calming this reaction is to write down all your concerns and worries along with any possible solutions that you can think of before going to bed. That way you don't need to lie awake and think about these issues as you have already either solved the problem or determined a course of action. Many people try to quieten these nightly ruminations with alcohol which as discussed in Sleep Tip #06-006. Unfortunately, alcohol lowers the quality of your sleep and can lead to other problems.

A simple pad of paper or perhaps a more formal sleep journal should calm your mind and reduce this anxiety. This will allow you to sleep. I will be covering how to keep a sleep journal in a later sleep tip.