In this video I'm going to talk about how worry and anxiety can make it hard
to fall asleep, and I'll teach you how to train your brain to stop worrying at
night. Do you ever have that problem when your brain won't shut off? Like you're
tired from a long day and you're finally getting to bed after all of your to-do's
and then you just lay there not sleeping and then your brain starts to bring to
mind like every possible worry like oh I wish I hadn't said that,
or how are we gonna afford those car repairs, or you start thinking through
everything you have to do tomorrow and before long you're wide awake and you're
getting more and more frustrated. I'm Emma McAdam, I'm a licensed Marriage
and Family Therapist and today you're gonna learn one powerful skill so that
you can fall asleep when you're worried or anxious. Now this video is not
a quick fix because I'm going to teach you a lasting solution to worry based
insomnia. So if you're watching this video right now and you're hoping to
fall asleep I will tell you what to do tonight but that's gonna come after I
teach this lasting solution. This video is sponsored by Manta Sleep they make
some amazingly soft sleep masks they are so comfortable they're super
customizable so you can move these eye pads around and they also block out like 100%
of the light in the room. One of my favorite things about these masks is that they put like no pressure on your eyeballs because of their unique
shape and this is you know a valuable tool because the light that enters your
eyes sends a message to our brain about how awake we need to be. So bright blue
light environments can trigger our brain to be alert and to be active, and dark
cool light environments can trigger your brain to turn on those sleep signals. Go
to mantasleep.com and use the code nutshell to get a 10% discount. Now in
this video we're going to talk about how you can train your brain to fall asleep
faster, even when you're anxious, and using a sleep mask like this one from
Manta can help your brain turn on that sleep response. So check out the link in
the description to learn more about Manta's products and to get a discount.
Now our brains and our bodies are naturally good at sleeping, they like to
sleep. So if we're not sleeping well then it's often because we've developed some
habitual way of keeping our brain turned on.
I mean we've gotten in the way of our own natural sleep response and having a
consistent routine before bed like wearing a sleep mask or doing other
sleep hygiene routines can help your brain start to turn on those sleep
hormones like melatonin and that's because our brain likes to
make these paired associations. So a bedtime routine gets paired with that
feeling of sleepiness and I go into a lot more detail on this in my video on
triggers. So just like when you watch an ad with like a really beautiful
hamburger and your mouth maybe starts to water that's a paired association and
what we do right before we go to sleep can help our brain turn on that sleep
response in the same way, it's the same type of paired association. So one thing
that often happens with people with insomnia is that they developed the
habit of thinking through their day when they laid down. So when you do this
repeatedly instead of associating your bed or laying down with that
sleepy time, your brain associate your bed with worry time, and when we've
practiced this over and over again now the brain starts to think lying down
let's get to work and we've developed this trained response. We've taught our
brain through habit that the time to worry is bedtime. But the good news is
your brain is built to rewire itself it's built to pair and to unpair these
associations. So all we have to do is to retrain our brain to associate the bed
with sleeping. But as Nick Wignall says, " If you want your dog to stop pooping on
the grass you have to train it to poop somewhere else." So we have to train our
brain to worry elsewhere, we can't just force our brains to stop worrying and
that's because worry serves a function. It's our brain trying to keep us safe, to
get things done and to make sure that we take care of tasks.
So productive worry it helps us remember to take out the trash or to pay our
bills. Worry helps us take action and prevent problems. However, unproductive
worry it pops up at the wrong time or it leads us to endless hypotheticals, or it
spirals into these thinking patterns that leave us feeling anxious and this
can flood our body with stress hormones and it can even leave us feeling anxious
about anxiety, like 'oh no I'm worried that I'm gonna worry so much that I
can't sleep'. The antidote to worrying when trying to
sleep is to process through emotions and worries and thoughts when you're awake.
You need to just face your crap during the day, let your brain have time to
process through the worry. So one of the reasons that you worry at night is
because you keep yourself so busy or so distracted throughout the day that your
brain doesn't have the time to process and work through your concerns.
Let's compare your brain to a computer for a minute, let's compare worry to how
a computer needs to do updates. So computers have to take little breaks
once in a while to update their system, to organize their files or to you know
update some piece of software. But if they're constantly prompting you to do
an update and you're always too busy to take a break from what you're doing, then
eventually either the computer is going to break or it's going to force you to
do an update at an inconvenient time. It's got these urgent tasks you know
like whatever's going on in the forefront of your mind,
or whatever's keeping you busy in the moment and then it's also got these
important tasks, which you can put them off for a little while but if
you keep putting it off eventually your brain is going to bring it to mind when
you have nothing else to distract yourself with. So when we keep our brain
busy or distracted throughout the whole day this doesn't give our brain the
chance to work through our worries until we try to go to sleep. So we all live in
this culture of distraction. I mean people take their phones to the bathroom
with them because two minutes of sitting there it just seems too boring.
We often have distraction running while we're driving, exercising, eating, almost
every minute of the day, and this prevents your brain from being
able to run those background tasks like worry. So distraction stops you from
resolving those worries when you're awake
and because you've put it off the worries pop up at night and then they
trigger that stress response and that keeps you awake. So, if you want to stop
worrying when you lay down at night, you need to slow down during the day and
spend time away from your devices and let your brain process through those
worries during the day. Now because this is kind of vague like it's this big
picture task that requires some like little efforts throughout the day I'm
going to teach you one small change that's really concrete that you can do
every day that's going to help you fall asleep.
So going back to the computer analogy if you don't want your computer to force an
update when you're supposed to be presenting your thesis you just need to
do the update earlier. So when it comes to worry, this means you need to plan in
time to worry on purpose, this is deliberate worry.
Deliberate worry means that you're intentionally and consistently making a
time each day to address your worries and to make a plan. So this sends a
message to your brain that you're going to take care of it so that it doesn't
have to keep reminding you when you're trying to go to sleep. So your brain is
kind of like a nagging mom do you want your mom to stop asking you to do your
chores? If you take out the trash, if you just do it then she'll stop asking. So if
you want your brain to stop worrying at night what you need to do is address the
worries during the day. So the first step is to plan in a time each day to sit
down and write down each of your worries. You just choose a consistent time and it
usually will only take about 5 to 15 minutes. But if you've been avoiding a
lot of things for a long time then it might take longer at first, and
eventually with practice this is just going to take a few minutes each day. Now
don't do this right before bed. So right after lunch or maybe like right after
dinner it would be a good time sometime in the afternoon. Choose a good time for
you and set a reminder in your phone. When you're doing deliberate worry you
need to write down your worries, this is really
important. There's something about writing things down that makes worries a lot
more manageable, and as you plan this into your schedule just plan to do this
consistently for a few weeks. Like this is not a quick fix, this is a lasting
solution. Okay so on to step two after making your list you need to sort
through your worries. So your brain is amazingly powerful at thinking through
future possibilities and imagining outcomes and this is what makes humans
able to build skyscrapers and iPhones. But it also means that your brain can
imagine worst-case scenarios and catastrophes no matter how unhelpful it
is to do that, or how unlikely those catastrophes are. So ,after you've written
down your list, you want to go through your list and highlight which worries
are actionable. So you are going to separate worries that you can act on
from worries that are hypothetical or imagined danger. So this doesn't mean
that they're fake or that they're impossible it just means that they're
not something that you're gonna choose to act on in the present moment.
So for example with coronavirus hypothetical worries might be something
like 'What if this lasts for years?', or 'What if I catch it?', and actionable
worries might be what are reasonable preventative measures I can take, or how
can I schedule my day tomorrow during lockdown. Okay, on to step 3. For the
actionable worries create a plan. Write down the next smallest action, use a verb
an action word and then set a reminder, set a reminder to take the smallest
action tomorrow to do the smallest step. So if you're worried about a long day
ahead of you put a reminder in your phone for tomorrow morning to make a
schedule for your day, or if you're worried about protective gear make a
plan to look up patterns for a homemade mask. You don't need to solve all your
problems, you just need to choose the next smallest actionable step and make a
reminder for it. Okay step four is acceptance. Some problems can't be solved
right away and they need to be accepted. So what you're going to do with those is
set those aside wholeheartedly and you could even say this out loud 'I
can't do everything at once', or say 'I can't control everything'. This is really
all about understanding your locus of control, what is and what isn't in your
realm of control. Now in my opinion worry is about unresolved issues, issues
that you haven't faced and either taken action on or actively chosen to accept.
So it is a choice to choose not to act. Worry comes up when we haven't resolved
what to do and our brain keeps prompting us to face it and to make some decision
about it. Worry basically says over and over again 'do I need to do something?'.
It's like a cloud that hovers over us and by planning in time for deliberate
worry it's like taking that cloud turning it into rain like some solid
water and then you've got something more manageable something you can do
something with. So deliberate worry answers that question with a yes or a no.
Step 5. Shifting your focus. When you've taken the time to face your worries on
purpose it's time to be intentional about what your brains going to pay
attention to. So I recommend shifting your perspective
to gratitude. Spend a little time remembering the things that are going
well, remind yourself of your successes. I personally I have a routine I do before
bedtime, where I write down some of my wins for
the day and I practice a little bit of gratitude before I go to sleep. Lastly, if
you're watching this video right now and you're trying to fall asleep but you're
worrying, get out of bed and do a brain dump. So that means just writing all your
thoughts on paper and when you've got all your thoughts written down take that
piece of paper and set it aside, file it somewhere and say out loud I'm
gonna face this tomorrow, and after you've done that physical act of setting
it aside, then you can go back to bed or you can try reengage your mind with a
book or a meditation or a distraction for tonight. Now again this is this is
the short-term fix right the long-term fix is facing your worries intentionally
throughout the day. But for tonight you could try my video on progressive muscle
relaxation, or a body scan, or my insomnia antidote
video which is just talking about gratitude as an antidote to worry. Now
all of these may or may not be helpful in the short term but in the long run
facing your worries with a deliberate practice and setting a bedtime routine
with good sleep hygiene can help you retrain your brain to fall asleep at
night instead of worrying. I hope you found this video helpful. Thank you for
watching. Please subscribe and sweet dreams.
Hi this is called Therapy in a Nutshell with a Kid
I'm Aliya and...
...and bye.
(Perfect!) Get this off me! Get this off me! Got it!