HowDoWhy

In my last post I talked about conditioning against insomnia. There will be a bit of that here, as well. But today’s post will focus on the impact of stress on our ability to sleep. It’s the single most common lament, “I can’t turn off my brain,” and at the heart of that are stress induced thoughts that simply won’t go away. We toss, we turn, we fitfully adjust our pillows, but, when stressed, the brain is like a riddlin deprived child suffering from attention deficit disorder. It has an agenda and it absolutely insists you pay attention to it. “Look, this is worrying me,” our brains tell us, “and nobody’s getting any sleep until we work this out.”

The inconvenient truth about our species is that our technology has outstripped our biology. Natural chemical responses that once served to protect us against a dangerous world are still very much a part of us. Stress, once brought on by the threat of predators, territorial threats and other life-threatening environmental events now triggers from far less threatening stimuli such as heavy traffic, public speaking or crucial academic tests. The various stimuli hardly warrant a fight or flight response but our biology, which is notoriously slow to evolve, hasn’t yet caught up and “copes” in the only way it knows how.

When you find yourself tossing and turning in bed worried about a deadline, speech, test or relationship, you are experiencing the result of that gap in our technological evolution and our biological evolution. The primitive response mechanisms in your brain are reacting the only way they know how. The result is that, physiologically, you are enduring precisely the same response to modern stress as you would were you to be, say, stalked by a pride of lions. And in your brain’s defense, it’s hardly smart to take a nap when you’re being stalked by lions. If only your brain could distinguish the difference between a pack of hungry cats and a looming tax deadline. Actually, it can! But it requires using conscious effort. We cope by using the same tool that’s at the heart of the problem; our brains. We just have to tap into the rational thinking part to make it work.

While the human brain still retains its primitive elements, we’ve also evolved a fair bit of advanced wetware up there. You’d think it would be easy to take control of irrational anxiety and get some sleep. The problem is that the anxious fight or flight responses we feel when we are stressed are rooted in instinct that has evolved over millions of years. Every higher animal on earth has these stress reactions hardwired and we’re no exception. It’s so refined that it doesn’t take any thinking, planning or effort to kick the ol’ adrenalin gland into overdrive. It just happens in response to any perceived external threat. Countering that with rational thought, on the other hand, actually does require thinking, planning and effort. It’s HARD to be rational! Please read on if you’d like to know how to apply a proven technique to encourage your brain to shut up and finally let you get some rest.

The first step in fixing the problem was recognizing stress as the cause. The next step is a quick return to my previous post on conditioning. Time to train your subconscious into understanding that your bed is no place to mull over potential solutions to nagging problems. Don’t perpetuate a bad habit. If you find yourself tossing and turning with an over active mind, get out of bed. Leave the bedroom entirely. Grab a pad of paper and a pen and head for the couch. You want to disassociate your bedroom from your stress. From the comfort of your couch or a cozy recliner, begin the following exercise.

Write down what’s on your mind. List out each thing that’s nagging you and leave plenty room between each item. Next, review your list and determine if the items are rational concerns or irrational. For example: Big speech next week. If you’re prepared, you’ll just have to brush up on some points, practice your delivery, anticipate some questions and maybe rehearse in front of a mirror a few times until you’ve got the material and delivery down. This would be an irrational fear. If you are unprepared and don’t really know the material, this is a rational fear. Don’t worry about solutions yet. Just categorize the fear as rational or irrational. Both are valid.

If your fear is categorized as rational, the next step is to map out real solutions to what’s panicking you. Using the speech as an example, realize that you have a week to familiarize yourself with the material and write the speech. You can rehearse and practice your delivery as you write. Ask yourself questions and answer them on paper. When will I have my rough draft completed? When will I have my final draft completed. From whom will I solicit feedback? What insights can my boss or colleagues provide? To whom will I delegate other tasks so I can spend time researching and preparing? To free up some time, what meetings can I rearrange? What conference calls can I reschedule? In writing my speech, what will be my key points? What will I wear? Who will I single out to engage my audience? What questions might they ask? And, ultimately, so what if I don’t know an answer? I can always give out my card and offer to research and answer via email anything I couldn’t answer from the podium.

If you categorized your fear as irrational, that makes life a little easier but it still warrants the same process (otherwise you wouldn’t have been tossing and turning). Using the same example - I’m well prepared so what am I worried about? What can I do to mitigate those feelings? Make a list of everything you have prepared and review it to see if you’re missing something. Didn’t plan an outfit? Plan one. Didn’t consider what questions might be asked? You’ve got a whole week to try to anticipate some so plan to do so. Don’t know if the speech will be what your boss wants? Plan to schedule some time with her to review what she thinks are relevant points. Once you’ve covered everything you can do to offset your irrational concerns, make another list covering everything you ARE confident on. I’ve got last month’s figures memorized backwards and forwards. That closing joke is going to kill. The sales department is going to be thrilled when I single them out for their stellar performance. The boss is going to love that I paid attention in our last objectives meeting and have touched on those points. I look damn fine in the suit I’ll be wearing.

By the time you are done with this exercise you should have addressed all the nagging fears and doubts (rational or not) with which your brain was torturing you and have a well conceived strategy or solution in place. You should be convinced that you’ve got options, that there are alternatives, that you have time, that you now know the answers or, at the very least, that what you’re worried about is hardly the end of the world and you know what to do if things don’t work out ideally. Take a nice deep breath, smile and say, “well, another problem solved. Atta-boy (girl)” and then go back to bed. Keep smiling contentedly to yourself the whole time, even after you head hits the pillow. The very act of smiling, even faking one, causes the release of happy chemicals. Coupled with your writing efforts, you’ll hopefully convince your brain that everything really is alright now.

There is no guarantee this solution will work every time. It’s not uncommon to crawl back under the covers and find yourself facing a whole new set of worries and concerns. Don’t stay in bed. You’ll have to repeat the process again for them. And, yes, you might be at it for hours. But who are we kidding? Would you rather be tossing and turning in bed with no hope of getting sleep, or would you feel better knowing that the time was at least productively spent and you’ve produced solid solutions for your problems? As you go through the solutions you’ve mapped out in the following days, your primitive brain will grudgingly begin to admit that your higher brain is actually good for something. Those seemingly insurmountable fears seem to be falling by the wayside. Maybe it’s actually ok to go to sleep tonight. Big Brain seems to have everything under control. Maybe the lions…*yawn*… really are ….gone….*snore*

Part three will be coming soon and I’ll cover less traditional but very successful alternative solutions to finding a perfect set of Z’s. The point in my next post is to not be rigid. Even if the upcoming solutions sound a little off the wall, I assure you they are grounded in valid, hard science and they work.