If your mind seems to shift into overdrive as soon as your head hits the pillow, you’re not alone. Many people find themselves playing out scenarios over and over again in their heads, or fixating on things they should have said or done differently when they’re trying to drift off to sleep. It even happens to Taylor Swift, whose album, Midnights, is inspired by sleepless nights, with its lyrics unpicking the intrusive thoughts that come to her in the small hours.
Returning again and again to the same, often negative thoughts and going back over things we might regret is known as rumination. “It is the act of going over something that has happened, often with a focus on our own role in it,” says Dr Jenna Vyas-Lee, clinical psychologist and co-founder of Kove. “We might ruminate about a social event, an exchange, a piece of work we’ve done or even current affairs like climate change or the economy. We engage in this activity as a coping mechanism; it’s often linked to feelings of uncertainty and anxiety.”
Rumination is “something our brains are hard-wired to want to engage in”, explains Juulia Karlstedt, a counsellor specialising in anxiety. “Our brains have evolved to be big, beautiful problem-solving machines. The difficulty is that often we are trying to problem solve or make sense of situations that don’t have a simple solution or that are unchangeable, resulting in us looping round and round in our heads.”
“If you’ve ever tried not to think about something, you know how impossible that task is,” Karlstedt adds. “To know what not to think about, our brain has to think about it. This means that with ruminating thoughts, if we try not to think about them, we accidentally think about them more, thus keeping the spiral going.”
So why does this repetitive spiral of worry tend to come into its own at the very time we’re trying to switch off? “Many people find that rumination is more likely to kick in for them around bedtime in part because this is often the time when we have less external stimuli to keep us distracted from our own internal experiences and thoughts,” Karlstedt explains. During the day, we might be able to keep negative thoughts and regrets at bay by keeping busy with other tasks or by discussing our fears with other people, but that’s not usually an option at 1am.
Once we’ve started grappling with those unpleasant thoughts, our body starts to react – often in a way that couldn’t be less favourable for sleep. “Because rumination is a form of anxiety, when we begin to engage with it, our body begins to undergo the physiological changes associated with a fight or flight response,” Karlstedt says. Think adrenaline rushes and an increase in blood pressure and heart rate. “In other words,” she adds, “we get more alert and prepared to take action – not exactly the most conducive state for falling asleep.”
Bedtime is often the time when we have less external stimuli to keep us distracted from our own internal experiences and thoughts.
Breaking out of the cycle of rumination can be tough, but it’s a good idea to start tackling this night-time issue earlier in the day. As well as setting up a “good wind-down routine” with limited screen time, Vyas-Lee recommends setting aside “specific time to worry” by setting a timer for 20 minutes. Use that short period to really double down on all the fears that tend to commonly crop up in your late-night worry spirals, with no distractions. If you find yourself returning to those thoughts outside of this period, remind yourself that you’ll be able to focus on them during the next day’s worry period.
“When I work with clients struggling with rumination, we instead practise learning to acknowledge rather than try[ing] to ignore or not think about the thought causing rumination. In a way that makes it less ‘sticky’ and repetitive,” Karlstedt says. You might do this by keeping a notepad by the side of your bed and writing the thought down to look at in the morning, by practising mindfulness and meditation before bed or it can be helpful to get out of bed to acknowledge your thought and then get back in when you feel ready to try to sleep again, she explains.
If you find yourself playing out scenarios from years ago, you might want to imagine saying to yourself what you might say to a friend who was struggling, Karlstedt advises. Self-compassion is key to breaking these negative thought patterns – and treating yourself with kindness is always a good place to begin.
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