One of the things I hear most often from people with chronic insomnia is how different their mind seems to become in the middle of the night.
During the day, they might feel relatively rational and able to put things into perspective. But at 3am, everything can feel different.
"What if I don't get back to sleep?"
"How am I going to cope tomorrow?"
"What if this keeps happening?"
"What if there's something seriously wrong with me?"
Before long, one difficult night has become a prediction about the rest of their life.
Part of the reason is that nighttime is a very different environment from daytime. During the day, our attention is constantly being pulled outwards. There's work, family, conversations, messages, phones, places to go and things to do. Then we get into bed, turn off the light and much of that disappears. Suddenly, it's just us and our mind.
Thoughts that might have passed unnoticed during the day can feel much louder. Worries seem darker. Thoughts become stickier and it's much easier to get pulled into them and believe that what our mind is telling us is true.
I've seen this with thousands of clients over the years, and one of the most important things I help them understand is that their mind isn't actually the enemy. It's trying to protect them.
Our brains have evolved to look for danger. When we're tired, anxious and awake in the darkness, that threat system can become particularly active. The mind searches for problems, predicts what might go wrong and tries to find solutions. Unfortunately, there aren't many useful problems we can solve at 3am. So the mind goes round and round.
In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, we call it fusion when we become so caught up in our thoughts that we experience them almost as facts. "I won't cope tomorrow" no longer feels like a worried prediction. It feels like the truth.
This is why I encourage my clients to practise noticing their thoughts rather than automatically following them. "There's my mind predicting tomorrow." "There's the thought that I won't cope." "There's my worried mind trying to protect me again."
We're not trying to replace negative thoughts with positive ones or force them to disappear. We're simply learning to recognise them for what they are: thoughts produced by a tired, protective brain in the middle of the night.
Your mind may still be loud. It may still tell you that tomorrow will be a disaster. But you don't have to solve everything it gives you.
Your mind isn't your enemy. It's a protective system working overtime.
And each time you meet it with a little less fear and a little more understanding, you're helping your brain learn that there is nothing it needs to solve right now.
That it's safe to let go and with safety comes sleep.
