Five things you can do tonight when your mind will not stop
Written by drs. Pauline Bos
Psychologist NIP and educational psychologist, Amsterdam city centre
At three in the morning every problem is bigger than it is. Not because you think more clearly then, but because your ability to keep things in proportion is at its lowest. Below are five things you can try tonight. None of them solves anything, but they do interrupt the pattern.
1. Put your feet on the floor
Sit on the edge of your bed and place both feet flat on the floor. Press them down firmly for a few seconds and release. Repeat that five times.
This sounds too simple to do anything. What it does is move your attention from thoughts to physical sensation, and that is precisely what worrying cannot compete with.
2. Name five things you can see
Five things you can see, four you can hear, three you can feel. Out loud or in your head, it makes no difference. The point is not relaxation, the point is occupying your working memory with something other than the scenario you are busy building.
3. Write it down, but with a limit
Put pen and paper ready, not your phone. Write down what is in your head for ten minutes, then genuinely stop. Do not reread, do not organise.
What you are doing is signalling to your head that it no longer has to remember. A large part of night time worrying is exactly that: remembering that something needs remembering.
4. Get up if you are awake for twenty minutes
Lying there while awake teaches your head that bed is a place for thinking. Get up, sit in another room with dim light and do something dull. Go back as soon as you feel sleepy.
This is the only tip on this list that makes a real difference in the long run, and it is also the most annoying one to do.
5. Breathe out longer than you breathe in
Breathe in for four counts and out for six. Do not breathe more deeply, breathe out longer. The out breath is the part that brings your heart rate down.
Do it for two minutes. Longer is pointless if it makes you impatient.
When this is not enough
If your mind has not stopped for months, it is not a matter of technique. Persistent worrying often comes from something unprocessed, or from a level of tension that is structurally too high.
This list is then a plaster at best. A fifteen minute conversation costs nothing and usually delivers more.
drs. Pauline Bos
Psychologist NIP and educational psychologist, Amsterdam city centre
More than 25 years with people, behaviour and the stories people have come to believe about themselves.