We have all had the experience of trying to recall the name of that guy in that movie. We rack our brains and finally give up in frustration. Hours later, just as we lay our head on the pillow, the name erupts from our subconscious: Dennis Quaid! Although our conscious brain had set the problem aside, all day long our unconscious mind was working on it—and sometimes even continues into the wee hours of the night.
Sometimes we wake up in the middle of the night, glance at the clock (first mistake!) and discover it’s the evil hour of 3:00 AM. And then, the worrisome thoughts take over.
“Then back they come, the fears that we fear . . . nocturnal trivia, torts, and dramas,” as W.H. Auden wrote in his poem The Age of Anxiety (1947, 2011, p. 17). At first, we let one thought take hold, then another, and soon we are puzzling over a frustrating situation at work, a family crisis, financial worries, or a betrayal by a friend. And just so, the racing thoughts begin. You find yourself now increasingly wakeful, ruminating and worrying.
Many of us struggle with chronic insomnia, whether having difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep. Even Pope Benedict XVI struggled with insomnia, and some believe this was one of the reasons he stepped away from the papacy. His words in The Yes of Jesus Christ reveal the depth of the struggle: “These are the cares and duties to which we are exposed every day from dawn to dusk and that so fill our mind and heart that they pursue us into our sleep” (2005, p. 120).
And yet, as Jesus tells us: “And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life?” (Mt. 6:27) In fact, the lack of sleep from worrying may even decrease our span of life by several cubits! A growing body of research indicates that sleep is vital to every aspect of healthy living, showing that sleep deprivation can result in weight gain, increased risk of heart attack and dementia, and even death.
My husband Art (one of the co-authors of the new book Anxiety), by temperament a worrier, was once told by his Carmelite spiritual director that if he wakes in the middle of the night and begins to ruminate and worry, he should pray the Rosary. Art, being a bit of a perfectionist, objected that it wouldn’t be a “good” Rosary! Nonetheless, he now knows that praying the meditative mysteries can interrupt unproductive ruminating and initiate a calm mindset more suitable to sleep. Some people find that simply holding a Rosary helps them fall asleep!
There are a number of proven strategies you can employ to improve your sleep. They fall into two main categories: (1) what you can do to help prepare the environment and set yourself up for a good night’s sleep and (2) what you can do in the middle of a wakeful night.
Dr. Andrew Huberman, a Stanford professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology has dedicated several of his HubermanLab podcasts to the topic of improving sleep. Some of the main cues for waking and sleeping are light, darkness, temperature, and caffeine. Here are a few practical steps you can take to help encourage a good night’s sleep:
- Eliminate caffeinated beverages after a certain hour of the day; this depends on how your body metabolizes caffeine. Some people can even drink coffee after dinner and have no trouble sleeping!
- Get sunlight in your eyes as soon as possible after waking (ideally, just after sunrise). God in His infinite creativity and attention to detail, has designed us so that certain neurons in our eyes respond best to the wave lengths of light we can see in the rising and setting sun. By getting the morning light in our eyes as soon as possible after waking, we can not only set our circadian clock, but we are likely to get better sleep at night.
- No looking at screens two hours prior to bedtime. Minimize artificial lights in the evening. Remove digital lights or displays visible in your bedroom.
- Have blackout curtains in your bedroom. Studies have shown that even the dimmest of light (even as little as 100 lux) can disturb your sleep, increase heart rate and insulin resistance, and disrupt the autonomic nervous system.
- Keep the temperature cool, around 65 degrees Fahrenheit.
Now, what can you do in the middle of the night, when you wake up with Dennis Quaid! ricocheting through your brain? When that first intrusive thought pops in, and you start ruminating about that snafu you had at work, which then morphs into the problem you have with your boss in general, which then reminds you that your finances have been a little rough lately, and then you check the time and realize that you are going to be even less effective tomorrow what with the lack of sleep . . . and now your ruminating has jumped to the meta level of worrying about worrying.
If you struggle with ruminating in the middle of the night, it is helpful to know the difference between thinking about a problem (which may include developing a plan to solve it) and ruminating. Thinking about a problem is best done during the waking hours—you have 16 daytime hours in which to develop a plan to deal with the problem! Ruminating over problems in the middle of the night tends to be very ineffective and only serves to deprive you of much-needed sleep.
Ruminating can lead to threat mode, which is when your amygdala sounds a warning of danger. Threat mode initiates a flood of adrenaline through your body, preparing you for fight-or-flight. When our ancestors were running away from the saber-toothed tiger, they needed their bodies to gear up for action. The amygdala sounds the alarm (tiger!) and floods the body with stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, the heart starts beating faster, blood pressure increases, and breathing quickens.
This threat activation is life-saving when facing true, immediate danger, but in the middle of the night, you don’t want to be running from the saber-toothed tiger. (Or at least, only in your dreams!) When you first entertain that brief thought about a situation at work, or you entertain—even momentarily—the thought that you might have forgotten to send an important email, or you begin to wonder why your relationship with your boyfriend seems to have stalled, you are already on the road to ruminating.
Ruminating leads to anxiety. And anxiety brings on the threat response.
As Saint Francis de Sales wrote in his Introduction to the Devout Life, also quoted in our previous article, “Birds that are captured in nets and snares become inextricably entangled therein, because they flutter and struggle so much.” This is anxiety. “Examine yourself often, at least night and morning, as to whether your soul is ‘in your hand’; or whether it has been wrested thence by any passionate or anxious emotion” (1876, 2012 p. 199-200).
Do not entertain the thoughts that attempt to take your soul out of your hand. Let them drift away like balloons on a summer day. Do not engage any particular thought, do not allow any emotion to enter into your thinking, but simply allow one thought after the other to gently drift away.
Take a slow, deep breath through your nose. (You can count to 4 if it helps, but not if it wakes you up more). Hold your breath for a few seconds, then slowly exhale. One version of this is called “box breathing”: you breathe in for the count of 4, hold for the count of 4, exhale for 4, and so on. Some people find this soothing, but others simply inhale and exhale slowly. Another version is simply called “deep, slow breathing” with a longer exhale than inhale. In the middle of the night, it will be important not to think about how to breathe, as this might wake you up. You can practice during the day if you fear this might happen. Deep, slow breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system which initiates calmness, decreasing the fight-or-flight threat response.
Keep your soul in your hand and sleep peacefully.
Editor’s Note: Laraine Bennett is co-author with her husband, Art, and daughter Lianna Haidar, of the new book, Anxiety: A Catholic Guide to Freedom from Worry and Fear, available from Sophia Institute Press.
Photo by Megan te Boekhorst on Unsplash
