Silencing My Mind: How I Fall Asleep
Text version (with a bit more detail) below.
Throughout my life my noisy brain has often interfered with my ability to do the most basic of human things - falling asleep.
To add to this, in the last few years I’ve experienced a lot more anxiety, bad dreams and general mental noise.
There’s no shortage of great advice out there on how to deal with this sort of thing. Insomnia, anxiety, and a general chatty mind are extremely common. The remedies to these sorts of things can range from simple tips on basic sleep hygiene, CBT, or even just reading a fiction book before bed. All of this stuff works.
That being said, the method I do most often now, that’s most effective for me, is a bit of a variant and mix of the aforementioned techniques. It’s not something I’ve read much about online.
So here’s what I do:
There’s two parts to it: Writing and relaxation.
It’s best done immediately prior to going to bed, in the 0-30 minute window before. All you need is a pen, some paper, and a comfy place to sit.
The first part - writing. I sit down, and write all of my thoughts. And I mean all of them. Anything that passes through my mind, or that’s been doing circles there, I pen down - I try and capture my stream of consciousness. This can be anything - it can be nonsensical, dumb, sad, happy, anxious, whatever. I do this for at least 5 minutes, sometimes much longer. *
At some point, one of two things will happen; I will run out of things to say, or I will get bored. Both of these are useful - because it means, for the moment, my mind has run out of things to say.
Once this happens, I put to one side the pen and paper, and just sit and breathe deeply, eyes closed, and just chill. I wouldn’t call it meditation, so much as just relaxing (though you do you).
If a thought pops up in my head again, I’ll just pick up the paper and pen and jot it down, and go back to breathing deeply and chilling. I constantly empty my mind by penning down anything that pops up.
Sooner or later, I’m basically out of ideas, and tired.
Then I go to bed, and often, sleep easily follows.
*If it’s your first time doing this, it might be much longer. This is usually a cathartic experience
I’ve been doing this a while and it’s really helped me. I don’t do it every night - I’ll sometimes do the things I mentioned earlier like reading a book, listening to an audiobook etc, but this is a useful arrow to have in the quiver.
A few other things to mention:
Firstly: I’d recommend pen and paper because it offers a few advantages.
It’s tedious and cumbersome - it forces you to slow down. Typing and messaging can be done incredibly quickly and adds to the frenetic feeling of being productive. The medium in which we write affects us more than we realise. Additionally, I’m incentivised to be succinct and just summarise where I’m at - on an emotional level - simply. This helps me deal with it better.
As an added bonus, it means that much less screentime before bed.
Secondly - when writing, be nice to yourself. After splurging out any anxious thoughts, ask what’s good or what you’re grateful for. The great thing about writing out chatty thoughts is they sometimes demand a response - bringing some balance to your mind with writing some positive or grateful lines along with the frenetic ones. I feel like sometimes gratitude is a destination that sometimes we need to work to get towards, rather than arriving at immediately. It can be hard to just list 5 things you’re grateful for off bat if you’re having a terrible day. Once the rain has poured, the clouds can clear.
Thirdly - relaxation. Just breathe deeply, relax in whatever way works for you. My mind is normally much quieter after even one round of this, and after several I even sometimes get some moments of silence.
I hesitate to call it meditation because it seems to me that one of the main points of meditation is to learn to observe thoughts and let them go - not identifying with them. This is definitely a useful skill, but right before bed probably isn’t the best time to train it. After all, it’s late, I’m tired, I’ll be profound and zen tomorrow, I just want to sleep.
Besides, everyone probably feels like they should meditate nowadays, harbouring some guilt that they don’t do this ‘perfect’ activity. Don’t let that get in the way of you relaxing. Just chill. The Dalai Lama once said “sleep is the best meditation”, so really...
If you’ve gone through all the classic sleep tricks, and still find nothing quite hits the spot, I’d encourage you to try this. I was sceptical about writing a stream-of-consciousness, but found to my great surprise it’s often a calming experience. It may do nothing for you, but hell, if you’ve got nothing but time, you probably don’t have much to lose.
And so, however you get there, sleep well.