5 Tips to Fall Back Asleep Faster
*Watch the video above for more in-depth explanations. This is only a quick summary.
Do you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back asleep? If so, keep reading, as I have five tips for you to help you fall back asleep faster. I used to struggle with the same thing when I had insomnia, and these five strategies are what helped me fall back asleep.
Before we dive into the tips, I want to first explain why this happens in the first place. Your brain thinks there is danger out there. Even though you are safe in your bed, your brain is convinced that there is a threat it needs to keep you safe from.
This happens anytime we fear something and are trying to escape it. Whether you fear a physical threat like spiders, snakes, or bears or things that don’t physically exist, like the fear of being awake at night, all your brain knows is that you are fearing something. Your brain doesn’t know the difference. All it knows is you are fearing something and trying to escape it, so there must be a threat or danger out there.
So, when we experience these fears and attempt to escape or evade them—whether by reaching for a sleeping pill, trying meditation, or any other method to induce sleep—the brain interprets this as an effort to escape danger. Consequently, it activates the fight-or-flight response, keeping us in a heightened state of alertness, making it difficult to fall asleep or return to sleep after waking up.
Understanding this mechanism offers a roadmap for addressing sleep issues effectively. Now, let's get into the five tips that can help you fall back asleep faster.
- Embrace Being Awake
Counterintuitive, right? However, resisting wakefulness only amplifies the brain's perception of a threat. By allowing wakefulness to happen without trying to force sleep, we signal to our brain that there's no imminent danger, gradually lowering the fight-or-flight response with time.
I remember working on this with my client, Ashley. She had a long list of things she did to try and make herself sleep. She told me that her ritual of things that she does was causing her a lot of stress to make sure she did everything right to have the best chances of sleep.
Over time, we worked on her letting go of one thing at a time over several weeks. She told me she felt more at peace, not trying to fight sleeplessness. She eventually did start falling back asleep faster and faster.
- Lie Down to Rest, Not Sleep
Instead of piling pressure on yourself to fall asleep, approach bedtime with the intention to rest. This can mean being awake or asleep. By removing the expectation and pressure to sleep, your stress levels are lower, and you feel more at peace.
- Engage in Enjoyable Activities
During those wakeful nights, do something you genuinely enjoy and not something to try and make you relax for sleep. Anything that feels good to you is the perfect choice. This can be reading, listening to a podcast, or watching a show.
- Playfully Stay Awake
As strange as it sounds, actively trying to stay awake can alleviate the pressure to fall asleep. Anytime you can let go of the pressure and stop trying to force sleep to happen, the more relaxed you will be and the more sleep you will get with time. Trying to stay awake won’t keep you awake longer. When I used to do this, I would wake up later on and find out I ended up falling asleep.
- Reduce the pressure to sleep.
When we have insomnia, we place a lot of pressure on ourselves to sleep. This can be from things such as wanting to be a good parent, having the energy to get through the day, doing a good job at work, being able to enjoy yourself, and soooooo much more.
All this pressure adds a lot of stress and desperation to fix your sleep, which ends up feeding our fears of being awake and our brain thinking there is danger. Yes, it sucks to not be able to sleep but the more you can take that pressure off, the better off you will be.
Check out the video above for more details on how to take the pressure off and implement the other tips as well. Keep applying these tips, and you will start to sleep more with time. It doesn’t happen right away as it takes time to teach your brain that you are safe but you can get to a place where you are falling asleep faster and getting more sleep.
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