What Do I Do If I Can’t Sleep?

When you struggle to sleep, figuring out what to do can be frustrating. There are endless articles, books, programs, supplements, and tips to sleep better, and what’s even more frustrating is that none of them seem to work. Someone asked me last week, “I can’t sleep. What do I do?” So, I thought I would share my answer here since I am guessing you can’t sleep either if you are reading this. 

Think about what you usually do at bedtime. Do you try to do things to make yourself more relaxed and hopefully help you sleep? These are all attempts at trying to escape wakefulness (sleeplessness). Attempting to escape wakefulness will cause you more trouble sleeping and lead to insomnia. Keep reading to learn why this happens. 

A better option is to do something that you enjoy or feel like doing without any thought or worry about affecting your sleep. You could watch Netflix, do something creative, listen to a podcast or audiobook, read, or whatever you look forward to.  

When you look forward to bedtime, you turn a stressful situation into something positive, and you end up teaching your brain that there isn’t a threat out there. (See this blog post to understand why your brain believes there is a threat out there. 3 Reasons Trying Everything To Overcome Insomnia Is preventing You From Sleeping). Any attempts to make yourself sleep are teaching the brain that it’s not safe to be awake. 

I am guessing you wonder if this would make you feel more awake. Yes, it could keep you awake a few minutes longer. However, it will lead to your brain feeling safe again and sleeping much more than those minutes you lose. I don’t know about you, but I would gladly lose 15-minutes of sleep to gain back hours when I had insomnia. 

I know that being ok with being awake and enjoying that time is not what you want, and I get that. Nobody wants to experience sleeplessness, and however, this is the only way to teach the brain that you are safe. This allows your brain to take sleeplessness off its safety radar and let sleep happen again. 

Check out my free five-step checklist to break the insomnia cycle to understand this topic even deeper. https://www.katelingates.com/5simplesteps