How to Calm a Racing Mind at Night

Why your mind speeds up when you lie down

During the day your attention is busy. In a dark, quiet bedroom, unfinished business gets its turn. Sleep researchers describe a loop that keeps this going: you worry, the worry keeps your body alert, you notice you are not asleep, and then you worry about not sleeping and about tomorrow, which makes you more alert still (Harvey, 2002).

Part of the loop is watching for signs of failure. In one experiment, people who had trouble sleeping were slower to pull their attention away from pictures related to clocks than good sleepers were (Woods et al., 2009). The clock on your nightstand is a cue your brain is primed to check.

1. Hold a "worry appointment" earlier in the evening

An hour or two before bed, write down what is on your mind and, next to each item, one possible next step. In a study of students who had trouble sleeping, this "constructive worry" exercise lowered their mental arousal before sleep compared with simply writing down worries (Carney and Waters, 2006). The point is to close the loop before you are in bed.

2. Write tomorrow's to-do list at bedtime

In a sleep-laboratory trial, young adults who spent five minutes writing a specific to-do list for the next few days fell asleep faster than those who wrote about what they had already done (Scullin et al., 2018). Putting tasks on paper seems to tell the brain it no longer has to hold them.

3. Turn the clock away

Checking the time turns every waking into a calculation of how many hours are left. Face the clock to the wall and leave your phone out of reach. If you need an alarm, set it and stop looking.

4. Stop trying to fall asleep

Effort is the enemy of sleep. "Paradoxical intention" means lying in the dark with your eyes open and gently trying to stay awake. It takes the pressure off, and a meta-analysis of 10 trials found it reduced anxiety about sleeping and improved sleep (Jansson-Fröjmark et al., 2022). The American Academy of Sleep Medicine lists it as an effective technique (Morgenthaler et al., 2006).

5. Build a mindfulness practice

Mindfulness trains you to notice a thought without following it. In a randomized trial of older adults with disturbed sleep, a six-week program improved sleep quality more than sleep-hygiene classes (Black et al., 2015), and in another trial meditation programs reduced the keyed-up feeling before sleep and time awake at night (Ong et al., 2014). Start with ten minutes in the evening, not in bed.

If you are still awake

Get up, go somewhere dim and do something calm and dull until you feel sleepy, then go back to bed. Staying in bed and wrestling with your thoughts teaches your brain that bed is where you worry. More in how to fall asleep fast and how to stop waking up at 3 AM.

What does not work well on its own

Arguing with your thoughts in bed rarely helps. Challenging unhelpful beliefs about sleep is part of full cognitive behavioral therapy for sleep, which works well as a package, but the American Academy of Sleep Medicine found too little evidence for it as a stand-alone technique (Morgenthaler et al., 2006).