When sleep isn’t coming, sometimes the gentlest thing is to begin again.
I’ve always been a stickler for my evening routine. It’s been curated and developed over decades.
I love it. I protect it.
I welcome the gentle transition into evening and off to sleep much like someone who enjoys candles and bathing for relaxation.
I stop looking at the computer by a certain time at night. I don’t do heavy mental tasks like bills or other anxiety-producing work. I stop using my cell phone and texting. I use soft accent lighting instead of harsh overhead lights.
I have a transition window into evening. It usually begins right after dinner. I’ve cooked, eaten and cleaned up. In winter months, the meal itself becomes transitional as I have been known to serve dinner by candlelight and cook with soft classical music in the background.
This allows my body to relax and my brain to begin releasing the stress of a hard workday.
Then comes a warm shower, changing into my nightclothes of soft cotton flannel and snuggling up either with a book in front of the fire or curled up on the couch with my blanket and my dog to watch a movie. If time is tight, maybe it’s only half a movie.
Just fun and slow toward gentle rest. I allow the day to wind down naturally. A few hours later, I am quieted inside.
As soon as I feel sleep coming, I go to bed.
I don’t go to bed awake, and I never read in bed. For me, reading is mentally stimulating, and I don’t want to create an association between reading and something dull or sleep-inducing. As a reader, I wouldn’t want that.
If I’m not feeling drowsy, I don’t lie down yet. I don’t want to get hot and toss and turn, and I especially don’t want to give my brain open space to think.
And then, one night, I broke my own rule.
Let’s just check social media for a second.
I never do that before heading to bed, and I am especially careful not to while lying under the covers. But that night I did.
One peek led to another and another until I had the scrolling in full swing. I don’t even like looking at social media, and fortunately I caught myself before too much time had passed. Well, not hours anyway …
But it had been just enough scrolling to undo all the wonderful calming habits of the evening up until that point.
My brain refused to shut off, and my mind began to spiral. Unwanted thoughts decided to take up residence and demanded my attention.
I knew that attempting to sleep while thunder poured through my mind was futile.
In an attempt to reset what I had undone, I uncrawled back out from the warm covers and made my way to the kitchen. I plugged my phone in to charge at my desk in another room, removing the temptation to do it again that evening.
Since it was Christmastime, I’d been enjoying working with cookie dough. I opened my collection of cookie recipes and found all of my gingerbread ones to read about later.
Nothing terribly demanding. Flip through the folder, scan for the word ginger and pull the recipe aside into a small growing pile beside me where I sat on the floor. My ever-present lovely dog, Mindy, sat next to me, wondering why we were flipping through recipes after midnight.
My brain was slightly better, but I was nowhere near the sleepy and tired state I usually am before I tuck in. Sugar cookies became my next fixation.
I measured out the remaining ingredients needed for a double batch I planned to mix in the morning. I always make a habit of setting my place prior to baking … mise en place … as it helps both my productivity and my mental health.
Not too much at once, and I am always in a state of creating.
It doesn’t take long to measure flour, sugar and baking powder. With everything measured and orderly, I draped a lightweight towel over the ingredients. Task completed, yet once again, I was left in a quiet room with darkness closing in.
Still, the familiar feelings of tiredness and peace did not come.
Maybe if I lay down, wrapped myself in the warmth of the blankets and closed my eyes, I would be okay.
Maybe.
So I decided to give it a try.
The covers were toasty where I’d laid a heating pad to warm them for me. Snuggling down, both Mindy and I let out a sigh. A few minutes passed. Nope. Sleep was not there.
I stopped tossing and turning, shaming myself and silently yelling at myself in some vain, useless attempt to rock myself back to sleep … as though willpower could force the situation.
Instead, I got up.
Needing to get tired, I started my evening over. Sort of.
I decided that no matter what time it was, I would simply pretend it was 9 p.m. instead of 3 a.m. and start the evening again.
I could do a few small tasks. I could redo the way I normally wind down: curl up on the couch, watch a little television with my dog on my lap and allow myself to gradually become drowsy.
So that’s what I did.
I mentally reset the house to feel like 9 p.m. I cuddled up on the couch, blanket on my lap. Mindy snuggled on my lap. I turned on a short sitcom to reset my head.
Mindy fell asleep quickly, having no trouble herself with what time of night it was. Her warmth, the light glow of the Christmas tree and the funny little show gradually calmed my mind and pulled my brain from the thought spiral.
I was finally able to relax.
And as the credits rolled, I found I was ready to tuck in.
This time, I fell asleep at my normal speed.
It had been a three-hour fight to get back to this point because I’d messed with the gold standard I keep for myself of no screens or social media after a certain point in the evening.
There is a reason I shut that sort of thing down.
I learned that night that although I was upset and getting myself more upset, I could trick myself into beginning again. In doing so, I could stop the self-blame, the self-condemnation, the unfair internal yelling and all the baggage that comes along with middle-of-the-night bother by manufacturing a way through it.
My 3 a.m. worries released as I pretended it was only 9 p.m., and in that moment, I was able to relax and calm the stormy deluge of words tormenting me. In this way, a new self-talk overwrote the old and allowed time to stop, albeit briefly. It was enough to allow body, mind and self to slow, drifting toward peaceful sleep.