Insomnia and Overthinking

This week we answer a question from a listener about overthinking at night and it's effect on falling asleep.  Listen in and find out more!   If you have a question you'd like to ask or input on the show email us at Info@quietchaoskw.com or message us on Instagram @quietchaoskw.  If you like what you hear give us a like!

Transcript

Intro: 0:01

Globally, one in every eight people suffer from a mental disorder, anxiety and depression affect people from all walks of life, all ages, all ethnicities, and we're here to talk about it. This is a quiet chaos podcast, from anxiety to depression, from disorders to marriage, and everything in between we're talking about we're talking about it. Oh, really raw, and we'll have some fun. Let's do it. This is the quiet chaos podcast. And now your host, author, therapist, international speaker, Jason and our solo women.

Jason Sullivan: 0:48

Welcome to the quiet chaos podcast. This is your host, Jason Sullivan. And as always, it's a pleasure to be back and talking with you again. I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, I cannot absolutely cannot believe we are 35 days away from 2023. Where did this year go? i It's just mind blowing to me that we are 35 days away from starting in the year. That means that we are about five weeks away from New Year's resolutions. I don't know how you guys are with that I am horrible. I have all these great ideas in January of things that I'm going to do. That lasts for about a week. And then I tend to go back to my old routine. And so this year, I'm trying to do something different, I am actually going to try to do an end of the year resolution I am starting next week. And my goal is to get a little bit more active, get out and move around a bit more with doctoral work and work. It has been a pretty tight year. So I go from 4am until about 9pm every day. And I need about 3040 minutes to an hour to just work out a bit. And I think that's not an unreasonable goal. So fingers crossed, we'll see how it goes. So who knows maybe in January, you'll hear me recording while jogging through the streets. I doubt it. But but the sky's the limit right. Now this week, we have a great question from Eric J in Los Angeles, California. Jason, I am having a lot of trouble falling asleep at night, my mind races and I think of everything. It's not just the stuff from the day. But what might happen tomorrow, the next day, the next day, on and on and on things I did in the past and whether I'm even a good person. Can you talk about this topic? Absolutely, we can talk about this topic. And Eric, this is a tough one, because it's a very common issue with especially during this time of the year, because people are meeting with families. And these tend to be stressful times. Sometimes we feel isolated. And that gets to us as well. And what you find is that our body is really sensitive when it comes to timing. And so during the day we stay busy, we stay moving pretty much with work, our daily schedules, our daily routines, but it's in the evening, when our body is trying to calm down that our circadian rhythm the cycle that our body uses to determine what time of the day it is how much energy to produce, how to stop producing so much energy, it's it gets a bit confused. And so when you're laying down at night, your body is trying to decide what to do with it should it speed up should it slow down. And it usually means that there's some disruption going on. And what we'll do is we'll walk through the process of not only sleep, but how to increase your sleep and how to fall asleep in a better way. So the first thing we have to do is we have to determine what kind of sleep issue are you facing. And there are three categories here a transient is 123 weeks, you know less than a month. And if you've been having this trouble these problems less than a month, then these are a bit easier to adjust and correct. Then you have short term which is one to six months. And the challenge with one to six months again is still not a high challenge. But it's one that will take a little more work. And then you have chronic which is six months or longer and usually with something chronic we would put it in as a as a sleep disorder. So what we're going to do is we're going to cover all three, and I will do my best to keep it in somewhat of a tighter frame here so we're not going on for an hour or two. So after we break it down into those three categories, we need to look at how the brain processes sleep. Also How it processes thought patterns. Because those thought patterns are picking up at night for you. We tend to think more at night. It's pretty common. A lot of people, a lot of clients that I've worked with over the years have reported the same thing. And there have been a lot of studies and research done on specifically this topic in 2021. Weiner at all, which is a group of researchers. They use the racing and crowded thoughts questionnaire to determine what the elements were in overthinking and sleep processing. And what they found was that ruminating that thinking about today, yesterday, last week, next week, what I did when I was seven is the world going to be okay, next year, these kinds of things tend to be predominant factors in overthinking around sleep. And that doesn't mean that they're separated from worry, and anxiety, they actually work together and make the issue worse. And so when you're when you're looking at this, they did find that predominance of overthinking with sleep issues. And when you apply different principles, we can actually work to reduce that overthinking, and at the same time work to get you to sleep faster. And so based on the idea that the body functions on a routine and pattern, what we need to do is begin to look at elements that will help with both. Alright, so one of the first ones is tryptophan intake. And there was research done by Saddam Tay at AU in 2021. And they found that when we increase l tryptophan intake by one gram that has a good effect, and that's not just in the evening, but through the day. When you look at the effects of L tryptophan on the body, it covers everything from mood regulation, to depression, learning, memory skills, visual cognition, aggression and control and so you get a little bit clearer picture of what we're talking about. Now I'm sure you've heard about melatonin and serotonin in some form or fashion. Melatonin is a neurotransmitter, it does a lot of things. But in this context, what it helps us do is it helps us regulate our circadian rhythm. And we think of circadian rhythm as sleep or not sleep. But really our circadian rhythm is involved throughout the day. It helps us know when to produce energy, when to decrease energy, when to increase body temperature, when to decrease body temperature, among a lot of other things. And so when you look at tryptophan as a precursor to both, then you begin to understand the deeper importance of maintaining it. Now tying that to routine and pattern, I think is a pretty straightforward thing. When we look at foods that contain higher levels of tryptophan, you find that dairy is the number one, it has the highest levels of tryptophan, followed by turkey and chicken. Now, we just finished Thanksgiving, and we're looking forward to the Christmas holidays. And Turkey is a big part of that. If you notice that when you have Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas dinner, after you finish, everybody feels a bit tired. A lot of people will take a nap after the dinner. And that's because what you find in Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners will be a high amount of tryptophan, not just in the turkey. But as we move forward, you'll see that there are other elements as well. Now after turkey and chicken, we have oats, nuts and seeds, bread, chocolate and fruits. Going back to these two dinners, where we have a lot of bread, and we have chocolate, and we have fruit somewhere in the mix, someone always brings that jello and fruit mix. I don't know what that's about. But you do have bread you do have seeds and nuts. And there are a lot of beneficial qualities to that. And again, when you look at the after effects of of those dinners, you do have a more calm and a more relaxed state. And so mixing this in through the day, it might look like setting a small alarm on your mobile don't don't send that nuclear fallout alarm. It'll it'll scare everybody and probably give you a panic attack. But you know, something simple like one of the vibrating alarms. But you do that at regular intervals through the day. And as you space it out, what you find is that those good qualities tend to stay with you because you're building a nice arc of tryptophan intake through the day. Now when you look at the studies, you find that having tryptophan about 45 minutes before bed reduces mild insomnia quite a bit. Now, that's not the only pattern we want to include. Your Body Works on body temperature reduction, light reduction as well. And so about 20 or so minutes before you lay down, what you want to do is take a nice hot shower, because if we can increase your body temperature, what we're doing is we're loosening the muscles, we're dilating the blood vessels in your neck and shoulders, it has a nice relaxing effect on the body. And it also has a calming effect. If you've ever been to a spa, they have steam rooms, they have sauna. These are intentional things. They're designed for vascular dilation, which again, relaxes the muscles. And you just kind of feel good when you come out. Now, the benefit of that is when you come out of the shower, you turn the water off, and your body temperature drops, drops pretty fast. And that keys the body into producing a higher levels of melatonin. And so now we've got two pieces in place that will help. The third piece we'll be looking at caffeine. Caffeine takes about seven hours to fix your system. And because it's a stimulant, it has properties that will keep you moving, it gives you energy. And this is exactly what we don't want. We don't want a stimulant in our system. When we're trying to rest when we're trying to go to sleep. We've We've literally created an arc through the day that helps us calm helps us regulate. And so if you're going to have caffeine through the day, try to mark it. If you intend to fall asleep at let's say 10. Well stop, stop around three. And that will help quite a bit especially with the overthinking. And the overstimulation. All right. So now we've got these components in place, we want to add a couple of more things. These things come with practice, by the way, I'm putting a lot together. And so you can take it in steps and stages. But the more you do it, and the more you do it precisely at the same time every day, what you're going to find is that you're creating a routine, and a pattern that your brain begins to interpret. And it begins to expect. And as you are going through the evening, you will find that your body is tired, it's relaxed, it's comfortable, you're not overthinking and you're ready to fall asleep. But we're not going to stop there. What we want to do is we also want to boost a couple of other things. One is going to be your endorphins. These are the endorphins are considered the happy hormones. They're they're what make your body feel comfortable. And it's like going to the gym, after you go to the gym, people will come out and they say these odd things like it was a good hurt, okay, I don't get that one myself hurt is hurt. But the idea is this is that when you're exerting your muscles, you're creating small tears in the muscle, and the body begins to produce endorphins. This is the body's pain reliever. But it also makes you feel good. And so you hear these statements like it was a good kind of hurt. Well, we want to apply this and we want to apply it in a way that doesn't increase heart rate, it doesn't increase adrenal functioning. And so what I would say is this do very, very, very, very simple stretches. Just stretch your arms a little bit. Simple, simple things, you don't want to elevate heart rate, and do it for maybe a minute to two minutes. And now we've covered your endorphin production. And again, this reinforces the overall pattern, which allows us to fall asleep naturally. Now let's talk a little bit more about overthinking. overthinking, comes when you're trying to fall asleep, when you're laying down in bed, everything is dark. And still, it's a difficult thing to address. So what we're going to do is we're going to add another component in here. And this is called bilateral stimulation. And bilateral stimulation is pretty simple thing. It just sounds complicated. It really is just a process of stimulating the right side of the brain and the left side of the brain. And we want to do this in a way that really allows those cortical features those outer or top brain features to to come online, which is what we need for peaceful thoughts and relaxed thoughts. Now there are a number of ways to do this. What I'm going to say is this very simply, out of all of these things are options that I'm going to give you take the ones that you like the best and run with it, you can apply it however you like. And here we go. So one really simply is coloring. If you enjoy coloring, sketching, drawing these kinds of things. It really does have a good impact on bilateral stimulation, the right hemisphere of the brain, which is one part of what we're trying to stimulate, does abstract reasoning. It's creative. It comes up with new ideas and new ways of doing things and the left hemisphere theory is more involved with structure and rules and concrete thought, when you take a crayon out, and you apply it to a piece of paper, what you're doing is you're choosing a color. Which color do I like the best? This is right hemispheric thinking. left hemisphere would be where does the color go? And what are the rules of coloring? And again, don't don't do this intentionally don't don't think of it like, Okay, I have to apply the color a certain way, in a certain place, these things will come naturally. You're the left hemisphere is going to look at where do the colors go? And do they go inside of the lions? Did they go outside of the lines? What are the rules of coloring. And you do this for maybe 1015 minutes. And what you find is that your mind will slow down and it will calm down. Another option would be taking a short walk, your right foot is tied to left hemisphere functioning. Left foot is tied to right hemispheric functioning. And you'll see this when people are really angry, they have a tendency to pace when they're worried they have a tendency to pace back and forth. Also, this is a natural way that our brain reduces that's a anxiousness and it's maybe it's anger level. And so incorporating that would also be an option. Like I mentioned, sketching, it can be reading, even don't read something stimulating, don't read a horror novel, as good as those can be. We're trying to relax the brain. So read something like a history, something, something that doesn't really grab your attention and make you overthink. So those are a few options. Now, let me give you one more thought on this. And that is when you go online. If you look at Amazon, and you look at adult coloring books, for example, which are really popular, you'll find that a lot of the books contain really, really specific images, really complex images to color in mandalas. For example, to me, when I look at those, I don't see relaxation, I see almost a homework assignment. When you have that many squares to color, it's too much. And so I would go with something simple go with Mickey Mouse go with something really, really light. So that way you don't feel more pressured to complete more to do more. Light sketching is another really good approach. And and so these are ways that you can really reduce your overthinking because you're stimulating your brain towards something non stressful. Now, finally, if you don't fall asleep, okay, we tend to fall into the pattern of trying to make ourselves fall asleep, it might go something like this, you lay down, and you're trying to relax, and your brain is running, and you're trying to say something like, oh my gosh, I need to be up at eight in the morning, I need to be up at seven in the morning, I need to go to sleep, why am I not sleeping? Okay, your brain is trying to communicate with a region that doesn't communicate, it doesn't use words, it doesn't do logic, it doesn't do reason, it functions on pattern. And so if that becomes the case, don't stay in bed. Okay? Because if you have that conversation repeatedly, it creates a pattern. And that pattern is based on the association of bed and not sleeping. And so when that begins to happen after the 20 minute mark, just get out of bed, do something, you can go back to coloring, sketching, reading, these things will really have a good impact and help. Another thing that you can do with that is take something like a podcast. And this isn't a self promotion, or I'm not plugging the show which partially I am. But take the podcast that doesn't overstimulate you turn the volume blow, okay, you want it to be low enough, that you can still hear it. But not loud enough so that it's easy to hear it. You want to let your ears work on listening. What that does focalize as your senses on hearing the words. And when that begins to happen, you'll find that your body by nature is just still it's the motion and the movement of the body disrupts the ears from hearing clearly. And so by nature, what happens is we just tend to lay more still, our mind is focused more on the words and our overthinking decreases. This helps us again, reduce overthinking, it gives us something that's easy to focus on, and it helps us fall asleep. So putting all of these together into one consistent motion through the day and again, I know it's a lot of stuff, putting it together. Find what works for you find a balance in this, but at the front end do it at the same time every day. Because if you can do it through the day at the same time you produce a regular pattern and your brain. It's amazing. It really does function as accurately as the clock. I mean, it's just unbelievable. So Eric, I hope that helps. I hope that that gives you some insight, some things to practice, really listen a few times if you need to. But I think these things will help. If, if you expect it to help on the first night or two, it probably won't put you to sleep. Right off, I wish it would that would be it would make life a lot easier. But your brain needs to adapt into to wrap around this new pattern and this new routine. And so I would say probably three or four nights into this, you'll start seeing the effects. And as you see the effects, you're going to fall asleep more easily. Your body is craving the pattern and the routine You're overthinking decreases, and you're not trying to argue yourself in sleep. And now finally, I don't know you. But it sounds like as you're overthinking at night, you're questioning whether you're a good person or not. Generally, what I find is that good people tend to worry about that. And so if you weren't worried about it, I would be a little more concerned. But I would imagine you're a pretty good guy. And it just sounds like you're overthinking it sounds like your mind is May is maybe racing a bit too fast. So apply these things. Let's see how it goes. give me feedback on it. If it works for you, if it's helping you let me know. You can just message me and your you can email me the same way that you did originally. And we can tweak it, we can adjust different things, we can see what works a little better for you. Well, that does it for this week. I hope you guys have a wonderful day, a wonderful rest of your week. And I will talk to you soon. Keep sending the messages in the emails, I really do read them. And I really do enjoy them. Your thoughts, your feedback, your questions, really, I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying hearing from you. And so if you're new to the show, and you do want to message or you do want to email, you can find me on Instagram at quiet chaos kW. Or if you want to email, you can find us at info at quiet chaos kW. So you can look into that, send me a message send me an email. If you haven't had a chance to read the book yet on anxiety. It's called Quiet chaos, the link between anxiety and awareness. You can find it online or in the bookstore. It's carried worldwide. If you are an apple reader, you can find it in Apple books. So check it out. Let me know what you think. Again, if you get a chance, give us a review. We're always wanting to expand and grow and getting a good review is the best way to do that. So help us grow and help us reach more people. And give us a like, take care, and I'll see you soon this is Jason signing out.

Intro: 23:09

You've been listening to the quiet chaos podcast. Our passion is to talk about anxiety, depression and disorders and answering tough questions but having fun doing it coming at you with facts, interviews, hard to discuss topics and a little bit more rebellious than your typical mental health show. We hope you've enjoyed it. Make sure to like rate and review and we'll be back soon. But in the meantime, hit us up on Instagram a quiet chaos kW. Remember, there is hope even when your brain tells you there isn't. See you next time on the quiet chaos podcast.