
These strategies, while effective on their own, are even more effective as part of a structured CBTi programme. 2 CBTi can help you take control of your thoughts
By not worrying about the implications, or trying to fight your own thoughts, their impact is dulled which means they’re less liable to be arousing and to keep you awake. Here, the key is simply to accept that you aren’t able to sleep because of overthinking or intrusive thoughts. Since everyone is different, it might take a few goes to find a process which works for you.Īs strange as it sounds, not doing anything about your intrusive thoughts can be a surprisingly effective strategy to deal with them.
1000, 993, 986, using “jumps” of 7 in addition to using a word, image or syllable.
adding a puzzle element, such as counting back from 1000 in certain “jumps” e.g. This is particularly useful if your intrusive thoughts have a visual component. accompanying the word you use with a visualisation of a shape, like a triangle or square. The only requirement is that it has no emotional significance to you (i.e. a nonsense syllable (such as pah, oop, vee. The underlying psychology is complex, but the theory is that mouthing a word requires a lot more mental power than just thinking it and the use of that mental power causes a blocking of the original intrusive thought. One of the early, but effective solutions to overthinking and intrusive thoughts in bed is called “ articulatory suppression,” in which you would mouth a word at a rate that makes thinking about any other thought difficult ― usually 3 to 4 times a second. We’ll go over a few of these strategies here, in the hope that they’re useful to you or someone you know. reduce the time it takes to fall asleep (the sleep onset time). The core of these strategies is that they enable a person to substitute thoughts that might keep them awake (arousing thoughts) with non-arousing thoughts. Many will be covered in a course of CBT for insomnia (CBTi). There are a number of thought blocking strategies that have been studied for dealing with these intrusive thoughts in the context of insomnia. You may also find it easier to fall back to sleep if your sleep isn’t interrupted by racing, intrusive thoughts. 2 3īy implementing better ways to deal with intrusive thoughts, the time between getting into bed and falling asleep needn’t be so difficult. This might sound sensible at first, but it can cause more problems than it solves.
So people with insomnia will commonly try to shut out thoughts that are stopping them from sleeping. Insomnia and overthinking often go hand-in-hand. We can’t sleep, overthinking about every little thing.įrequently, people living with stress, anxiety, depression and insomnia will say that racing, intrusive (unwanted) thoughts make it harder for them to get to sleep than any sort of physical discomfort or pain. Sometimes our worries can have a real impact. Modern life isn’t easy, with concerns about money, housing, work, relationships and living a “successful” life being frequently reported as sources of worry for many people.
how Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for insomnia (CBTi) equips you to deal with sleep-intruding scenarios.
#SOLIVITA HOA HOW TO#
how to stop intrusive thoughts at night. techniques that can help to quieten a racing mind. why shutting out your thoughts and feelings is not a good strategy. In this article we’re going to explore ways to calm your weary mind, how to stop overthinking and banish unwanted thoughts from your sleeptime. Our daily worries can often creep into our thoughts at night-time and this can seriously disturb our sleep.