It’s incredibly frustrating when you’ve longed for bedtime all day due to sleepiness, yet the moment you crawl between your sheets, you now feel wide awake. Then, as the minutes and hours tick by, and you can’t escape into your dreams, you know that the next day will only be filled with more sleepiness.
Unfortunately, this can create an endless cycle of sleep deprivation, which can cause fatigue and brain fog during the day, leading to memory challenges and a lack of focus. The cure is to sleep more, but bedtime remains a challenge when your body won’t drift off to sleep.
Thankfully, there are ways to reconfigure your brain so that your bed once again becomes a place where you sleep.
Why You’re Alert at Night
Feeling wide awake when you’re lying in bed at night trying to go to bed is a sleep problem called conditioned arousal. This sleep problem can develop into insomnia, which is the most common sleep disorder, so you’re not alone in your nighttime struggles. As for why conditioned arousal occurs, it’s likely because something in your environment has told your brain that getting in bed should arouse you instead of put you to sleep.
Unfortunately, the more you struggle to fall asleep, the less sleep you get during the night and the more tired you are during the day. Depending on how much sleep you miss out on during the night, you may even feel tired and foggy all day. However, when you go to bed, your brain once again gets the signals to “wake up,” repeating the cycle.
When you are a good sleeper, you get into bed and fall right asleep, allowing your bed to make the connection: lying in bed = time to sleep. However, when you spend each night tossing and turning, your body soon associates lying awake with your bed instead.
Even if you have good sleep habits, you can get thrown into this unpleasant cycle after just one thing, such as a stressful event. This is because worrying about something from the day can keep you awake at night, and soon, your mind associates bed with this worrying, which can keep you from falling asleep.
The key to feeling alert during the day and tired at night lies in retraining your brain.
Retraining Your Brain to Sleep Better
If you’re stuck in a cycle of nighttime alertness and daytime sleepiness, you need to actively retrain your mind to see your bed as a place to sleep. Once you do this, you’ll get more sleep and will no longer experience fogginess during the day.
Keep The Bed for Sleeping
When it comes to retraining your brain, you need to teach your mind that your bed is a place only for sleeping (and sex). This rids your mind of the association of your bed with daytime activities.
To follow this retraining step, you can’t be on your phone in your bed before trying to sleep. Besides the fact that the blue light given off by your electronics can disrupt your production of melatonin, making you less tired, it can also cause your mind to associate your bed with the stimulating nature of your phone, even if scrolling on your phone feels like a passive activity.
Tossing and Turning? Don’t Lie Around
The problem with tossing and turning all night is that soon, your brain associates the bed with these activities—instead, you need to teach your brain that tossing and turning are not allowed. To do this, give yourself 20 minutes to fall asleep; if you’re still awake after this time—which is likely when you first start to retrain your brain—get out of bed. You may not want to leave the warmth of your blankets, but it serves a higher purpose.
Getting out of bed ensures that you don’t spend hours tossing and turning, creating this association with your bed. Instead, get out of bed after 20 minutes and do something else, whether that’s reading, journaling, tidying up, etc. Once you feel tired and ready to sleep, go back to bed and try again.
A note, though: avoid doing anything with electronics while you’re out of bed. As discussed previously, electronics can suppress melatonin, which will keep you from feeling sleepy. So, engage in some relaxing activities sans screens.
Improve Your Sleep Hygiene
Sleep hygiene refers to the habits you adopt that promote a good night of sleep; if you’re lacking these habits or, even worse, have habits that hinder your sleep, you may have a hard time falling asleep at night simply because your mind hasn’t properly been prepared for sleep. These challenges can occur even if you have felt tired all day.
To help your body get ready for sleep and limit the arousal you may experience when you try to fall asleep, incorporate these sleep hygiene habits:
- Go to sleep and wake up at the same time each day (even on weekends!)
- Avoid caffeine before bed
- Avoid electronics at least an hour before going to sleep
- Get sunlight first thing in the morning
- Exercise during the day
- Ensure your room is dark, cool, and quiet
Could My Daytime Fogginess Be from A Sleep Disorder?
Brain fog refers to a cluster of symptoms involving fatigue and impaired attention, memory, and concentration. While this can occur solely through sleep deprivation, no matter its cause, brain fog may also result from sleep disorders. It is especially common in those with narcolepsy and idiopathic hypersomnia, with more than three-quarters of those with these conditions reporting brain fog as a symptom.
However, sleep disorders are not the only cause of brain fog. If you feel tired during the day and have a hard time concentrating, it may simply be because you didn’t get enough sleep. If improving your sleep hygiene doesn’t help, reach out to a doctor; they can help you determine if it is a sleep disorder or other health condition causing your brain fog.
Making Bed a Time for Sleep
It can be challenging when your brain starts to associate your bed with a restless night, leading to hours of tossing and turning. Most frustrating of all is that this can then create a cycle in which you’re tired and out of focus during the day—thanks to a lack of sleep—but wide awake come bedtime because your bed has now become a place of alertness.
Breaking this cycle is the only way to reclaim your nights and days. By halting tossing and turning by leaving your bed, keeping your bed for just sleep, and improving your sleep hygiene, you can help prepare your body for sleep and ensure your brain understands that when you get into bed at night, it’s time to sleep.
