Don’t Look at the Clock When You Can’t Sleep (and Focus on It)

When you can’t sleep, the clock makes fun of you. “At least I have seven hours,” you might think as you lie down, but if you are still awake after an hour, then you only get six hours, and six is ​​not much. And if you’re not tired yet , it’s less than six and you end up just laying in bed thinking about how you’re going to fuck in the morning.

If this sounds familiar, it’s not just you. Sleep experts have long recognized the idea of ​​“losing sleep due to sleep loss,” and this is a well-known factor that can contribute to insomnia. This is not necessarily the cause of your sleep problems, but it can make them worse.

For example, let’s say you have some minor problem that makes it hard for you to sleep. You fall into a cycle of continuous nighttime stress, poor sleep, and fatigue the next day. Then you start to fear going to bed because you know it’s going to happen all over again.

Before you know it, you may be taking medications to help you sleep, which have their own health risks (nighttime Benadryl is not for you ). A recent study found that “time control,” as they called watching the clock, could encourage people to take medication they might not otherwise need.

So what can you do instead?

One of the authors of this study says it’s good to make a promise to yourself not to look at the time. Cover the alarm display or, if you use your phone to check the time, put it out of reach. If the alarm hasn’t gone off yet, it’s still night, and that’s all you really need to know.

Without a watch, you may worry about not knowing if you are getting enough sleep or not. But even with a clock, you don’t necessarily count the hours accurately. During the hours when we think we are fully awake, we often fall in and out of sleep, and we get more of it than we think .

Another encouraging thought is that relaxation is almost as good as sleep. If you can’t sleep, it’s best to lie quietly in bed with your eyes closed. This may give you some of the benefits of meditation, and there is even a hypothesis that meditation gives you some of the benefits of sleep. True or not, it’s a comforting thought when you’re lying awake in the middle of the night.

And if you need another reason to stop worrying, remember that relaxation is one of the best ways to fall asleep , so whether you fall asleep or not, you are helping your body and brain by finding a calm way to spend the rest of your time. hours of the night.