Awake At 3 Am Again! Let's Switch Off That Chatter

You wake up at 3am and your brain already has a list. That conversation. That decision. That thing that still doesn't feel finished. None of it needs solving right now — but your brain doesn't know that.
In this premium track, Dana explains why your brain fires up its own personal news feed in the middle of the night — and walks you through a simple technique to shrink it, fade it, and click it off so you can actually go back to sleep.
Because 3am is not the shift where any of this gets solved. And your brain just needed someone to show it the off switch.

Transcript

Hey, I'm Dana and welcome back. Today we're talking about middle-of-the-night problem solving. This is something that I am personally notoriously known for. Waking up somewhere between 3 and 4 a. M. , Smack in the middle of what feels like a very important situation, But actually it doesn't really exist. It's more likely a hot flash or a blood sugar dip or who knows what, But something sparked a wake up, But then it happens. My brain decides that we are now working. We are in working mode and suddenly I am problem solving problems I didn't even know that I had when I went to sleep. Problems that genuinely cannot be solved at 3 a. M. And probably actually don't need to be solved at all. Does this sound familiar to you? If it's not something going on with you, Maybe it's somebody in your family or a loved one because it does happen to a lot of us. Today let's talk about what is actually happening when your brain does this and how to switch out of it once it gets started. So you know that feeling when you startle awake in the middle of the night. There's a split second before your brain fully loads and then it hits. The low hum of something unresolved and maybe you start to feel it like tightness in your chest before you even know what you're starting to think about or maybe it's a sense of something that needs your attention but you just are not sure what it is and then your brain helpfully fills in the blanks. So just notice that feeling for a second because that's exactly what we're working with today. Here's what actually is happening when your brain wakes you up like this. Your brain is in completion mode. It's a completion machine. All day long it's collecting things. Conversations that didn't feel finished. Decisions that are open. Moments that didn't feel like it had a real clean ending and during the day there are a hundred distractions keeping everything moving forward but at night when everything goes quiet it pulls up that ticker tape. So you know that ticker tape that runs along the bottom of the tv screen. The one that just keeps scrolling with item after item of the news whether you're actually watching or not. Your brain has its own version and I call it my personal news feed. Dana's ticker tape and in the middle of the night when there's nothing else to compete for attention that ticker tape runs. That conversation. The email. The thing that I said. The thing that they said. The decision that's still open. Scrolling through one after another whether or not you ask for it. It's there. It has no time sensitivity. It's now. It's the past. It's the future. So your brain isn't doing this to torture you. It's doing what it believes is helping. Flagging open items. Making sure you haven't missed anything. It just has absolutely no concept of appropriate working hours. So here's how to actually work with this. This is the part that I want you to remember for the next time you wake up at 3 a. M. Instead of trying to push that ticker tape away or actually try to start solving all these problems scrolling through one by one I want you to change the channel. So if you picture the ticker tape on a television screen. Your personal news feed running along the bottom. Close your eyes and picture it there. And then I want you to start to pay attention. Is it loud? Is there volume? Is there music? Is it big? Is it small? Is it bright or is it in black and white? Is it moving fast or slow? Is it right in front of you or off to the side? I want you to notice the characteristics of your ticker tape. And so here's what I want you to do. Shrink that picture that you have in your mind. Just reach out in your imagination and make the screen smaller. And as you watch it get smaller and smaller, Zooming out further and further away, I also want you to turn down the volume. I want you to slow the pace of the ticker tape. Turn it down slower and slower. More quiet. Draining the color. Watch the color go from vivid, Maybe it's bright, To soft and gray and fading out. And now click it off. Turn it off. This is not something forever. We're not pretending that those things don't exist. Just off for tonight. The ticker tape will be there tomorrow when you need it. But for right now, In the middle of the night, You don't need this to run. So the next time this happens, You now know what to do. You find the screen, The ticker tape, You shrink it, You slow it down, You fade it out, And turn it off. So hopefully this new trick is going to be helpful for you in the middle of the night the next time you wake up solving all of those problems. I'm Dana Mitchell, And I wish you a wonderful, Restful sleep.