The Art Of Attention — Nick Wignall Sleeps Better By Worrying Deliberately

Nick Wignall is a clinical psychologist based in Albuquerque who specializes in evidence-based treatments for anxiety and insomnia. Nick and Daron discuss the relationship between sleep hygiene, cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia, and mindfulness. Nick shares a refreshing strategy for getting better at worrying on purpose and Daron describes some of the attention exercises he recommends to people struggling with alertness in the middle of the night.

Transcript

The thing that is very easy to pick out with anyone who comes in with difficulty or trouble sleeping,

They are trying super hard to fall asleep.

And it's almost tragic that they're putting in so much energy and effort into fixing their sleep,

And that's the thing that actually really has started to cause it and is what's maintaining their struggle with sleep.

Welcome to the Art of Attention,

Part of the WCBE podcast experience.

I'm Darren Larson.

I had a great conversation with Nick Wignall that I'm excited to share.

Nick is a clinical psychologist who specializes in sleep problems.

If you've ever struggled to fall asleep or to get back to sleep in the middle of the night,

You've probably come across these lists of tips for navigating insomnia.

Suggestions like not drinking coffee after a certain point in the afternoon or limiting your screen time before bed.

These are not the kind of things that we discuss.

Nick describes how our normal responses to unwanted alertness become part of the problem and gives us alternative ways to respond.

I share some attention exercises that are complementary to the approaches he recommends.

We both get really excited about this topic.

At one point,

However,

When Nick is talking about how effective he's found a particular strategy,

He accidentally says he's never seen a significant reduction in bedtime worry,

When he clearly means to say that he's never not seen a significant reduction.

I point this out upfront to address any confusion,

But also to tease you into listening closely for this surprising way to worry less and sleep more when you're in bed.

I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Nick Wignall.

Nick Wignall,

Welcome to the Art of Attention.

Hey Darren,

Thanks for having me on.

Hey,

Yeah,

Thanks.

So I think I discovered you on Twitter,

Which I find really funny.

I've been thinking about this lately,

How social media,

There's so much noise,

But I think part of it is like if we stop waiting for that to be the reality and start tuning our attention on what stands out,

What's the signal in the noise.

I don't know,

You stand out to me as somebody whose voice is unique and different,

Just a room for nuance.

And anyway,

So I'm excited to talk to you about your approach to helping people sleep better,

People struggling with insomnia and how worry plays into that.

Before we dive into worry and insomnia,

I guess I'm curious to hear how is it that you came to specializing in sleep as a therapy theme?

Yeah,

It was kind of a happenstance.

I just,

When I,

Right out of grad school,

As I was getting ready to start my first job,

The guy who runs the clinic where I work asked me to review a book.

He was the editor of a journal and he just asked me if I would edit this book,

And I said,

Yeah,

Sure,

Knowing nothing about the book.

But it was basically a clinician's treat of manual for cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia.

And I was instantly kind of intrigued because I'm very much a cognitive behavioral therapist interested in anxiety primarily,

And I had no idea that there was this CBT protocol for insomnia.

I mean,

I didn't even know insomnia was a thing,

Like in mental health.

I knew about insomnia,

But I didn't know there was this whole kind of world of applying principle with CBT to insomnia.

And so I was intrigued and I read this book and I was just mind blown,

Not only that there was an approach,

But that it was stunningly effective.

Okay.

More effective than almost any other kind of treatment we have in mental health.

Like the research on CBT-I is just,

It's incredible.

So I instantly was like,

This is amazing.

Why aren't more people doing this?

Yeah.

I'm going to specialize in this because this is awesome.

Wow,

That is cool.

It's like,

And in fact,

I think I don't know that I've ever heard about it until I heard about you.

It seems like what we hear so much about,

And I can't believe how this continues to be the message is like sleep hygiene,

You know,

Cop caffeine and turning off your devices and all these things,

Which the people who come to my classes or seek me out,

And I think it's one of the most popular themes I run into.

People do not sleep through the night or they don't sleep well.

But it's amazing how sleep hygiene continues to be the response to that,

Right?

You run into that?

Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

Everywhere.

I sort of think it's my best theory and sleep is not a prominent topic in either med school or any kind of mental health profession.

So I think it gets like a 30-minute segment somewhere in some class.

And so sleep hygiene tips kind of like fit neatly in there.

And so anyone who ever has trouble sleeping,

They go to their primary care physician and they go to their therapist or whatever and they just get a little worksheet with 10 tips for don't look at blue light before bed and don't look at too much caffeine.

Yeah,

It's wild that that's most people's idea of what working on sleep needs.

Well,

It makes me wonder,

Like if you talk about medical school,

That part of their training is almost being sleep deprived as part of their education.

So it seems like kind of a blind spot.

Yeah,

And I know people are looking at that more now.

So when you discovered or were surprised by how much research or how many effective treatments were out there that were not being talked about or promoted,

What kind of things caught your attention specifically about that?

Well,

The first thing that this book that I read did a really great job of kind of laying before it jumped into the,

Well,

What do you do for insomnia?

It laid out really what insomnia is and the big kind of misconceptions about insomnia.

So I think that's really important from the outset.

And it really affected me was that insomnia,

Which is a specific,

There's all sorts of sleep disorders,

Right?

There's things like restless leg syndrome and narcolepsy and sleep apnea,

All of which are caused by physiological pathologies.

Basically,

There's something wrong with the way your sleep system is working.

Insomnia,

Though,

Is what's called a subjective disorder.

There's nothing physiologically wrong with people who have insomnia,

Which I think is a really common problem is that insomnia just gets lumped into all these other sleep disorders and it's treated as if something's broken in your body if you have trouble sleeping,

Which for a tiny set,

For some percentage of the population,

That's true.

If you have obstructive sleep apnea,

There are some things going wrong that are making it hard to breathe while you're sleeping and that's leading to poor sleep.

But the vast majority of people who suffer from poor sleep,

It's insomnia.

And it is a cognitive and a behavioral disorder,

Meaning the way your habits of both behavior and mind,

So the way you think and the way you behave,

Are what are contributing to your difficulty sleeping.

And that just blew my mind,

Like that that was kind of the case for what was going on with insomnia.

And once you really understand what's happening with insomnia,

It totally changes the way you look at quote-unquote treatment for insomnia.

Yeah.

So then when you are meeting with someone who is presenting and you kind of rule out some of those physical things,

Or how do you recognize that this is a cognitive thing for the person who's sitting across from you?

What are the clues that you hear in their symptoms that reveal to you it's cognitive or behavioral?

Yeah.

The first thing is they know more about sleep hygiene than I do.

I get all these people who very understandably,

They're suffering with poor sleep and they've been doing their research online.

They've been talking to people,

They've talked to experts,

They've been Googling stuff.

And there's this,

Again,

It's understandable,

But a level of obsession with how do I fix my sleep?

Everything from avoiding blue light to trying,

You know,

800 different sleepy time teas to,

You know,

All the sleep hygiene stuff.

And right there,

That is a huge signal to me that,

Yes,

Insomnia is going on because what's happening is people are trying too hard to sleep.

And this is the,

To me,

The fundamental kind of psychological problem in insomnia is that people are applying effort to sleep.

Which is,

On the one hand,

Makes sense.

I mean,

In 98% of our lives,

Effort is a great thing,

Right?

Whether it's studying for an exam or,

You know,

Giving a presentation or like whatever,

Effort is usually a good thing,

Trying hard,

Right?

But there's a few little things in life,

Sleep being one of them,

Where trying hard not only doesn't work,

But it backfires spectacularly.

Right.

And so that is,

That's the thing that I,

That is very easy to pick out with anyone who comes in with difficulty or trouble sleeping.

They are trying super hard to fall asleep.

And it's almost tragic that they're putting in so much energy and effort into fixing their sleep.

And that's the thing that's actually really has started to cause it and is what's maintaining their struggle with sleep.

I totally,

I really look for me too.

And this is actually where,

And it's exciting because I know from experience when we address that it can be a game changer.

But again,

Something you've said already,

Which is it's behavior is habit.

I try to explain to people,

At least in the way I come at this from a mindfulness perspective,

A very specific approach to mindfulness is that this is not like solving the riddle.

I mean,

There is some degree of clarifying a strategy,

But it's more like skill development or habit change than it is about forcing anything or even,

Oh,

I've cracked the code.

Now I'm good.

I'll sleep now.

It's more like a project that you're going to be working on where you're changing.

You're trying to tweak your habits.

That's consistent with what you run into,

Right?

Yeah,

Exactly.

It's really,

You have to kind of think long-term.

It's a little like,

If you're a personal trainer and someone came in and say,

Hey,

I want to work out so I can lose weight.

And they ran on the treadmill for an hour and they said,

Hey,

I'm only one pound lighter than I work so hard.

Like,

How come I haven't lost weight?

Exactly.

You can work as hard as you want once,

But it's not going to do anything.

Weight loss is a thing that comes about with small changes over time.

And I think you're exactly right.

I think sleep is very much something like that.

So you can do a flurry of research and change all these things about your nightly routine,

But your sleep doesn't just,

You're not just going to magically conk out as soon as you hit the pillow one time.

It's about really changing your whole approach,

Both behaviorally and mentally to sleep,

How you think about sleep,

What you do around sleep.

It's a project,

But it's a very,

It's a very doable thing.

I think if you approach it with the right mindset.

Exactly.

So then how do we start?

So I know I've read an excellent article that you wrote,

Which really got my attention and I was so excited about the role worry plays.

You probably know which article I'm talking about,

About the deliberate worry,

Right?

Yeah.

Let's talk about some of those key elements that help set the stage for people to even begin.

There's something about,

We kind of train ourselves,

Would you say,

To not sleep well?

You talk about classical conditioning.

Could you speak to that a little bit?

Yeah,

Sure.

I think a place to start is if you,

You got to think about your,

Your body's level of consciousness,

Really,

The degree to which you're engaged with the world,

It kind of falls on a spectrum.

I mean,

Imagine a horizontal line with four parts and off far on the left is unconscious,

You're asleep.

That's like one little section there.

It's like a gear,

Right?

Like in a car.

Then the next one up is relaxed,

Right?

So when you're relaxed,

You're very calm,

You're mellow,

You're not really doing anything in particular.

Then the one up from that is alertness,

Which is how we spend most of our time during the day.

You're checking emails,

You're having coffee with a coworker,

You know,

You're eating your cereal in the morning.

And then,

And then we have this like turbo gear on the far end called arousal,

Which is where you really got to get something done.

You know,

Your fire alarm goes off in the middle of the night or something,

Or you just,

You got to kick up the high gear.

And so we all have these like gears built into us,

Right?

Now,

The thing is,

You can't go from one,

You can't skip over gears.

Just like in a car,

If you try and skip over,

You know,

If you're driving a manual,

If you skip over a gear,

Very bad things happen to your transmission.

It's not good.

Right?

So you,

You can't go from alert and checking working nails and,

You know,

Doing stuff and having intense conversations with your spouse,

All of a sudden to sleep.

It doesn't work that way.

Like you've got to go through alertness and then,

And then relaxation,

And then relaxation is the doorway into sleep.

So the trouble people get into is they get into bed and they don't fall asleep right away.

Their spouse,

Ironically,

You know,

Conks out after,

You know,

Literally as soon as their head is the pillow and then they go,

You know,

All right,

Make it work so easily.

Why can't I,

You know,

And then they lay there for 10 minutes and they remember like that article they read on Google that says,

You know,

Most people take,

It takes 10 minutes to fall asleep.

They think,

Well,

What's wrong?

How come it's not taking me 10 minutes?

What did I do?

Was it the mashed potatoes I had for dinner?

Was it the,

And see what's happening now is mentally you're kicking into high gear,

Which makes sense.

That's what we always do when we're confronted with a problem.

Right.

Right.

We kick into high gear because that helps us solve problems.

The trouble is sleep has this very paradoxical thing where the harder you try to do anything,

Including thinking about the fact that you're not sleeping moves you further away from sleep.

It moves you along that spectrum towards arousal,

Right?

Which just makes it harder to sleep.

So no matter how well you're thinking,

No matter how brilliant an insight you read about some article about sleep hygiene was,

Even if it's totally true,

If you're thinking really hard about it,

You're not going to be able to fall asleep.

You're basically waking yourself up more,

Right?

Exactly.

Yes.

So I think,

And I'm going to get back to your original question here.

Sorry.

I know I'm full around about,

But obviously for most people with insomnia,

Worry plays some role,

Often a very big role in their trouble sleeping.

Now,

And obviously as we just talked about,

Worry is a problem because it's arousal.

It kicks you into high gear and in order to get fall asleep,

You need to,

You need to be in low gear.

Right?

So the problem with worry is that most of us,

We have our,

What I call,

And I'm sure you can speak to this because I know this is a topic of yours that you're interested in,

But the degree to which we can control our attention,

What we choose to focus on or not focus on is a muscle.

And I think a lot of us actually have a very poorly developed attentional muscle.

We,

Our attention tends to get drawn to whatever comes into our field of view.

So an email pops up from our boss,

We instantly just like go to it and start cranking out a response without really thinking,

Is this the most helpful thing for me to be doing right now or not?

And the same thing goes for when you're laying in bed and the thought occurs to you,

Hey,

It's taken more than 15 minutes for me to fall asleep.

Is there something wrong?

What did I do this evening?

That line of thinking,

You,

You can choose whether you want to keep your focus and attention on that line of thinking or not.

But if you have kind of an underdeveloped,

Like again,

Like most of us,

If your attentional muscle isn't very strong,

That worry is going to pull you like gravity and you're going to keep going,

You're going to keep getting into it.

And you're just going to go further and further down that into that level of arousal.

So what we need to do,

I think is,

Is kind of twofold.

And maybe you can,

You can speak to the part about,

You know,

Being able to redirect your attention,

Kind of building that attentional muscle.

But another big part,

And this gets back to the what I call deliberate worry is your,

And this is a kind of a goofy metaphor,

But bear with me,

Because I think it's vivid and it works.

If you get a new puppy and you let it go in your backyard,

New puppies don't come trained,

They don't come potty trained,

Right?

They are just,

They're poop wherever they want all over the,

You know,

All of your grass,

All over your new deck,

You know,

In the flower bed,

Everywhere,

Right?

Now a rookie dog owner is going to say,

Hey,

Why,

You know,

Why are you pooping on the lawn?

You're not supposed to poop on the lawn.

Maybe you'll,

You know,

Whack them on the nose of the newspaper or something.

But as anyone who's ever owned or trained a dog knows,

You can't yell at your dog to get them to stop doing something,

Right?

You can't make the dog not poop on the lawn.

What you do is you have to train your dog where to poop.

If you don't want to poop it on the lawn in the deck,

You train it to poop in the little dirt patch in the back of the yard,

Right?

So it's sort of like,

You can't get rid of something negative with a negative.

You have to,

You have to encourage something different with a positive.

So I apply the same idea to worry,

Which is if,

If your worry is kind of bombarding you and overwhelming you at night when you sleep,

Right?

Create another space of time and literally reward your brain for worrying during that time in particular.

Like scheduling it.

Yeah,

Exactly.

And that's actually another term for this is scheduled worry.

So we do,

You just carve out a little time each day.

Daily is really the best at first.

And generally the time I recommend is in the evenings,

Not super close to bedtime,

You know,

But,

But also maybe kind of after dinner,

Like as you're starting to wind down,

Just carve out a little 10 or 20 minute period of time,

Set a timer on your phone and you sit down with a,

Like a legal pad and you just try to worry as hard as you can,

Deliberately,

Effortfully try really hard to worry and kind of say to your brain,

All right,

Worries,

Bring it on.

This is it.

Let's do this.

It's kind of fun.

I mean,

I'm good at it.

I'm,

I,

I,

I come from a long line of people who have spent many,

Well,

I don't know,

Beyond hours,

We've spent a lot of time honing the ability to imagine worst case scenarios.

So,

And it's actually kind of delicious,

Right?

Or else we wouldn't.

Well,

That's why I like that term deliberate worry.

Like you're doing it on purpose.

And this goes back to the dog example.

What you want to do is you want to reinforce your worry on your terms in this particular time and place,

Right?

Because think about it during most of our life,

During the day when you're at work,

When you're,

You know,

Getting the kids ready for school,

Whatever,

When worries come into your mind,

You just slap them out of the way.

You say,

I can't deal with that right now or go away or,

You know,

You're constantly invalidating your worries all day long,

Right?

And you,

For most of us during the day,

We can kind of get away with that because we have lots of distracting things to hold our attention on,

Right?

We swat away a worry away and then our kids screaming because the other kids,

You know,

Pulling their hair or our boss is calling us into a meeting or whatnot.

The trouble is when you lay into bed to go to sleep,

You don't have any more distractions.

So all those worries that you've been swatting away all day long,

They are just chomping at the bit and they are ready and you've got no line of defense anymore,

Right?

Because you've been swatting them away all day long.

So deliberate worry really works because you're essentially,

You're validating,

You're being compassionate for your mind's own worry and you're saying,

Okay,

I don't really like you worry,

But I respect that you're here.

I get that you're just trying to help and I'm going to sit down and I'm going to listen and I'm going to listen attentively.

I'm not going to do anything else.

I'm not going to try and get rid of you.

I'm just going to,

I'm literally just going to transcribe all these worries and get them down on paper.

Right.

I'm going to give you,

Right.

We're going to have a set time.

You go do your thing.

I'll take notes.

Right.

Exactly.

Yep.

And I tell you,

I,

When people do this consistently and it takes,

There's a few key things before I rush off.

Daily is important.

It's got to be regular.

It's got to be a habit.

It's got to be rewarding for the worry.

You really have to give your,

Or your full attention.

You have to act like you enjoy it.

It's a skill.

Developing the skill of doing it on purpose.

It really is.

It really is.

And,

But then you also have to have a time limit.

And so you structure it and after your 20 minutes,

Like that's it.

You'll get back to it tomorrow.

And this is really key.

You just write down the worry.

It's like a,

You know,

A sentence per worry.

Don't elaborate on it.

Don't like go into what you should be doing about it or whatever.

Just say,

You know what,

I'm getting it down on paper.

It'll be there if I need to get back to it later at some point,

But I'm just,

I'm just describing it.

I'm just jotting like a,

You know,

Like old movies from the 1930s where the secretary takes dictation for the boss,

You know,

Like you're just putting it down.

It's just on the paper.

Yep.

Yep.

And if you,

I can virtually guarantee in my experience,

My clients who have actually done this consistently,

I've never seen a significant reduction in bedtime worry.

When people commit to doing this for a week or two,

At least it really works.

It's like training your dog,

You know,

Like at first there's going to be some accidents.

It's not going to,

It's not going to go real well,

But if you stick with it,

Your dog is going to learn.

Similarly,

Your worry brain is going to learn because you're giving it a space and a time to do its thing.

That's right.

And then as a really nice side effect,

It's not going to bug you nearly as much.

Yeah.

It's got a reserve.

It's got a standing appointment.

It's like a,

It's like a kid just wants to know you're going to spend some time.

They don't need all your time.

They just need to know that they've got,

They've got a priority in there somewhere.

I'll say that when I'm teaching my workshop on worry and insomnia,

And I do see them related in the same way you do,

What I like to build in is that it's so parallel to what you're doing,

But as part of a mindfulness practice,

People will say they don't have time for mindfulness practice,

Right?

They're too busy.

But so I'll ask them,

So how much time have you budgeted for sneaking worry into all the crevices of your life?

Right?

Everyone laughs because it's like a default.

It's a default setting that is the priority.

So how I like to do it is when you catch yourself worrying,

Start to remember you have options.

One is to just worry.

And I like the idea of having scheduled worry for this category of choice,

Right?

Or you could remember,

You know what,

I'm worrying after dinner and before I watch Netflix,

Right?

So I'm going to put that one on hold.

So my two other options are to focus on something that's happening outside my imagination.

That could be sounds around me or what I see,

Right?

Literally with my eyes or some sensations in my body.

So that would be focusing away from that impulse to worry.

And then a third option is to actually just investigate,

Huh,

What's it feel like in my body when I'm worrying?

So it becomes,

It's almost like you're becoming a student of the process of worry,

The habit of worry.

You're actually observing it more like a scientist kind of objectively in real time,

Which is really useful data.

And I think all three of those together help people feel like they have,

If you can make a conscious decision,

Including the conscious decision that,

Oh,

I'm just going to worry,

But I'm going to decide to do that.

And realizing that the big project,

Long-term project is I'm trying to change my relationship to worry that it's not my enemy.

I just want to be more intentional about how,

How I do it and get,

Maybe get better at it,

Actually have it be more productive.

So the last thing you said,

You've got like a list,

Right?

So that's productive.

I've got a list of actually things that are,

Well,

I remember you saying something about taking another pass at that list to see which of those things are not urgent or no,

What's the word,

Something I can do something about.

So what's the next step?

When do I have that list?

Yeah.

So what I will do sometimes is add another layer onto deliberate worry,

Which is what's sometimes called constructive worry,

Which is,

And you can experiment with different ways of doing this,

But it's,

It's like a second stage.

And some people piggyback it right after doing deliberate worry.

Some people do it at a separate time,

Like during the day,

But the basic idea is you go back and you scan your list of worries and what you want to sort of the filtering you want to do is what are,

What are things that are actually problems,

Right?

And then what are things that are problems that I can actually do something about right now or in a reasonable timeframe?

And those ones you can sort of like circle and you can basically put into your,

Whatever your kind of organizational productivity system is,

You know,

If you're,

If you're worried about,

I don't know,

The big presentation you have to give on Thursday,

You know,

Schedule in a time tomorrow morning to prep for the presentation.

And what this also does,

I think subtly an important thing this does is that it helps your,

Your,

It helps your,

Your worry brain better distinguish between things that are actually concerns,

Threats,

Right?

Versus things that it's kind of like spun up as threats,

Things that look and feel like threats,

But aren't maybe,

They aren't actually threats.

So I think that's a really helpful exercise on a couple of different levels.

That's like phase two of deliberate worry.

Okay.

But I love your,

I just,

Sorry,

I have to go back to what you were saying before about your kind of your three options for what to do when you find yourself worried,

Because listening to all of those,

What you'll notice from a literally a cognitive behavioral perspective,

Which is thinking about your thoughts as if they are behaviors,

All of those things,

Right?

Just like looking at your worry or noticing how does your body feel when you're worrying.

Those are all observational,

Right?

You're just noticing,

You're just noticing,

Describing,

You're noticing.

And the great thing about noticing and observing is it kicks you into a lower,

That's a lower mental gear than analyzing or problem solving.

Yep.

Most people stay revved up in arousal and therefore not sleepiness.

Yeah,

Exactly.

They're analyzing.

Well,

It also gives you one,

A little distance between the meaning of the thoughts and feelings,

Right?

Or the,

And probably even a higher level,

What we're actually doing is we are just caught up in the narrative,

Which just is so compelling to us,

Especially if that narrative has caught conflict in it or drama or some potential embarrassment or it's so compelling to just be in the trance of the story.

So anytime we can notice specific perceptions or like,

What's it like to think?

What's it like,

What's it like to worry?

What is,

When I worry,

What does it consist of?

Are there images in my mind?

What kind of images are there?

Am I talking to myself?

What's going on in my body?

Right?

And it's like you're saying,

It's that noticing does bring things down.

Yeah,

I love it.

It's observation for,

If you remember from like high school biology or maybe physics,

That the scientific method,

Right,

Is,

You know,

It starts with observation,

Not theorizing.

Exactly.

Hypothesizing comes later.

The first thing you do is you just notice,

You just gather data,

Right?

And it's,

As Sherlock Holmes famously said,

It's a capital mistake to start theorizing before you have data.

So if you're laying in bed trying to sleep,

Which of course you can't do because you can't try and sleep,

Right?

Yeah.

You're theorizing in your head,

Like,

Oh,

What was it that led to me not being so sleepy that I ate today for dinner?

You know,

What's the fit?

What does it mean that I'm not asleep after?

No,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No.

Right.

And storytelling,

The interpretation is what's keeping you revved up,

Right?

That's keeping your mind in high gear because that's a sophisticated kind of form of mental activity.

That really is high gear.

It's high gear.

And the trick to getting back to sleep is figuring out ways to keep your mind in a lower gear.

Yeah.

Because if you stay,

If you're actually sleepy,

Which almost all people with insomnia are,

If you could just keep yourself in a lower kind of relaxation gear,

Your natural drive for sleep will kick in.

The trick is to not let yourself get pumped up into arousal.

Right.

So what we're trying to do is actually set the stage for sleep to happen instead of forcing sleep.

Because paradoxically,

Like you said,

When we try to sleep,

We actually rev up.

And yeah.

So when I give people those three options,

Worry,

Get your attention out of your imagination or turn your curiosity towards worry itself.

What makes that hard is the narrative focus is such a strong default for us because that's where we spend so much of our time.

And that's why I approach this as exercise.

How can I exercise this capacity to get better at each of those three modes?

Right.

So that when I find myself awake at two o'clock in the morning,

I've got a muscle that I've been working on that allows me to prioritize the sensation over the making sense or the something I can notice instead of something I can engage in solving or getting rid of.

I'm not sure if you have something specific you do for once you've got the worrying habit strategy in place,

But I can share with you what I do for the actual,

Um,

You find yourself alert in the middle of the night.

What can we do now?

Do you have something that you already recommend to people at that point?

Um,

It depends a little bit.

The classic CBT answer is get out of bed and you do something relaxing and start to feel sleepy again.

And I think,

I think for a certain subset of people that that's actually pretty good advice.

Um,

Because what you don't want to do is mentally associate worry or arousal with your bed.

That's a,

That's a bad idea.

So,

Uh,

Get out of bed until you're sleepy again and get back in.

But honestly,

I think for a lot of people it's,

It's enough to just anything that can kind of get your mind into that just sort of observing being mode,

The non analytical mode is fine.

So I actually,

I tell people,

Like pull out a book,

Pull out a Kindle and like,

You know,

Re read a book that's,

Um,

You know,

Something interesting and engaging,

Not super exciting.

Um,

But frankly,

And this is like,

This is like this is like heresy among traditional kind of sleep hygiene types,

But I will tell people,

Watch a TV show,

Put a,

Put on Seinfeld or Cheers or something.

If it,

If it keeps you in kind of a relaxed state of mind and gets you to sleep,

I guarantee that the tiny negative that is light exposure is nothing compared to the massive amount of arousal you would expect.

Exactly.

Worrying about not falling asleep.

Well,

And part of what you're saying there is that everyone's going to need to find what works for them.

And for some people that might be white noise or music or a TV show.

And for one person,

It's actually arousing for another person.

It's soothing.

There's so many things out there now for you that you could test out and try.

Right.

Uh,

Have you heard of nap flicks by the way?

It's like,

Yeah,

You've got to look it up.

It's like,

It's like really boring stuff,

Like watching a Latin mass or,

Um,

Watching a rotisserie chicken,

Just rotate and bake or whatever.

And I even saw one where there's like 12 hours where you get on a train.

I can't remember what country it is.

It's like in real time,

This multiple hour train ride.

So I agree with those strategies you're talking about.

The thing I add from kind of the mindfulness perspective,

And it's really in line with everything we've been talking about so far,

Right?

I approached the actual unwanted alertness in the middle of the night as three steps.

First step is to drop the goal of unconsciousness,

Right?

And it's implied by what you're saying,

But it's,

And it's,

It's to address the arousal.

And the second step is to replace that goal with getting rest,

Right?

And then the third step is to get really good over the next few weeks,

Months,

Years at finding and savoring rest and exploring,

Exploring that.

So I'll teach people different ways to find different types of sensory rest that they can investigate.

I guess one of the most common or most popular,

What works a lot for people is this idea.

So I realize I'm awake and I'm starting to worry and problem solve and think about tomorrow.

If I can say,

Okay,

Wait,

I'm going to drop the goal of unconsciousness.

I'm switching the goal.

I need to get a good night's rest.

And then I'm going to start immediately going into redirection and have that.

I've decided on that ahead of time.

So tonight I'm going to,

If I wake up in the middle of the night,

I'm going to see if I can find sounds in my environment,

Air conditioner,

Heater coming on,

Cars going by,

Things turning on or off,

Refrigerator.

If there's no sounds,

Maybe have a fan or some kind of,

Something where I,

And it becomes exercise.

I'm redirecting my attention to the sound and I'm redirecting that auditory cortex that's used to talk to myself.

And I'm,

I'm giving it something to do,

To listen to that's not my internal narrative.

And just to keep coming back out again and again to those external sounds can be huge.

Some people will actually do some kind of counting mentally instead,

Like generate an internal sound,

Which would be kind of like a mantra approach,

I guess,

To like preempt that impulse to narrate and just give it sounds,

Like even just counting to 10 really quickly over and over or repeating a vowel sound or something.

Then we can build in once I've listened to sounds for a while,

Maybe I start to catch,

You know what,

My legs are kind of relaxed.

When I listen to the car go by,

There's rest in my legs.

Like,

Wait a second,

Wait,

What's happening here?

And so you start to,

Instead of this vicious cycle of activation,

Activation,

Activation,

Right?

The pictures in my mind generate an emotion,

Which generates talk.

Now that external sound is generating relaxation in my body.

And I'm starting to go on a virtuous cycle of rest leads to rest leads to rest.

And I'm not trying to lose consciousness,

But I'm setting the stage.

Next thing you know,

I'm,

I've drifted off,

You know,

Ideally with practice.

I love it.

Yep.

And I really,

I think a really important implication there is that what you do around bedtime should,

You know,

Really should be kind of automated.

Like you should have a playbook that you don't have to think about.

You don't have to make decisions about,

What do I do if I,

You know,

If it's half an hour and I still have to,

Like,

You should just have a protocol,

An algorithm for what happens.

If I wake up in the night,

This is just what I do.

It's too late to decide,

Right?

Right.

It's too late at that point to come up with your strategy.

And trying to problem solve and come up with decisions is,

You're just shooting yourself in the foot.

Even if you're coming up with good decisions,

You just revved yourself up back into arousal.

So I love that idea of having,

It's,

It's a,

It's skill development,

But it's like all skills though,

It's about routine.

It's routine.

You know,

Like Michael Phelps doesn't like wing it every time he shows up to practice and decides like,

What am I going to do today?

I wonder,

No,

Like he,

The dude is like regiment.

He's yielding to the program that he chose ahead of time.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yep.

One of the things I tell my clients is you want to sleep like a robot.

A robot just has instructions,

You know,

And you just sort of,

You follow,

You come up with a good game plan.

That makes sense.

You be flexible.

If it doesn't work,

You know,

In the longterm,

You can modify,

Be willing to change it.

But for the most part,

You just,

Just kind of go with the flow.

Cause if you,

If you try and start making decisions on the fly,

You're just,

You're kicking yourself back up in the high gear.

Do you find that mindfulness comes into,

Into your conversations or that what kind of obstacles do people that you work with run into when they try to do something like develop the ability to relax as a skill?

Um,

So it gets to,

I'm laughing because it gets to this,

The central paradox of sleep problems with it,

Which is you can't try to do anything to fall asleep,

Including the ultimate,

What people imagine as sort of like the ultimate restful,

Relaxing exercise,

Which is I'm going to do mindfulness meditation,

Right?

I can't sleep.

So I'm a try really hard to be mindful.

Right.

Even though it's mindfulness,

You're trying really hard to do it.

And you're really worried about whether it works or not.

That's not going to help you get to sleep.

So this is a,

A really important thing.

I think,

I think mindfulness is actually super helpful for sleep,

But I think the way you approach it is critical.

And that is it's to me,

Mindfulness meditation,

An actual mindfulness meditation,

That's an exercise you do that strengthens your attentional muscle,

Which if you happen to have a stronger attentional muscle,

That's going to help with redirecting from worry in the middle of the night.

But if you think that the actual exercise of doing a mindfulness meditation is just going to put you to sleep,

I think that's tricky road to start walking down.

For most people,

Mindfulness is a very,

It's a,

Even though the activity itself is,

Is non analytical,

It's about observing,

It's just about being present in the present moment.

But for a lot of people,

Mindfulness is like a,

It's like a thing.

It's like a life hack to just be part of your regular kind of mental health routine.

Yeah,

I agree.

No,

I think it's something that's a skill that you cultivate.

In fact,

That's what the idea of how am I worrying during the day?

What's the relationship between that and how I'm navigating sleep at night and approaching it as like you're saying,

Attentional skills as something that I develop,

There is potential there,

But there's a lot of clarification to do a lot of misconceptions.

And if you think about what's actually happening in mindfulness meditation is there,

We're trying to stay alert and relax at the same time,

But that often means with practice over time,

You actually end up staying awake instead of falling asleep.

We're putting our story aside or we're trying to put our story into the background instead of the foreground.

That takes a lot of practice.

And on the way to that,

You realize how scattered your attention is.

So like you're saying,

That could just be one more thing to get tangled up in in the middle of the night.

The main distinction for me is while doing a mindfulness meditation is often not particularly helpful for most people in the middle of the night or if they're having trouble sleeping,

Being mindful is always helpful.

Oh,

I love that.

Yeah.

Right.

So,

And that just gets back to what you were saying before about kind of being in observer mode rather than fix it problem solving mode.

And to me,

That's just what being mindful is.

You're just in the present moment.

You're observing,

You're being curious,

But you're not being judgmental.

You're not being predictive.

You're not being analytical.

So that's one thing I tell my clients is go ahead and being mindful is a great,

I think,

Aspiration when it comes to sleep.

But do your mindfulness in the morning or your lunch break or something.

Yeah.

And I think of it as maybe in the middle of the night,

It's more like a redirection,

Noticing things that are leading to what's the word you said,

Away from arousal and into relaxation,

Whatever works for that individual to call off the battle with arousal.

Right.

And I think the project is very personal and experimental.

Find what works,

Find how you frame it in a way that is leading you to relax your grip,

Not type in it on this whole issue of getting more rest.

Yeah.

And in general.

So all right.

Wow.

So I really appreciate your time.

Is there a way people can learn more about what you're up to,

What you're writing about?

What's the best way for people to keep track of what you're up to?

Yeah.

My website's kind of the hub of all my work,

Nickwithnall.

Com.

And I C-K-W-I-G-N-A-L-L.

Com.

And that's got links to my articles.

You can sign up for my newsletter and get my newest articles,

Twitter,

All that good stuff.

So that's probably the place to go.

All right.

Well,

I'll look for you on Twitter and I'll do what I can to promote you.

I thank you so much for bringing a different angle to so much of what we hear about in this area.

So,

And yeah,

Let's keep in touch.

And I'd love to even talk again more about how our work kind of overlaps and complements each other.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

Thanks,

Darren.

Thanks so much,

Nick.

And thank you for listening.

If you struggle with getting a good night's sleep,

I hope you came across a new idea or strategy that you're excited to try out.

In the show notes,

You'll find links to Nick's work,

As well as a few resources related to topics that we discussed.

If you enjoyed this episode,

I hope you'll help us spread the word.

In addition to listening on wcbe.

Org through the WCBE podcast experience,

You can also listen on iTunes,

Spotify,

Stitcher,

SoundCloud,

And on the Insight Timer meditation app.

If you or someone you know is interested in being a guest on a future episode,

Email me at Darren,

D-A-R-O-N at attentionalfitness.

Com.

You can also email me to let me know your reaction to this or any other episode.

Until next time,

Don't wait for the world to get less distracting.

Find ways to exercise your attention.

I'd love to hear about it.

Reviews

Interesting & worthwhile ideas on sleep

Excellent, refreshing discussion about insomnia and worry. I will come back again to hear yet more in the conversation that I didn't pick up in the first 3 listens. Thank Daron & Nick.

Interesting angle that I will try! Thanks for sharing the knowledge.

Thank you for these fascinating insights. I will pass this along to several people I know who struggle with insomnia.

Very helpful! Thank you 🌷

The best tips I’ve heard to get back to sleep.
Much better than any sleep hygiene tips and given with a lot of care. Thank you.

Very helpful.
Thank you.
🙏♥️😇

Fantastic information 👌It all makes so much sense 😀
Thank you💕

This shows a completely different way of looking at things thanks