When Your Mind Won't Sleep - August 22

When you wake up caught in a 3 a.m. thought storm, is your first instinct to try to push it away? In today’s 5 Minutes In Nature, Liz reflects on the tiredness that follows a restless night. She shares that the most effective way to ride out these mental squalls is to avoid feeding the negative thoughts.

Liz also reminds us that these storms are simply your mind’s way of recalibrating — and, like passing weather, they will fade with time.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.

It's a lovely morning up here on Dartmoor.

There's a soft sunlight,

There's a quite a blustery breeze,

In fact I'm sheltering in the lee of a burial cairn and I'm looking out westwards towards Plymouth.

I'm up on something called Butterton Beacon and if I look northwards I can see the very steep-sided valley of the River Urn as it cuts its way up through Dartmoor.

Dartmoor from this angle as I look northwards is just an expanse of green and hills and tors.

It's a wilderness,

It's empty,

It gives me a real sense of freedom and I so appreciate it being on my doorstep.

And I'm a little bit bleary-eyed because last night I woke up at three o'clock in the morning with some buzzy thinking.

I'd actually spent a good portion of the day trying to assemble some new technical equipment and it's not my favourite job I've got to say.

And I kind of go round in circles and down rabbit holes and I just,

After a while I began to question whether I bought the right stuff and what was I doing and I haven't got enough money to waste it on stuff that isn't exactly right.

I'd believe the reviews and maybe I should have done more research and you know all of this stuff so it was just whirring,

Whirring,

Whirring in my mind.

And I thought I'd talk to you about this not because I have a very simple way of getting rid of those waking up at three o'clock in the morning thought storms but because I want to help explain how I see what's going on and how I navigate through them.

You see when we have intense agitated thinking that is focused during the day or if we experience something that intense agitated thinking will spill out of us at a later time.

And for me that was three o'clock in the morning and it's actually my psychological system just recalibrating and resettling again so it's just doing its thing.

And so rather than give you a tip on how to get rid of it because actually I don't think it's a good idea to get rid of it I just think it's doing its thing and I'm assuming tonight it will be gone and I'll have a good night's sleep.

So rather than tell you how to get rid of it I'll just explain how I experience it and I guess the biggest thing is I know what not to do.

Most people or certainly a few years ago I would have engaged I would have been wide awake with all this thinking going on and I would have tried to engage with it trying to work out solutions to the problems it was showing me or feeling frustrated that I hadn't with myself that I couldn't get to sleep and worrying about waking up and feeling tired in the morning.

So I don't do any of that.

You see for me it's a little bit have you ever played with a kitten and you know with a kitten if you drag a bit of string along the floor it chases the string and it's great fun isn't it you sort of chase you know you can draw the kitten across the floor and it loves the game and it's this wonderful energy between you and the kitten as you play this game with it.

Well that's a bit like a bit like my three o'clock in the morning thinking.

If I play with it and I think about it it just extends it extends it it makes it carry on for longer and in the same way if I was to play with a kitten and drag a string across the floor and the kitten completely ignored it well the game would stop pretty soon.

So for me not investing time and energy in my thinking is is just makes sense because I don't want it to carry on for longer than necessary.

And then the second thing I find is helpful is I use it as a practice to bring my awareness back to that settled space within.

The thinking still carries on it still chunters along but I'm in a settled space as I experience it and often then the thinking will distract me away from that settled space and so something else that works for me is I I allow myself to be bathed in it I allow it to go through me I am curious about this agitated thinking and as I step into it and feel it my sense that I get is that this is just agitated energy the story is not there without the story it is just agitated energy and then eventually I I go to sleep.

So I just see three o'clock in the morning thinking as as a process of thought and I'm with it.

I'd be curious to know what your response is to this and whether you've got anything that works for you when you wake up in the middle of the night.

Reviews

Answering your question, I put on my headphones and listen to nature sounds like the ones found on Insight Timer. I become so focused on the sounds that my mind moves from the “thought storms” to just total relaxation. It seems to work for me.

I too experience that 3am thought loop. I've found that just viewing it as thoughts/energy and not following the loop is most helpful for me. It will come and it will go..🙏

Thanks Liz 🙏🏼
I like your explanation of waking up in the wee small hours. It makes perfect sense that if you have had a full on brain using day, that this later process will happen.
Kittens are such fun to play string games with.
I use to toss and turn and try to get back to sleep, now I just get up, make a cuppa and read a while then go back to sleep.
Tossing and turning and fighting being awake makes it worse.
🌿🧶🐈🧶🌿

I love the idea of restless night thinking being my body’s normal way of discharging daytime energy. And the cat and the string.
Thanks Liz!

Thank you Liz for this perspective on the 3 am brain storm. I like the idea that it's the mind doing it's thing. Fir me, with my interest in the 5 Elements theory of TCM, the wake up time may be an indication of energy blocage in the active meridian at that time, which may well be linked to the energy of thinking (3 am is between the active period for the Liver and Lung meridians) Lungs hold our emotions, Liver stores vital energy.
For me, the storms are usually so strong the only way to calm is to put headsets on and listen to a meditation on IT!! I'd be interested in hearing other's thoughts on this.
🙏🏼