How to Fall Asleep When You Can’t Stop Thinking

If you can’t stop thinking in bed, stop trying to fall asleep and start trying to rest. Give your mind a calm, detailed picture to hold instead of your worries, slow your breathing, and if you’re still lying there frustrated after a while, get up and do something quiet until you feel sleepy.

Fighting your thoughts, checking the time and calculating how many hours you have left all make you more awake. The steps below do the opposite.

Right now, in bed

Two ways to spend the next 20 minutes

Fighting it

• Trying hard to sleep
• Arguing with each thought
• Checking the time
• Scrolling to distract yourself

Resting

• Letting sleep come or not
• Giving your mind one calm picture
• Clock turned away
• Phone out of reach

The next 20 minutes

1. Drop the goal of sleepingTell yourself: “I’m just resting.” Rest still helps.
2. Park the thoughtsIf something is nagging, jot one line on a notepad by the bed.
3. Slow your breathingIn for about 4, out for about 6. Ten breaths.
4. Hold one calm pictureA detailed, pleasant scene. Keep coming back to it.
5. Still wide awake and frustrated? Get upDim light, something boring, back to bed when sleepy.

1. Stop trying to sleep

Sleep is one of the few things that gets harder the more effort you put in. Effort means alertness. Shift the goal: you’re lying here to rest your body. If sleep comes, good. If not, you’re still resting.

Many people find this alone takes some pressure off.

2. Park what’s on your mind

Keep a notepad and pen by the bed. If a task or worry keeps resurfacing, write a single line (“email Lena about Friday”) and put it down. You’re not solving it. You’re telling your mind it’s been saved for tomorrow.

Avoid using your phone for this. It’s too easy to start checking things.

3. Slow your breathing

Breathe in gently through your nose for about four counts and out for about six. Slow breathing with longer exhales is linked with lower physiological arousal in many studies. Ten slow breaths is a good start, and you can return to it any time.

4. Give your mind a picture to hold

Trying to empty your mind rarely works. Replacing the thoughts with something absorbing but calm tends to work better.

In a study of people with insomnia, those asked to imagine a pleasant, engaging scene in detail fell asleep faster and had fewer unwanted thoughts than people told to distract themselves however they liked, or given no instructions.

Pick something you know well and can picture slowly:

• Walking through a place you love, noticing each detail
• Making a familiar recipe, step by step
• A quiet beach, moving from sound to temperature to texture

When your thoughts drift back to the worry, which they will, return to the picture. That returning is the whole technique.

5. Relax your body, part by part

Starting at your feet, tense each muscle group for a few seconds and then let it go. Work slowly up to your face and jaw. Many people reach their shoulders and realize they’ve been holding tension there all day.

6. If it’s not working, get up

If you’ve been lying awake, frustrated and getting more alert, get up. Go somewhere dim and calm, do something quiet and a little boring (a familiar book, folding laundry, a calm audio track), and go back to bed when you feel sleepy.

This is called stimulus control, and it’s part of the behavioral treatments recommended for chronic insomnia. The idea is to keep your bed linked with sleep, not with lying awake thinking. Don’t judge it by tonight. It works over a couple of weeks.

When it’s one thing you can’t stop thinking about

Sometimes it isn’t general noise but one specific topic. The same steps apply, with a small adjustment for each:

• Something happening tomorrow (an exam, an interview, a hard conversation): write down the one thing you most want to remember for it, then tell yourself the preparation is done. Lying awake rehearsing won’t improve it, and sleep will.
• Work: write the unfinished task and the first step for the morning. Then close the notebook and put it out of reach.
• A person, whether a crush, an ex or someone you argued with: notice the scene starting and swap it for your calm picture. Late-night thoughts about someone are common and tend to be the most dramatic version of the story. Why you can’t stop thinking about someone explains why.
• Something exciting: good news can keep you awake too. The breathing and imagery steps work just as well for excitement as for worry.

How long should it take to fall asleep?

There’s no exact number, but many people fall asleep within about 10 to 20 minutes on most nights. Taking more than about half an hour regularly is one of the signs sleep specialists look for when assessing insomnia.

Don’t time yourself tonight, though. Watching the clock is one of the fastest ways to stay awake. If you want to track it, make a rough estimate in the morning.

What to avoid

• Checking the time. Turn the clock away. Knowing it’s 2:47 only adds pressure.
• Scrolling. It adds bright light and new things to think about.
• Working out the problem. At night, problems feel bigger and solutions are worse. Write it down, solve it tomorrow.
• A drink to knock yourself out. Alcohol tends to disrupt sleep later in the night.

If this happens most nights

If you regularly can’t fall asleep because of racing thoughts, the bigger fix starts earlier in the evening. How to stop overthinking at night covers the full plan, including dealing with worries before bed. If you’re falling asleep fine but waking up with your mind racing, see what to do when you wake up and can’t stop thinking.

If sleep problems happen three or more nights a week for months, talk to a doctor. Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is the recommended first treatment and is very effective for many people.

Letting a voice do the work

Steps 3 to 5 are easier when you don’t have to remember them. A sleep hypnosis session slows your breathing, walks you through your body and hands your mind a scene to follow, so all you do is listen. Whether it improves sleep itself is still an open question; see what the sleep studies found.