Written by Marcia Frellick | Reviewed by Patricia Pinto-Garcia, MD, MPH Published on May 22, 2023
Key takeaways:
- Brain chatter is a constant stream of thoughts that can keep you from sleeping.
- Focusing the brain on a quiet, more pleasurable task can hasten sleep.
- Some people report that breathing exercises and writing down thoughts can help.
GoodRx Health
For many people, the to-do lists, creative ideas, self-criticism, scheduling, and worries crowd out the silence of sleep.
Up to 40% of American adults occasionally have symptoms of insomnia. Sometimes, brain chatter is what’s keeping people up at night. Here, three women talk about what they do to tune out the noise.
Crossword puzzles put her to sleep
As a freelance branding specialist, Carmel Samiri of Los Angeles says there is no shortage of things that keep her up at night.
Her work can involve photography, paperwork, and technology. And at bedtime, she runs through the list of everything that’s needed for upcoming project appointments, which can keep her mind racing.
She worries about whether her alarm will go off, whether the client will be happy with the work, and what will happen if she needs a sick day.
Carmel, who’s 34, says she has made her bedtime routine something she looks forward to, a reward for everything accomplished during the day. For her, that reward is doing crossword puzzles.
She keeps it old school — with a thick book of paper puzzles — because she knows staring at a screen can work against easy sleep. And she gets the large-print version so she doesn’t have to worry about falling asleep with her glasses on.
“I do my crosswords, and I start focusing. And then I noticed as I’m doing it — sometimes it’s within 1 minute, sometimes it’s within 30 minutes — I just start falling asleep.”
She finds she also sometimes needs a meditation break — even 5 minutes — during the day to tune out the chatter in her head.
That “helps my attitude, my patience, my sanity, my positivity for myself,” she says.
Measured breathing helps
Brain chatter regularly threatens sleep time for Corey Colwell, a 50-year-old executive in Seattle.
Corey is the chief operating officer for a personalized supplements company. Add that to her daily roles as wife and mother of two, with a daughter heading off to college — and the to-do lists, worries, and unfinished thoughts play on a loop just as her head hits the pillow.
Corey, who was a psychotherapist for 20 years, quiets the chatter with a breathing strategy and hand-tapping.
She practices 4-7-8 breathing (breathing in for four counts, holding for seven counts, and exhaling for eight counts).
“You really have to focus to do it ‘right.’ You actually have to exhale longer than feels natural,” she says.
She also says she has copied a practice she saw in a TED talk by drummer Jim Donovan. She taps her hands alternately on the bed at a fast drumlike rhythm at first and increasingly slows down the rhythm until the beats are far apart. Then her mind quiets and she drifts toward sleep.
“It’s the most magical thing,” she says.
A ‘brain dump’ lets your mind off the hook
Joanna Stephens, a 29-year-old entrepreneur from Haven, Kansas, uses the “brain dump” method to take care of the chatter.
Joanna, who writes about motherhood and home decor, is constantly thinking about ideas for her main website and other side projects.
“I’m also a mom and I have all of the ‘mom things’ to think about,” Joanna says.
Before bed, Joanna writes down the appointments for the next day and writes separate notes for work and family life.
“Once it’s off my brain and I’m not thinking about it anymore, I usually get to sleep a little bit better. I can’t go to sleep until it’s been written down,” she says.
Joanna keeps a notebook on the side of her bed so if she wakes up in the middle of the night with an idea, she can write it down and offload it until the morning.
“It lets my brain know I have thought about this and I’m going to make a plan for this. For some reason it seems to help.”
What does the doctor say?
Patricia Pinto-Garcia, MD, MPH
Medical Editor
When it comes to falling asleep, turning off your brain isn’t as easy as turning off a light. Worries, racing thoughts, and brain chatter can keep you awake at night even if you’ve created a healthy sleep space and follow sleep hygiene practices.
But there are healthy and positive ways to calm your brain chatter so you can fall asleep. These stories offer some excellent tips. Meditation and deep breathing help you center your mind so that you can find peaceful rest. Journaling can help you put your thoughts in order and even prioritize them so you know what to tackle first in the morning. Sometimes having a plan is enough to help someone feel calm enough to go to sleep.
It can also help to get your brain to think about other things. Reading and crossword puzzles help you put your focus elsewhere so you can drift off to sleep.
Exercise can also help — just don’t do it in the hour before your bedtime because it may have the opposite effect and keep you awake.
Brain chatter can come in cycles. So don’t give up on your practices just because you’re not experiencing brain chatter for a few days or weeks. You want to make your techniques a part of your sleep routine, just like a regular bedtime and a dark sleep space. Sticking to your sleep routine can help you get a restful night’s sleep no matter what your day brings.
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