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Is Checking Your Sleep Making It Harder to Sleep?
I knew it was working. I checked anyway.
One of the perks of my new oven is that it has some very clever features. Except apparently, they’re not that new. I’ve just never used them. 😂
One of them is delayed cooking. You put the food into the oven, set everything up, and tell the oven when you want it to turn on.
Brilliant.
I probably could have been using this for years, but it took someone actually showing me how to do it before I finally tried it.
So the other day, I was going to be out and was trying to figure out how I was going to get supper on the table. I knew one of my kids would be in and out of the house, but I didn’t really want to rely on him being there at exactly the right time.
Perfect opportunity.
I put a Pyrex of chicken into the oven, set the delayed timer, and left. Later, I looked at my phone. The oven had turned on. I could SEE that it had turned on.
And what did I do? I called home.
“Can you just check that the oven is actually on?”
It was.
Twenty minutes later, I still had this little feeling. Maybe check again. So I had someone check again. Still on.
Then I came home about an hour later and opened the oven door. Just to make sure the food was actually in there.
The same Pyrex of chicken that I HAD PUT THERE MYSELF.
I closed the oven door and started laughing. Because really, Chevy?
Then I realized something.
We do this with sleep all the time
When sleep has been difficult for a while, we start watching it. Closely.
We check the clock when we wake up. We calculate how many hours we slept. We evaluate how tired we feel in the morning. We wonder whether last night was better than the night before.
And it doesn’t stop there.
At 10 a.m., we check again. How tired am I? At 2 p.m.: Am I going to make it through the afternoon? At 6 p.m.: I'm exhausted. Does that mean I'll sleep tonight?
And then bedtime comes around and we’re checking all over again. Am I sleepy enough? Is my mind quieter tonight? Is this new thing I’m trying working?
Sometimes I think we spend so much time checking our sleep that we barely give our bodies a chance to just be.
Why do we keep checking?
Because when something matters to us, we want reassurance. It makes perfect sense.
If you’ve struggled with sleep for weeks, months or even years, of course you want to know whether things are getting better.
The problem is that sleep is not something that responds particularly well to being watched.
Think about falling asleep. You don't actually do it.
You can create conditions that support sleep. You can work with what is keeping your body alert. You can change habits that may be getting in the way. You can learn how to respond differently to a racing mind or a middle-of-the-night awakening.
But there is still a point where your body has to take over.
You cannot stand over it saying, Okay, are you doing it yet? How about now? Now?
That would be ridiculous.
Except that's pretty much what we do.
Checking can become part of the problem
The more important sleep becomes, the more attention we give it. Our brain notices what we pay attention to.
If you wake up at 3 a.m. and immediately look at the clock, calculate how many hours you’ve slept and start wondering how you're going to function tomorrow, that awakening has suddenly become very important.
Your brain has something to work on. Brains LOVE having something to work on at 3 a.m.
Suddenly you're calculating, predicting, problem-solving and monitoring. Exactly what we don't need when we're trying to go back to sleep.
But one of the biggest things I want people to understand is that the checking doesn’t only happen at night. We can spend the entire next day checking ourselves.
How tired am I? Can I concentrate? Why am I yawning? Is this because I only slept six hours?
Sometimes we decide how we’re supposed to feel before we’ve even had a chance to feel it.
You look at your sleep tracker or your clock and see that you slept six hours.
Immediately: Oh no. Today is going to be awful.
Maybe.
But maybe not.
What if you just got up and lived the day before deciding?
Stop opening the oven
That’s really what I learned from my Pyrex of chicken.
Every single time I checked that oven, absolutely nothing changed. The oven didn't cook better because I checked. The chicken wasn't safer because I checked. And opening the oven when I got home certainly didn't accomplish anything.
It was cooking whether I checked it or not.
There are times when we need to do the same thing with our bodies.
Stop checking.
Stop measuring every sensation.
Stop asking yourself every few minutes whether you feel tired.
Stop looking for proof that whatever you're doing is “working.”
This doesn't mean ignoring a real sleep problem. And it doesn't mean that if you simply stop checking, years of insomnia will magically disappear.
It means giving your body a little bit of space.
You can work on sleep without making sleep your full-time job. You can have a difficult night without spending the entire next day analyzing it. You can wake up without immediately deciding what kind of day you're going to have based on a number.
You can try something new without checking every five minutes to see whether it worked.
Sometimes the next step is not another strategy.
Sometimes it’s stepping away from the oven.
What if sleep has become your full-time job?
If you are constantly thinking about sleep, planning for it, worrying about it, checking it, measuring it, changing things and trying to figure out what you’re doing wrong, there may be much more going on than simply needing another sleep tip.
This is exactly the kind of thing I work on with my clients.
We look at what is actually keeping you awake, not only at bedtime, but throughout your entire 24-hour day. Because getting back to sleeping naturally isn't always about doing more.
Sometimes it starts with understanding what is happening and learning where you can finally do less.
If you're exhausted from trying to figure this out on your own, I’d love to talk.
Maybe—finally—you can stop opening the oven door.
Missed a Blog? https://www.chevymermelsteinsleepcoach.org/post/why-your-mind-starts-racing-at-5-a-m-the-15-second-sleep-strategy-i-gave-my-client
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