Dr. Matt Walker

I know it sounds strange, this whole sort of get up, get out of bed, break the associate.

And we'll come onto something.

Well, actually, I'll come onto it now because I think it's one of the unconventional tips and you mentioned it.

A lot of people say to me, that all sounds great.

Science makes sense.

I just don't.

It's dark.

It's kind of cold.

I really don't want to get out of bed.

So give me some alternatives.

I think the single best piece of unconventional sleep advice I can give you is do anything that gets your mind off itself.

The principal reason that if you look at insomnia as a physiological condition or current working model mechanistically of how insomnia plays out is that you are in this state of almost low level anxiety and you are somewhat stressed.

And when you go to sleep or you try to go to sleep or you wake back up and you try to get back to sleep, you just have this Rolodex of anxiety.

the modern world we are constantly on reception and very rarely do we do reflection and unfortunately for many of us and i've been guilty of this the only time we do reflection is when our head is placed on the pillow and we turn the light out and that is the last time you want to be doing reflection that's the worst moment

And at that point, I think everyone can empathize with the idea of you turn the light out, you're under stress, your mind goes to those few things.

In the darkness of night, thoughts become almost 10 times worse than they do in the bright of day.

And at that moment, you start to ruminate.

When you ruminate, you begin to catastrophize.

And when you catastrophize, you're dead in the water for the next two hours.

So what do you do?