How To Stop Dreading Bedtime

How do you feel as bedtime draws near? Are you looking forward to going to bed or do you dread the thought of it?

At Oaktree Mobility, we recognise that getting a good night’s sleep is more than being physically comfortable in your bed or recliner – it’s also about finding inner peace and comfort so that you can get the deep restoration that you need from your nighttime rest.

Sadly, for many, the thought of going to bed can provoke anxieties and worries for all sorts of reasons. Issues with mobility and pain, the challenges of caring for others and just being able to let go of the worries of the day, which can seem worse at night.

Often the issue isn’t about sleep itself, but rather, about the fear that your own worry will prevent you from sleeping. These worries can compound causing physical tension that make falling asleep even harder. It's a vicious cycle. Anxiety creates worries about not sleeping, which makes sleep more elusive, which makes you worry more, which makes you sleep less. By recognising this pattern, you can take steps to find calm at night.

What happens when you dread going to bed

Dreading going to bed can come with a whole host of mental and physical sensations and symptoms that can make getting good rest impossible. These include:

• Your mind racing with thoughts about relationships, health, family, and work.
• You associate going to bed with discomfort, pain and not sleeping.
• You feel fidgety and agitated, unable to get comfortable, endlessly tossing and turning. 
• Your body tensing up, jaw clenching, muscles stiff with stress you don't realise you're holding.
• Obsessing over the consequences of lost sleep - tomorrow's performance at school or work or missing out on life. 

Additionally, if you are caring for others, it might be at the end of the day, when all is quiet, that the impact of over-giving, truly hits you. This is one of the symptoms of so-called ‘emotional labour’.

Over time, this nightly strain can become exhausting leading to daily fatigue and burnout, affecting work, relationships, and overall wellbeing.

What Can You do if You Dread Bedtime?

1. Practice good sleep hygiene

Make sure that you are doing all that you can to optimise your sleep. Check out all of the other articles on our website to learn about good sleep habits and in particular, the 5 things you need to be doing to give yourself a good night’s sleep.

2. Understand rest vs sleep

Our inner dialogue can be the greatest hindrance to being able to sleep at night. You might need to think about this one but how do you talk to yourself about going to bed? For example, do you say to yourself or others ‘I’m dreading going to bed tonight’? Catch yourself if you are saying this and try and replace this unhelpful (but understandable) statement with ‘I’m going to bed to rest tonight’. Can you see that there is a subtle, but important, difference between using the word ‘sleep’ vs ‘rest’?

It might be more possible for you to rest rather than sleep at night particularly if you start practicing techniques to help you rest such as:

3. Meditation

 Mindfulness and other forms of meditation can help you to become more aware of racing thoughts and sensations of stress in your body before they become overwhelming. Here are some meditation-based techniques to help you to not only become aware but also to accept and let go with loving kindness and acceptance whatever might be going on in your life or body.

4. Breathing for relaxation

When anxiety and dread ramp up, your breathing can become rapid and shallow, or you even forget to take a breath.

Use the 4-7-8 Method: Inhale quietly through your nose for 4 counts, hold your breath for 7 counts, and exhale slowly through your mouth for 8 counts. Repeat several times.

You can also use my own ‘inner safety’ breathing technique to bring yourself into a place of calm and peace to enable you to rest:

You can also use my body scan and self-acceptance meditation to help you to rest.

5. Improve your sleep environment

 How do you feel when you walk into your bedroom at night? Does it fuel the dread and anxiety?

If your sleep space is currently associated with sleep dread, maybe this is a good time to consider changing a few things in your bedroom - this is your opportunity to create your perfect sleep sanctuary. Consider soft lighting, comfortable bedding, soothing music, or white noise to foster a relaxing environment.

An inviting restful space can signal the brain that it's time to wind down, reducing anxiety. Sleep sounds can help drown out negative thought patterns.

6. Journalling

Journalling is a simple technique to help you to get all those negative and worrying thoughts out of your head at the end of the day. It’s simple but unbelievably powerful and it really works. I do it regularly too! I call it ‘vomit’ journalling and here’s how you do it:

Sit quietly with a piece of paper or journal and a pen. Set a timer for 10-20 mins and during this time don’t allow anything to distract you. Start writing all the fears and worries that are in your mind. ‘Vomit’ them out onto the page without stopping to think or correct your writing. Keep going for at least 10 minutes or until the timer goes off. When you’re finished, avoid looking at what you’ve written. You might even throw the page(s) away. The aim is to get the words and negative thoughts out of your mind so that they don’t stop you from being able to rest.

7. Nap

Nap but don’t over nap. If you’re not sleeping well at night, you might be tempted to sleep during the day, and this can send your sleep cycle completely out of balance.  Please read my article about napping on the Oaktree Mobility website. Taking a short 20 minute power nap could be helpful for mopping up fatigue but avoid sleeping in your recliner or bed for hours at a time as this will stop you sleeping at night and only perpetuate the issue of night time sleep anxiety.

Support when you’re dreading bedtime

This is for those of you who are caring for others and taking the worries of your responsibilities to bed with you. Who can you talk to about this? Who can you laugh with? Or even cry with? Don’t hold it in – remove those thoughts and worries (remember the journalling technique previously described) and find a positive outlet so they don’t show up at bedtime. If physical pain is keeping you awake, my article on dealing with chronic pain might also be a helpful read.

Reframe your relationship to sleep

Finally, are you talking yourself into dreading bedtime? Do you talk to everyone about it? Do you obsess about your poor nighttime sleep? It is understandable that you might be doing this but the more you focus on it, the more it perpetuates the cycle of dreading going to bed. I want you to start cultivating a different mindset around your sleep. If asked how you slept last night, you might experiment by saying ‘I got some good rest’ and leave it at that, rather than going into the whole story of how long it took you to fall asleep, what time you woke up, how long you stayed awake for and how long it took you to fall asleep again! Self-suggestion is a powerful tool, and we can talk ourselves into getting poor sleep, so use your mind and self-talk to help, rather than hinder you, to help you get the amazing sleep we all need and deserve.