Sunday Musings: 3 AM Confessions
Why do we lie awake in the middle of the night worrying about things we can’t possibly control at that moment? Maybe we inadvertently upset a friend and we’re agonizing over how to make amends. Perhaps we blew up the credit card buying “just a few things” on Amazon, and we’re concerned about how our spouse will react. We’re not going to call our friend at 3 AM and ask for forgiveness, because that will likely strain the relationship even further. Likewise, the middle of the night might not be the best time to tell someone about our online shopping addiction. Yet, we run scenarios through our minds, over and over, until we’ve tied ourselves into knots and finally pass out from emotional and mental exhaustion.
Things usually look better as soon as the sun comes up. Why is that? Perhaps it’s because darkness often links with despair, while sunshine conjures up images of hopefulness and positivity.
That friendship can easily be repaired over coffee and a heart-to-heart conversation. Another glance at the credit card statement reveals that, yes, we spent too much, but we’re not going to have to go without groceries or heat to pay the bill. How relieved, and silly, we feel after all that hand-wringing the night before.
The only thing worse than worrying about existing situations in the middle of the night is fretting over past experiences in the middle of the night. Because you can’t do anything about those. Still, there we are, staring at the ceiling and cringing over what we did between the ages of 10 and 40. Lying to our parents. Cheating on a test. Drinking too much. Saying something stupid. Not saying something when we should have. Doubting ourselves. Doubting someone else. Getting into a bad relationship. Refusing a potentially good relationship. Letting a friend down. Letting ourselves down.
It goes on and on and on. Just when we’ve finally squeezed everything we could out of one past transgression (at least we’re perceiving it as a transgression at the moment), another one pops into our heads. Some of them we haven’t thought about in 20 years. How nice of them to reappear when we’re trying to sleep.
Why does this happen? According to one expert at the Cleveland Clinic, waking up with anxiety in the middle of the night means “you likely have activated your sympathetic nervous system, your ‘fight-or-flight’ system. When this happens, your brain switches from sleep mode to wake mode. Your mind may start to race, and your heart rate and blood pressure may go up.”
Okay, so how do we stop it? Slow breathing. Relaxation exercises. Getting out of bed to walk around. Writing down what we’re feeling. Or just rolling with it.
That last suggestion has not been approved by experts, but it might be worth a try. If we resign ourselves to losing 30 minutes to about an hour of sleep, we can take the time to work through the issues that have us on edge. More importantly, we can use that time to forgive ourselves.
What if we got cozy, closed our eyes and embraced this sleeplessness as a way to self-confess and clear our internal slates? We could look at each item that’s currently keeping us awake from different angles to gain perspective. We might also realize that in the scheme of things, the actions that we’re fretting over or regretting are insignificant. And if they are significant, they can always be overcome. Anything can be overcome, even if it seems impossible at 3 AM.
Once we’ve dissected what’s on our mind, we don’t need to put it back together; we can gather all the parts and put them into storage. We self-confessed, forgiven ourselves (or maybe told ourselves we’re silly for worrying so much) and moved on. Yes, we’ve lost some sleep, but we’ve used our minds to complete a task, not to immerse ourselves in ongoing grief.
After awhile, we’ve got to run out of things to worry about, right? And if something pops back into our heads, we can say, “No, we already got rid of that one” and move on. This approach might not work for everyone, but for those of us who’ve already tried deep breathing, meditating/prayer, writing down our feelings and walking around the house, it seems like a worthwhile option.