It’s 11pm. You’re tired, and you’ve probably been tired since about 3 in the afternoon. The bed is comfortable, the room is dark, and somewhere in the distance a very optimistic version of you genuinely believed tonight would be different.
And then your brain goes: actually, can we just quickly revisit that thing you said in 2019?
If this is familiar, you’re not dramatic, or uniquely cursed. There’s a reason your brain does this, and it has nothing to do with willpower or not trying hard enough to relax.
During the day, your brain is occupied with work, conversation, scrolling, doing. That constant activity keeps the thinking part of your brain in charge and gives everything else less room to breathe.
The moment you lie down and remove all of that stimulation, something called the “Default Mode Network” (Buckner, Andrews-Hanna & Schacter, 2008) kicks in. This is the brain’s background processing system, and it activates specifically when you’re not focused on a task. It reviews the day, flags unresolved things and starts making connections.
For most people this is mildly annoying. For someone carrying anxiety, it’s like handing a very worried person a clipboard and unlimited time.
There’s also a physiological piece, your cortisol levels (the hormone associated with stress and alertness) follow a natural daily rhythm. But anxiety dysregulates that rhythm. Research shows that people with chronic anxiety tend to have elevated cortisol in the evenings compared to those without an anxiety disorder, meaning the body remains in a low-level state of alert when it should be winding down (Vreeburg et al., 2010).
So the room is dark and quiet, but your nervous system didn’t really get the update.
The instinct when your brain won’t switch off is to try to force it to stop, tell yourself to relax, tell yourself it’s fine and that you’re being ridiculous.
This, unfortunately, tends to make it worse.
Here’s why: your brain’s threat-detection system (the amygdala) doesn’t respond to logic, but it does respond to signals of safety (LeDoux, 2000). And when you try to suppress a thought, you’re actually increasing the amount of attention your brain gives it. Research on thought suppression consistently shows that trying not to think about something keeps it more active, not less (Wegner, Schneider, Carter & White, 1987). The classic example: try not to think about a white bear. You thought about a white bear, didn’t you?
The loop is a nervous system doing what nervous systems do when they’ve learned the world requires a certain level of vigilance.
Rumination feels purposeless. You’re not solving anything, instead you’re just replaying, catastrophising, and circling back to the same worries. It feels like a malfunction.
But from your brain’s perspective, it’s trying to help. Rumination is an attempt to problem-solve perceived threats (Nolen-Hoeksema, Wisco & Lyubomirsky, 2008). The issue is that most of what anxiety loops on, social situations, hypothetical futures, things that can’t be resolved at 11:47pm, aren’t problems that can actually be solved by thinking harder about them.
So the brain keeps going, because it hasn’t found resolution yet. And it won’t, because the kind of resolution it’s looking for doesn’t come from thinking.
A few things worth knowing, based on both the evidence and what tends to work in practice.
Externalising the thoughts. Writing down what’s looping before bed interrupts the cycle. Not journalling in the “dear diary” sense, just getting it out of your head and onto paper. Research from Baylor University found that writing a to-do list of outstanding tasks before sleep helped people fall asleep significantly faster than writing about completed activities, likely because the brain registered that the information had been stored somewhere outside of “itself” (Scullin, Krueger, Ballard, Pruett & Bliwise, 2018).
Not fighting the wakefulness. Paradoxical as it sounds, accepting that you’re awake rather than resisting it reduces arousal (wild, right?). The anxiety about not sleeping often becomes as activating as the original anxiety. Harvey (2002) identified this cognitive spiral as a key maintaining factor in insomnia, and sleep restriction therapy, used within CBT for insomnia, targets it directly (Morin & Espie, 2003).
Addressing what’s underneath. The nights don’t get easier just because you’ve learned a few techniques. Techniques do help, but if the anxiety itself isn’t being worked with, you’re managing the symptom rather than the source. The reason the brain is on high alert at night is usually connected to something it’s been on high alert about during the day too, even if that’s less obvious in the noise of daily life
Nighttime anxiety isn’t a sleep problem with an anxiety edge. For most people it’s an anxiety problem with a sleep edge. The nights are just where it’s hardest to ignore.
If you’ve tried the sleep hygiene tips and downloaded the apps and still find yourself staring at the ceiling cataloguing every awkward thing you’ve ever done, it’s a signal that the anxiety itself needs attention, not just the bedtime routine.
If any of this resonates and you’re wondering whether therapy might help, you’re welcome to book a free 15-minute call to explore working together.
Not sure if therapy is right for you yet? Read: How to find the right therapist.
If morning anxiety is part of the picture too, this might be worth reading: Morning Anxiety: Why You Wake Up Dreading the Day
Integrative Therapist (Psychotherapy & Hypnotherapy), working with anxiety, relationships, habits & compulsions, and the not-enough feeling.
A 3-step free guide to understanding and interrupting repetitive patterns in your relationships, behaviour and emotional responses.
