I looked at my watch:
2:43 AM
Shit 😢
I needed to wake up at 6am to get to work and I still hadn’t fallen asleep yet.
Or had I?
Maybe I’d fallen asleep but woken up… I’m not so sure 😵💫
Either way, I knew that if I was awake at 2:43 AM, the following day would be a complete write-off.
I’d be grumpy, tired and pissed off at anything and everything.
You know those days, right?
The days where the smallest things make you mad enough to destroy something.
WiFi not working?
Throw my computer out the window.
Favorite show not available on Netflix?
Punch the TV and then BURN IT as a sacrifice to the sleep gods.
Client not happy with my work?
Tell him to “get f’d mate” and throw him out the window with my computer and try to hit him with a grenade launcher before he hits the ground.
You know, normal stuff 😏
I’d probably smash a double shot of coffee (x3 🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪) which would help me during the day… but then would make it harder to sleep the following night, compounding the problem (#negativefeedbackloop).
It would have been fine if it was only once in a while… but every night?
Maybe that’s why my energy used to go up and down like a rollercoaster every few weeks 🤷♂️
I’d be fine for a few days getting up at 6am but usually within weeks, I’d crash and scrap the early wake-ups. I’d take a few days or a week to recover and get back to a sense of “normal”, only to repeat the cycle again…
…and again…
…AND AGAIN!
🥵
I thought it was normal. Having trouble falling asleep. Waking up throughout the night. Needing coffee to get anything done during the day. Energy going up and down like crazy every few weeks to the point where on my down weeks, I’d feel like life was absolutely pointless.
I thought everyone was like this.
Then I discovered the world of nervous system healing and found out that a messed up sleep schedule like this is a symptom of nervous system dysregulation.
That is…
When the nervous system is healthy (ie. regulated), we fall asleep easily, we stay asleep throughout the night (for the most part) and we wake up feeling refreshed and energised and ready to take on the day.
But if the nervous system is dysregulated, it can take hours to fall asleep at night…
…or perhaps we fall asleep easily but then wake up throughout the night, worrying about how to pay our rent that month or how to not get fired in the next round of lay-offs or whatever happens to pop into our head…
…or maybe we sleep more than anyone we know but we never ever actually feel truly rested and recovered.
In the Western world these symptoms might be normal and taken for granted but they’re actually all signs of nervous system dysregulation.
And while you can implement all kinds of sleep hacks to fix the problem – black-out curtains, eye mask, chamomile, no screens 1 hour before bed, early morning sunshine, no alcohol and more – in my experience, nothing beats restoring regulation to the nervous system directly.
I still make a point of not using screens before bed, getting early morning sunshine (#Huberman) and I even use an eye mask but that’s all just icing on the cake to me.
For me, the foundation of deep, restful sleep is regulating my nervous system and making sure I’m not going to bed while still in fight-or-flight activation.
That’s where Rageheart comes in.
It’s a crash course in how to restore regulation to your nervous system and disarm an overactive fight-or-flight response.
You first cultivate a deep connection to your body, then discover what a felt-sense of safety feels like and finally clear out old survival stress and incomplete fight-or-flight responses from the system.
It’s deceptively simple and you might be tempted to disregard the techniques…
…but if you truly integrate them deeply into your being, you will be surprised at just how powerful they are and how deep they go.
Anyway, if you’d like to restore regulation to your nervous system so you can fall asleep easily, stay asleep throughout the night and wake up feeling refreshed and energised, sign up for a free trial at Rageheart here and take the tools for a spin without spending a cent:
https://www.rageheart.co/go/
Already a member and feeling the impulse to dial in your nervous system so you can sleep better at night? Hit the “Sign In” link on the page above and get after it…
Cheers,
John Wood