Falling Into Mindfulness — An Autumn Oriented Rest Series
Tired and Wired — Mindfulness Tools to Consider During Stressful Times
Welcome Back to our Autumn Falling Into Mindfulness Series
In last week’s article, we made a pivot to explore whether mindfulness was the best tool to use during times of crisis. This autumn we decided to get back into regular online engagement with a weekly mindfulness series. If you’re interested in going back to the beginning, you can check out the first article here, start from exactly where we are, or simply join us in our Falling Into Mindfulness Autumn Art Practice.
We’ll be wrapping up the series soon, but while I am in Western North Carolina helping with acute disaster relief work—I can’t help but feel that focusing on practical mindfulness tools in a time of crisis is an important, and often overlooked topic.
Today we’ll be looking at a topic that many people can relate to—whether or not they find themselves in the aftermath of a hurricane. “Tired and Wired” is often a topic I chat with my 1:1 clients about because even when our brains and bodies are exhausted, sometimes we are still very unable to sleep. This “Tired and Wired” phenomena gets exaggerated in times of crisis, trauma, or acute relational stress.
Let’s get into it.
What Does it Mean to be ‘Tired & Wired’?
Whether you’re listening to your favorite bro-science, bio-hacking podcast, or working 1:1 with a sleep health or nervous system specialist—sometimes when someone is in a chronic state of exhaustion but they cannot figure out how to actually fall asleep at night, we call this phenomena “tired & wired.”
Tired and wired is when the body and mind are desperate for some good old fashioned sleep, but the brain and nervous system are processing environmental cues (both internal and external) that it is not quite ‘safe’1 to fully shut the body down and allow deeper stages of sleep.
Although oversimplified, feeling tired and wired is the body’s way of signaling something along the lines of “something is wrong, I have not yet solved an important problem that might keep us alive/our community intact, and I must solve it to be safe enough to rest.”
Why Does Tired and Wired Happen?
Our body evolved to need sleep with two very distinct and different internal physiological systems, that ultimately result in us falling asleep. In the scientific literature we call these systems “Process C” and “Process S.” I won’t bore you with the details, but instead give you an (over)simplified version of how they work together.
Process S is essentially is a process in the body that evolved to tell our bodies—the longer that we are awake, the more tired we will feel2. The other process, Process C, is a complex system that interacts with many other systems within our body that ultimately make up something called our circadian rhythm. Process C therefore evolved to tell our bodies—at specific times of the day, we are more likely to feel tired, regardless of the last time we slept.
When we are in the middle of a stressful period both of these different systems are impacted.
When we are under stress, we often will naturally sleep less, which creates more tiredness or “sleep pressure” in Process S. When we are under stress, other systems that might work more effortlessly during calmer times (cortisol production, insulin production, natural melatonin release) begin to drastically displace our body’s more regular circadian rhythm patterns (Process C).
In more simple terms: we are more tired and our body has less predictable times where we can reliably fall asleep.
We therefore might have a lot of desire and need for sleep with all of this build up, but during a stressful time sleep acts like a vital sign to remind us that whatever we’re working to problem solve has not yet resolved itself, yet.
Even after an acute stressor is gone from our lives, it can take days, weeks, months, or years3 for our bodies to re-regulate more useful patterns of stress-management4 to let both of these processes work in harmony again.
How Does Mindfulness Help The Feelings of Tired and Wired?
The truth is—during a state of crisis—a baseline amount of awareness and reflective abilities are crucial in recognizing that we need an extra layer of support. Another truth is that during a crisis—it’s very healthy and adaptive that we sleep less so that some of those resources can go towards problem-solving more!
Mindfulness can help two fold. In one way, mindfulness helps us identify that we might need extra layers of support. In another, yet, more specific way mindfulness can help us identify “hey! I’m not sleeping very well— how else can I take care of myself during this stressful time?”
Similar to last week’s article, I’m not saying to throw mindfulness out the window during a crisis. I’m saying that mindful awareness acts as a conduit for us to more skillfully identify and pursue extra layers of support.
In fact, mindfulness during stressful times is a great keystone skill to help us thoughtfully decide what our most skillful tool might be.
Let’s Mindfully Get Curious About Being Tired & Wired
When I am working with folks 1:1 or speaking in a sleep health workshop, I always urge people towards a sense of curiosity5. Let’s not just mindfully identify what’s wrong, let’s also get curious about what that might be coming from and how we might explore different ways of experimenting with it shifting.
When we are tired and wired we want to treat sleep as a vital sign.
Tired and wired does not mean our sleep is broken—quite the opposite actually! Tired and wired is a sign that our bodies are sustaining a significant amount of stress somewhere and we are tasked with gentle identifying and untangling or supporting those origins.
One of the first and most important things I am curious about when working with people is this—
What is the context of your life right now in comparison to other times when you’ve slept well?
If you are someone in Western, North Carolina right now who is navigating severe disaster relief work and you’re wondering why you can’t sleep—I would gently remind you that you are literally in a natural disaster crisis area right now and that it makes sense that your body is actively trying to use all of your resources to problem-solve. I might emphasize some work around active rest when you have the time to take it, and a compassion practice in the meantime around being kind to yourself when you cannot sleep. I would remind you this is a special circumstance and will not last forever, even if we cannot predict how long it will last. I would gently remind you that it is normal to sleep less well when we are worried about the well being of ourselves, friends, family, and communities.
If you are a nightshift nurse and your sleeping schedule changes every four days dramatically from how our bodies evolved to sleep—I would gently remind you that your job is not structured in a way that allows a body to feel safely regulated most of the time and it’s why most people move away from night shift work as soon as they are able. I might help create some curiosity around what lifestyle choices are within your control to shift versus which ones need to be managed until you can find a job with different hours. I would remind you that this is a difficult chapter in a medical professional’s career, and that you’re not crazy for not being able to sleep.
If you chronically have symptoms of being tired and wired and you don’t know where to start—I might begin to ask you questions about periods of your life where you’ve slept more peacefully and compare and contrast your life circumstances to the present. I would remind you that even if the moments of good sleep and quality rest were very small, there have been times in your life where rest felt more accessible and we’d do our best job to try to mindfully identify elements of what made that possible.
Regardless of your present circumstances—mindfulness is a key component into assessing your life within its largest context.
Once we’ve identified the overall context of your tired & wired feelings, we’d move onto spaces of agency
When I use the word agency, I’m really asking the questions:
Where do I have control over my life decisions, my story, or my resources?
Where do I not have any control over my current circumstances and how would I assume those circumstances impact another average human?
Feeling tired & wired is often a state of our nervous system being pulled out and away from a state of “rest & digest” for any number of reasons. Having strong feelings of agency (and curiosity!) are often related to nervous system states of being back into a more grounded state of “rest & digest.” While you cannot actually will your nervous system to change what it is experiencing, you can gently remind yourself that other nervous system states do exist.
By clearly identifying where you feel that you have more choices and where you feel like your choices are significantly limited you are able to do two things:
When you identify where you have control over your life decisions and have a strong sense of agency—you’re helping your brain highlight, remember, and bolster this feeling of agency.
When you identify the areas that you do not have control in your life—you not only identify areas that you can start to work on building skills around, but more importantly, you can begin to give yourself significant amounts of mindful self-compassion for the things in life that we cannot change. This compassion in and of itself can help us start to re-regulate our nervous system.
Finally, when I’m done sifting through these two areas with folx, we mindfully choose areas that might have most impact.
To go back to my previous examples
If you are someone in a disaster relief zone, there may be 1000 “gold standard” sleep hygiene habits that you haven’t been able to implement recently. As a practitioner, it would be deeply tone-deaf of me to tell you your rest and sleep will improve if you just started going to bed earlier and waking up at the same time every day. While that might help, it is not the most mindful, compassionate, or practical approach. Instead, I might ask you if you had to choose one type of rest or self-care to focus on every single day no matter what else is happening, what habit would feel like the kindest thing you could do for your body? I might ask if there is a project you can work on that gives you a sense of meaning if you wake up in the night and cannot fall back asleep. We’d then have a conversation about how we can work to best protect that self-care for you in the coming months and what obstacles we foresee with carrying that out.
If you are a nightshift nurse and I was sticking to the evidence-based science advice, my first recommendation would be to quit your job because it is too hard on your body in a sustainable way. Again, this advice would be tone-deaf and coming from a completely disconnected place of privilege of not being a nightshift professional. Instead, we might spend some time thoughtfully learning about the top three areas of sleep health and hygiene that would most bolster your high-demand job, and then discuss tactics for monitoring long-term health impacts if you’re planning to stay night-shift long-term.
If you’re someone who is chronically tired and wired and we felt like our work together was too broad to tackle alone, it might be easy and convenient for me to send you to a sleep specialist or a general practitioner who might simply prescribe you some heavy duty sleep aids to get back on track. While I am a huge fan of modern medicine, I also know too much of the science to think that medication alone is a long term solution. Instead, we might spend some time in our sessions making sure that I am the right fit as a support staff, and take a look at all of the other types of support around sleep health to ensure that you have the best, most robust team of people helping you with a complex life-long issue. We might have some thoughtful conversations on which questions to spend time with when you talk to your therapist, doctors, or other support systems so that nobody is missing any important information as you are on your journey back towards a more easeful place.
There is never just “one” solution to Tired & Wired and there is no silver bullet.
Tired & Wired is the culmination of many different variables impacting a nervous system at the same time. The body knows that it’s tired and the body knows that it cannot fall asleep consistently because of some unknown environmental cues.
As we’ve touched on in previous articles this autumn, increasing our compassion practice can be helpful. Reminding ourselves that our nervous systems are complicated and that our lives are complex and that we are doing the best that we can considering the circumstances can go a long way.
Sleep is not our enemy. Sleep doesn’t respond to the “logical” rules of what “should” work each night. Rather, sleep is often a request from our body to listen more deeply than before— to be curious, to be kind, and to be honest about where we can be a bit nicer to ourselves and integrate a bit more rest.
While I am still writing these mindfulness articles with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in mind, please know that even if your circumstances aren’t as “intense,” or “severe,”— you deserve to tend to your tired and wired sensations, too.
I hope you’re all resting as well as can be out there.
With compassion,
DagnyRose
How To Support During Hurricane Helene
While this article certainly pertains to various modes of crisis—writing this article is in direct response the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. I want to underscore that the devastation of the natural disaster in this area is severe even after several weeks of hard work by a dedicated community.
If you are in the area affected by the storm, it’s pretty unlikely that you’re reading this. However, on the off-chance that you are and there are ways you feel that The Art of Rest could be supportive—please feel free to reach out about local resources and we will do our best to connect you. Email us at dagnyrose@theartofrest.me to let us know how we can help.
It’s more likely that if you’re reading this, you’re somewhere slightly removed from this crisis. While being on the ground during this disaster, I’ve recognized that most of the important work and impact is being mitigated by local communities and local mutual aid funds. Check the footnotes for some information on how to support6.
In nervous system work, we often will say words like “safe” or “unsafe” —which may sound dramatic, but the body is more interested in the perception of safety rather than if safety makes “logical” sense.
In the scientific literature we call this ‘sleep pressure’
Depending on the severeity and length of what initally disrupted it AS WELL AS how sensitive our unique bodies are to change
(and this is why good sleep hygiene habits are so important!)
States of curiosity and creativity are often associated with states of “rest & digest” nervous system activation