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When you can’t sleep, the clock can seem to be taunting you. “At least I’m getting seven hours,” you might think as you lie down, but if you’re still awake an hour later, then you’re only getting six hours, and six isn’t a lot. And if you’re still not tired, then it’s going to be less than six, and eventually you’re just lying in bed thinking about how screwed you’re going to be in the morning.
If this sounds familiar, it’s not just you. Sleep scientists have long recognized the idea of “losing sleep over losing sleep,” and it’s a well-known factor that can contribute to insomnia. It’s not necessarily the cause of your sleep problems, but it can make them worse. For example, say you have some minor issue that makes it hard to sleep. You get into a cycle of stressing out over the clock at night, getting poor sleep, and then being tired the next day. Then you begin to dread bedtime, because you know it’s going to happen all over again.
Before you know it, you may be taking medications to help you sleep, which have their own health risks (nightly Benadryl is not good for you). A 2023 study found that “time-monitoring behavior,” as they called clock-watching, may be driving people to take medications they wouldn’t otherwise need. So what can you do instead? Here’s what sleep experts recommend.
Hide the clock
One of the authors of that study says that it can help to promise yourself you won’t look at the time. Turn the clock around, cover the display, or if you use your phone to check the time, put it out of reach. If the alarm hasn’t gone off yet, it’s still nighttime, and that’s all you really need to know.
Without the clock, you might worry that you don’t know if you’re getting enough sleep or not. But even with the clock, you aren’t necessarily counting the hours accurately. Those hours you think you’re fully awake, you’re often drifting in and out of sleep, and getting more of it than you think you are.
What do you think so far?
If you sleep with a watch or fitness tracker that tracks your sleep, only pay attention to the data if it’s helping you. If you check your data in the morning and think “hm, I got more sleep than I realized,” that’s reassuring. But if checking the data ends up adding to your anxiety, try to get out of the habit of checking the app. Trackers aren’t always 100% accurate anyway, and you may feel more tired if you think you slept poorly, even if your sleep was actually OK. Also consider these tips on how to use sleep tracking data more healthily.
Focus on relaxing
Here’s a reassuring thought for those late nights: relaxation, even if you’re awake, is almost as good as sleep. Close your eyes and calm your mind, and most importantly, tell yourself that this is exactly what your body needs right now. Relaxing this way may give you some of the benefits of meditation, and there’s even a hypothesis that meditation gives you some of the benefits of sleep. Whether it’s true or not, it’s a comforting thought when you’re lying awake in the middle of the night.
And if you need one more reason to stop worrying, remember that relaxation is one of the best ways to get to sleep—so whether you fall asleep or not, you’re helping your body and brain by finding a restful way to spend the remaining hours of the night.
