How to Stop Overthinking Before Sleep: What Studies Suggest
How to stop overthinking before sleep: what studies on rumination, imagery and to-do lists found, and what Hypnagogia-Pass offers a racing mind at bedtime.
Ayse Tara, BSc in Nursing
10/20/20265 min read
Try not to think of a white bear. In a 1987 experiment, psychologist Daniel Wegner asked volunteers to do exactly that for five minutes, and they could not keep the bear out. Afterwards, the volunteers who had tried to suppress it thought about it more than people who were allowed to think about it from the start. Bedtime puts the same request to an overthinking mind.
How to stop overthinking before sleep? Telling an overthinking mind to stop rarely helps, and studies suggest it may help more to give it a specific, absorbing job. Three sleep studies, on rumination, imagery and to-do lists, point the same way, and this article walks through each one and what it does not show.
Key takeaways
Hypnagogia-Pass is our method for the moment you lie down: 30 videos, more than 2,400 minutes in total, a word and a matching picture on a dark screen, no talking, soft background sound. It is something to try, not a treatment.
In a 2009 study of 70 people, those who ruminated more after a stressful speech took longer to fall asleep that night.
In a 2002 study of 41 people with insomnia, an imagery task shortened the time to fall asleep compared with no instructions.
In a 2018 sleep-lab study of 57 young adults, five minutes of writing a to-do list was followed by faster sleep onset than writing about finished tasks.
What overthinking does at bedtime
Researchers call the habit of replaying a worry again and again rumination. In a 2009 study in Psychosomatic Medicine, Peggy Zoccola and colleagues asked 70 people to give a five-minute speech in front of an evaluative panel, then had them wear a wrist activity monitor that night. People who ruminated more, both by habit and about the speech itself, took longer to fall asleep. Neither kind of rumination was linked to how long they slept in total.
The study shows an association after one stressful afternoon in a lab, not a cause, and it says nothing about long-term sleep. It does match what many people describe: the body is ready and the thoughts are not. If your thoughts speed up as the room goes quiet, our guide to how to stop racing thoughts at night and our look at why the mind races at night cover the same pattern from other angles.
Why telling yourself to stop does not help
Trying not to think about something tends to keep it close, as the white bear experiment suggests. The 2002 paper described below builds on ironic control theory, the idea that part of the mind keeps checking for the very thought you are trying to avoid. That is why a firm “stop” can turn the volume up, and why turning off your brain to sleep is so hard to do on command.
Our reading of the studies, not a study result: the ideas below all do the same thing in different ways. They give attention something else to hold, so the worry has less room.
Three ideas with a study behind them
Give the mind a specific job. In the 2002 study by Allison Harvey and Suzanna Payne, 41 people with insomnia were given one of three instructions for a single night: distract yourself with an imagery task, distract yourself in a general way, or no instructions. The imagery group fell asleep faster and had less unwanted pre-sleep thinking than the no-instruction group. General distraction did not make things worse. The authors suggest that the imagery task took up enough “cognitive space” to keep people from returning to their worries. It was one night in a small group, so it is a lead, not proof.
Write the list down. In a 2018 study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Michael Scullin and colleagues had 57 healthy young adults write for five minutes before a night in a sleep lab, either a to-do list for the coming days or a list of tasks they had already finished. The to-do group fell asleep significantly faster, and the more specific the list, the faster. The volunteers were young and healthy, not people with insomnia, so we cannot say how it plays out in an ordinary bedroom. If you are awake right now, this short post has a gentle thing to try.
Picture unrelated things, one by one. Serial diverse imagining, known online as cognitive shuffling, asks you to picture a series of unrelated objects. Our cognitive shuffling article covers what is known about it and what is not. For the survey side of the story, see how common these nights are in what sleep anxiety surveys show.
The catch: every idea asks for effort at 1 a.m.
Each of these needs something from you at the moment you have the least to give: remembering the steps, inventing images, finding a pen in the dark. Meditation and breathing methods ask for the same, a skill to learn and a mind willing to follow instructions. Falling asleep itself is a drift into hypnagogia, which our guide to hypnagogia explains in plain words, not a task to perform.
Our reasoning, not a study result: effort in a mind that is already racing can feed alertness. A method that asks for nothing may suit that mind better than one more thing to get right.
Something to try tonight: what is Hypnagogia-Pass?
Hypnagogia is the drifting, half-lit stretch between waking and sleep. Hypnagogia-Pass is our library of 30 videos, more than 2,400 minutes in total, curated by CantSwitchOff to walk you through the hypnagogic pass. Each session shows a word, then a matching picture, one after another on a dark screen, with no talking and soft background sound. There is nothing to learn, nothing to count and nothing to imagine.
Our reasoning, not a study result: every word and picture is chosen to be unrelated to the one before it, so the mind has nothing to link two in a row and can keep drifting instead of building a story or returning to a worry. You are not asked to stop overthinking. The thoughts simply get nothing to attach to. It is a method, not a treatment, inspired by published research on imagery before sleep that did not examine our videos. Why we built it tells the story, and our introduction to the method explains how it differs from cognitive shuffling. Try Hypnagogia-Pass tonight.
Your how to stop overthinking questions, answered
How can I stop overthinking?
Telling yourself to stop rarely helps, but giving your mind a specific task may. Studies suggest that an imagery task or a five-minute to-do list can shorten the time it takes to fall asleep. The evidence is small and lab-based, so treat each idea as something to try, not a guarantee.
Why do I overthink so much before bed?
Daytime distractions fade at night, so unfinished worries can sound louder. In a 2009 study of 70 people, those who ruminated more after a stressful speech took longer to fall asleep that night. The study shows an association, not a cause, and it cannot tell why some people ruminate more.
Can overthinking make you not sleep?
It can delay sleep. In the 2009 study, rumination predicted a longer time to fall asleep, though not a shorter total sleep time. It describes one night after one stressful afternoon in a lab, so it cannot tell us what happens over weeks or months.
What to do when you can’t sleep because of overthinking?
Try giving your mind something specific and engaging to hold instead of fighting the thoughts. In a 2002 study of 41 people with insomnia, an imagery task shortened the time to fall asleep compared with no instructions. If you are awake right now, this short post has a gentle thing to try.
Is overthinking bad for you?
Overthinking can get in the way of sleep, which is the part these studies cover. In the 2009 study, ruminating after a stressful speech predicted a longer time to fall asleep that night. Whether overthinking affects health more broadly is beyond what these studies show.
Know someone who's awake right now?
If you have a friend you have recently talked with about lying awake with their thoughts, or someone you think needs this information, send them this article. It brings them what the studies suggest, in plain words.
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If trouble sleeping lasts for weeks, or if your thoughts come with other symptoms that worry you, please talk with a doctor. This article is general information, not medical advice, and Hypnagogia-Pass has not been tested in a clinical trial.