End Overthinking & Sleep Better Tonight!

Welcome back. My name is Danielle Gianni. I'm an anxiety and OCD recovery coach, helping people reach the lifetime recovery stage for any OCD subset so you can have happy life and amazing relationships, just like I've been able to do. Today. I want to talk about how OCD can attach to sleep and how you can start to have better sleep each and every night. So you've probably heard me say that OCD can attach to literally anything. And you might know that OCD attaches to things that are important to us. Well, sleep is one of those really important things so that we can feel good each day. And when we don't get a lot of sleep, we can struggle mentally and emotionally. Now, OCD does cause sleep problems for a lot of people. I'm going to teach you today why and how you can start to make changes so that you are sleeping better. When you struggle with anxiety, you're used to ruminating and worrying in your head, and your brain is used to attaching to evidence that you need to worry, that there's a reason to worry. But the problem is worry doesn't solve the problem. It actually makes it worse. The worry, the rumination and the constant fear actually cause the results that you don't want. So the more you worry about not being able to sleep, the less you're going to sleep. So what's the solution? To stop the worry and stop the rumination around it. Now, a lot of people start to work on this, and because the next few nights of sleep still isn't really good, they think, well, this isn't working. That's not the case. As you work on the anxiety and OCD around sleeping, you're going to notice small changes over time. So don't expect drastic changes in this right away, but be patient with the process, because remember, OCD wants certainty and perfection and you're not going to get that. So you need to allow the process and your brain to be uncertain and imperfect. Now, if this sounds familiar, where during the day you're starting to already worry about, are you going to sleep tonight? What's it going to look like? Am I going to ruminate? And then you're starting to worry about the next day even, well, if I don't sleep tonight, then the next day I'm going to be miserable, I'm not going to be able to go to work, I'm going to lose my job. And then all of a sudden you have all this negative thought spiral of your life going downhill. So part of the problem is, is we're thinking way too far ahead. If it's 10am in the morning, I want you to think about what you're doing in that moment or maybe what you're going to do the next couple of hours to create the day that you want with ocd. We obsess. We obsess about something that may or may not happen. And the problem is, it hasn't even happened yet. Now, I know this sounds easier said than done. I've been there. So what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to take each and every moment to catch yourself worrying or obsessing or ruminating about the topic of sleep. And what you're going to do is you're going to bring yourself back into the present moment. You're going to focus on what's going on in that moment. Now, maybe you're really tired in that moment because you didn't sleep the night before. That's okay. You can notice that you're tired, but I don't want you to focus on that. You notice that you're tired, you yawn, and then you choose what to do next. If you're at work, focus on work. Maybe you need a nap. Maybe you don't have work today, go take a nap. But you're going to focus on what is going on in the present moment. Now, if taking a nap is even hard for you, I want you to focus on trying to do it without any expectations. This is the problem is we have these expectations on things and then we worry that we're not going to meet those expectations. And then if we don't meet the expectations, then our brain thinks that we're proving what we're initially afraid of or what we initially thought. It's called confirmation bias. Our brain is looking for what we already believe. So let's focus on having better beliefs so our brain can start noticing those. And. And then you will get more sleep. It may be slow. We want to make sure that we're noticing the positives just as much as we notice the negatives, if not more. Now, if you have ocd, you're obsessing about sleep. And then the compulsions that you're doing is try to alleviate the discomfort around the thoughts. So you have to recognize what your compulsions are. Are you ruminating about sleep? How much time in the day are you thinking about going to sleep? And you have to stop that compulsion. If you are bring yourself back to the present moment. Now your brain is going to go, well, if I don't Think about this. If I don't plan it, if I don't fix this, I'm never going to sleep. That's just what your brain is telling you. The more you ruminate on sleep, the harder it's going to be to sleep, because you're giving it so much attention. Your cortisol levels are going up, your adrenaline is going up, your rumination is increasing. So then when you decide to go to sleep tonight, you're going to be ruminating and worrying so much that it's hard to go to sleep. So you have to stop those compulsive behaviors. And there may be many other compulsions that we can help you identify around this. You have to stop those compulsive behaviors, focus on the present moment, Let things play out as they will, and 99% of the time, they're gonna play out a lot better than your brain is telling you that they are. But you have to give it space to allow to play out that way, because the more you obsess about it, the more focus it puts on it, the more anxiety you have and the less you're operating mentally and physically in a healthy way. One way to prove this is if you think about a moment where you were just in the present moment, maybe you were with family or friends, you were having fun. We're not thinking about sleep. Think about how you felt in that moment. You probably felt calmer. You weren't worried about it. It just wasn't in your mind. And you've probably felt pretty good. I want you to recognize that in those moments where you're not obsessing about sleep, you're probably not that worried about it. You feel more relaxed, and there's probably more confidence about going to sleep. So you've got to take the pressure off. You've got to stop the rumination and the other compulsions. I have a couple of really good sleep meditations for anxiety and OCD that you can listen to. And that was a game changer for me because they gave my brain something else to focus on that was calming and relaxing and directing my brain in a healthier direction with the right types of words and thoughts, that I was more easily able to go to sleep. I want you to try this for three days straight, really diligently. Whenever you get a thought or a worry about sleep, I want you to respond with, maybe I'm going to sleep, maybe I'm not, who knows? But I'm not going to think about this. And I want you to keep doing that every single time a thought comes into your head about sleep. You may have to do it a thousand times today, but every single time you get a thought, you're going to tell yourself, yep, maybe I'll sleep, maybe I won't. Or fill in the blank with whatever that thought is for you. Maybe it's something else regarding sleep. Maybe it's I'm going to have a nightmare, I'm going to have a bad dream. Whatever the thought is. There's a lot of different thoughts that could come in here, but you're going to respond with, yep, maybe that'll happen, maybe it won't, but I'm not going to give this thought attention. And then you're going to refocus on the present moment with what you're doing. If you're not doing anything, go find something to do. I want you to do this for three full days consistently. Just keep responding in that way and then keep disconnecting from those thoughts and refocusing on the present moment. Then I want you to come back to this video and put in the comments how this worked for you. You're not looking for drastic improvements here. I want you to just do it very diligently and then let me know what types of results that you see, big or small. If you need help with this, check out the link in the description below. My recovery programs are here to help you recover. No matter what anxiety and OCD is attaching to, you can have a life where you sleep well. I hope this video was helpful. We will talk to you very soon.