Sleep Now - 3.1 - Quiet Inner Noise

So, Kathy, we heard from a lot of people that when they are getting ready to go to bed or when they first lie down, they just can't stop thinking about.

Everything.

Everything. How would you go about quieting that inner noise?

Well, first of all, I think it's so very important to quiet that noise because our system is a biofeedback loop. It's a loop. And so when we think of really stressful things, which is very common when we're kind of trying to quiet down, our brain wants to clear out the things that need to do. We have to worry about this or this. We're trying to clear the deck so we can get the rest we need when we think those stressful thoughts. Oh, he's not going to love me anymore. I'm going to be alone. I ruined everything. Which I have three fingers pointing back to me. There are nights when my brain, the hamsters in my head get really loud and really aggressive. But when we think those things, our primitive brain thinks, oh, my God, I'm going to be abandoned. I'm going to die. Like, all this stuff comes up and it sends fight, flight, freeze chemicals to our body. It's like, danger. Danger, Will Robinson. We're going to amp up the adrenaline, the cortisol, all this is going on. Our body gets really tense because all these chemicals are going in. We're thinking these scary thoughts. And because our body is tense and we have all these adrenaline chemicals, they feed back to our head, which makes those thoughts more intense. It feeds those hamsters, and they're like, oh, my God, I was scared before and now I'm terrified. And that loop can just totally ruin a good night's sleep. So when we can interrupt that cycle, and it absolutely is possible to interrupt that cycle, when we can interrupt it, we can actually change the patterns. Because we do create, whether you believe Law of Attraction or not, a lot of what we focus on, we end up creating either subconsciously or by attracting it, whatever you want to call it. When we build the muscle to gently but firmly say, no, that person is a little bit angry at me. She's been angry before. If, you know, I'm going to tap on the feelings, I'm going to release them. Likely we'll be fine. If not, I have other friends. Like, if we gently calm ourselves, just like we would a child who's had nightmares, and we say, no, it's okay, I understand. You're really scared. I have a lot of compassion, and I want to teach you how to be less afraid. I want to Teach you how to see what's real and what's not. That's such an important muscle to build. And so few of us have ever had that role modeled. We just kind of tough it out in our fear until that friend goes, oh, what are you mad about? Or never want to speak to you again, or you work it through. But there's that part of us that's running wild, the hamsters. And Rick and I talk about taming the hamsters a lot. Because when you tame them, when you build the muscle of saying, hold on, hamsters, I understand you're scared. Let's look at what's real and what's not. Yes, we did say some harsh words with our friend. Is it important to just write down a note that I'm going to talk to her first thing in the morning.

And clean it up?

Clean it up. I didn't really want to say harsh words. Is it true that I'm going to die a horrible, miserable death and I've ruined my entire life and every friend's life and my whole, like, no. You know, right now I'm laying in a gentle, a comfortable bed. I have not. No one's picketing outside my house saying, I'm a terrible person. You know, my cat is still here, whatever it is. And that's one reason I love having either a pet or a stuffed animal. When you're learning this muscle, our primitive brain, which is based when we're very little, you know, a lot of the stories and patterns are based then. Being able to stroke or hold something can be really powerful. And I noticed. I really noticed this during 911 when everybody was, you know, we weren't sure what was going to happen or there were going to be more terrorist strikes. Everyone was, like, terrified. And the news was constant, like, this is horrible. This is horrible. And my cats were sitting with me on the couch, and I looked over and I realized this wasn't affecting them at all. This was not. They were okay. And I could be okay, too. That me getting stressed out and completely caught up in the drama of everything. Horrible things were happening. But me watching it 24 hours a day on the television screen and replaying the fears in my head wasn't serving me or anyone else around me. So we can go ahead.

So what we're going to encourage you to do is remember that in order to sleep differently than you have in the past, you're going to need to interrupt the pattern.

Yes.

And that is a conscious act. And Kathy talked about giving some energy of, no, stop. But we're going to do some tapping here with you, and I'm going to encourage you that as soon as you start into that pattern of thinking about it in the wheel, the hamster wheel that never ends, I'm going to encourage you to stop at that point in the evening and tap on it and to view this as something that. Okay, I'm going to interrupt this pattern. If someone were to look at the pattern of how I go to bed and how I lie there for the first minutes, I'm going to do something different. And by doing something different, we're playing into your biology, we're also playing into your energy, and you're building a skill so that when you want to sleep, you can sleep. Now, that is going to be a different kind of pattern that you're going to come up with. And, you know, it's a bit like some people have a pattern for personal care. Take off the makeup, wash their face, brush their teeth, put on their pajamas, and they're not paying attention to their energetics. And once they get into bed, it's a bit like if you were wearing your office clothes and you crawled into bed, it would feel so.

It'd be hard. Yeah. You still have your office brain on.

Yeah. And I bring my laptop and cuddle.

Up with it, leave it open so the melts can ding at me. Ding, ding, ding, ding.

But energetically, that kind of pattern interrupt is an opportunity to get that out of your system. And one of the reasons that you may be noticing that your mind does this is that it has a tension that it wants to unwind. And you probably, like we talked about before, never learned how to switch gears. And this is about interrupting and switching into a gear toward peace and acceptance. And it's gonna be okay. And now's the time to rest.

Yeah. I just want to add, I think there's three reasons that we have these hamsters on the wheels in our heads. One is just an old habit we haven't learned to say, you know, we have the muscle of worrying. We have the habit of worrying, and we can change that. Tapping, gentle, firm. No more. We're not going to do that. Two, there could be something either a primitive brain or a subconscious wants to figure out. We feel very stuck, and our brain is trying to spin it. And actually, when we can put it aside, like I loved, I shared before, I love to write something down. So the paper's holding it for me. If I get good rest, I often have new insights. And tapping can help there, too. Like, I'm confused about this. I'd like to have more insight. And the third thing is look at your deserving issues. Do you feel like you deserve to feel good? And I recommend Gay Hendricks, the Big Leap. It's a great book, but he talks about this really in ways that Rick and I have always. We've talked about it for a long time, but I like the way he put some things. If you don't think you deserve to get good rest, if you think you don't deserve to have too much abundance, if your day actually went well, you may find those hamsters louder than ever because they're trying to say, oh, that was too much good stuff. We need to bring it down to safe levels. So those are the three reasons, I think, that most of us have those hamsters spinning. And when you're conscious and you start thinking, huh, which of the three reasons is this? It lets you step out of the cage because you're looking at it from the outside. So if you can start saying, which of these does it feel like? And there's no right or wrong. It can be a mixture, too. But you start taming those hamsters and go, hamsters. Okay, you helped all day. Now it's time to sleep. You can make a difference in how you go to bed.

Absolutely. Let's do some tapping on those three.

Yes, absolutely.

Okay.