Paradoxical Intention

Have you ever heard of the idea of “reverse psychology?” This works great with toddlers. If you have something you want the toddler to do, like pick up their toys, just say to them “whatever you do, do NOT pick up your toys!? Please do not, do NOT pick up your toys!” And guess what–they’ll pick up their toys! Works like a charm. I don’t know what it is, but I think it has something to do with the fact that there’s a rebel within all of us.

Well, we have a similar tool to use for sleep. It’s called “paradoxical intention.” Basically you try to trick your brain by doing the thing you’re most afraid of. So let’s say you’re going through a pretty heavy bout of insomnia. You are so afraid that you’ll be awake AGAIN tonight after many nights of restless sleep. You just don’t think you can take another night of tossing and turning.

So here’s what you do: just plan to stay awake. That’s right, you heard me correctly: plan to stay awake and do everything in your power to stay awake. Read books, do chores, organize your mail. Try to stay awake as long as you possibly can. Just make sure the awake stuff is happening somewhere other than your bed (read my post about stimulus control to find out why I make this suggestion).

What this does is remove the performance anxiety of forcing sleep to happen. It gives your mind the much needed break from the PRESSURE you’ve put on it to sleep, sleep, sleep! So give up already! Just embrace the wakefulness! You may find that after a couple hours or minutes of doing this you can’t force yourself to stay awake even if you wanted to. Your eyelids will become heavy and you will become very, very sleepy…

So try it and drop me a line here to let me know how it worked! It’s worked for me and some of my clients–I’m curious to know if it worked for you.