Should I Wait Until I’m Sleepy to Go to Bed? | Ep 8

The “sleepy rule” is a popular one. But does it always apply?

In this episode I unpack the pros and cons behind waiting until you’re sleepy to go to bed.

If you find yourself thinking:

“Am I sleepy yet?”
“Is this a good time to go to bed?”
“Is this sleepy or just fatigue?”
“What if I’m not sleepy enough?”

This podcast is for you!

I talk about:

• Chasing sleep and what that looks like
• The big idea behind waiting until you’re sleepy to go to bed
• How the brain shifts into “monitoring mode” looking for sleepy
• How it can become an unintentional means of avoidance

At the very end, I share the recommendation l offer most of my clients and why I believe: “There are no rules when it comes to sleep. Only decisions.”

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Full Show Notes & Transcription HERE.

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About Beth Kendall MA, FNTP: 

For decades, Beth struggled with the relentless grip of insomnia. After finally understanding insomnia from a mind-body perspective, she changed her relationship with sleep, and completely recovered. Liberated from the constant worry of not sleeping, she’s on a mission to help others recover as well. Her transformative program Mind. Body. Sleep.™ has been a beacon of light for hundreds of others seeking solace from sleepless nights. 

© 2023 - 2026 Beth Kendall

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Mind. Body. Sleep.® with Beth Kendall is your trusted source for holistic insomnia recovery, blending neuroplasticity, nervous system health, and mind-body coaching to help you finally sleep again.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello and welcome to Mind Body Sleep, the podcast for anyone out there who wants to understand and recover from insomnia using a holistic perspective. I'm Beth Kendall, your host. Let's get started. Hello and welcome. I hope you guys are doing really well. I am recording this at the start of the holiday weekend, September 2023. We're having some really warm weather. It's supposed to get up to 100 this weekend, which of course is my absolute favorite kind of weather. And I got up really early this morning. And right away I thought, you know, why not take the dog to the dog park, right? Beat the heat. It'll probably be wide open. There'll be plenty of parking. And so I did. I was at the dog park by 8 a.m., which is in and of itself kind of amazing. And it was packed. There were dogs everywhere, hardly any parking. Apparently, there's a whole culture of people that go to the dog park before 8 a.m. But this dog park is amazing. I can't believe I didn't even know it existed until just last year. But it's this two-mile stretch of open land that hugs the Mississippi River. So there are hundreds of dogs in there off-leash, running, playing, swimming, and it's just so lush and green and gorgeous. It's pretty much my idea of heaven on earth. So I go there as often as I can and recharge. And I would go there even if I didn't have a dog. I would just go to look at all the other dogs. But it was really fun to experience it at an earlier hour. And I'm continuing to be amazed at how my sleep is still changing and evolving because I really did think that there was no way I would ever be an early morning person. Like I just, I that was sort of like the pinnacle of what I thought could never happen. So it is very curious to be that that seems to be what is happening as I enjoy my mornings more and more. So today I am talking all about the sleepy rule. Okay, because one of the most common questions I get asked by my students is when is it okay to let myself fall asleep at night? In other words, when should I go to bed? And a lot of times this question comes from folks who have been told to only go to bed when they feel sleepy. This is a well-known guideline in the realm of CBTI, which is cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. But I don't see this as a cut and dried rule. So that's what I'm going to expand on in today's episode. And of course, this is such an understandable question because insomnia, in my view, is essentially a shift in your relationship to sleep from one of effortlessness to one of applying effort. People who don't have insomnia generally don't think too much about this, right? There's no analysis about when to go to bed or measurement of how sleepy you are or anything like that. You just go to bed whenever you feel like it, which is exactly what I do now. But I remember very well trying really hard to create these perfect sleep conditions. So in this episode, I want to break down where I think this advice can be helpful and where it can be not as helpful. And at the very end, I'll share what I usually tell my clients when they ask me this question. Let's talk about where it can be helpful first. So there are a couple of reasons why waiting until you're sleepy to go to bed can be a useful guide. And they center mainly around the patterns of chasing or protecting sleep. And by chasing sleep, I'm talking about behaviors like spending large quantities of time in bed hoping to get a few hours or trying to sleep at random times in random places during the day because you feel like it's the only time you can get some sleep. And you know, sleep is a lot like unrequited love, right? The harder you chase it, the more elusive it becomes. I was really all over the map chasing sleep when I was going through it. I used to spend 10 or 11 hours in bed just hoping I could sleep for half of that, because I looked at it like I was increasing my odds of sleep by giving myself more opportunity for it to happen. And I think also the more time I had to sleep, the less pressure I felt for it to happen. But then it just evolved into weirder and weirder time frames and circumstances. And I was just affirming my brain's perception that sleep was something really hard that I had to chase to have. At the time, I didn't have access to anyone who was thinking about sleep in the way I currently do. And I think in the absence of helpful information, the brain will naturally start to create its own storyline about what you need to be able to sleep, which is exactly what my brain did. I knew somehow that chasing sleep couldn't be good or certainly normal because I didn't see anyone else doing it. But I was also on the hamster wheel of trying more and more things because I thought my ability to sleep was somehow impaired. Okay, so back to the idea of being sleepy before you go to bed. The premise behind this advice is to maximize sleep drive and create a ramp into sleep that allows you to actually sleep once you go to bed. And this makes sense because if you're starting to engage in sleep behaviors that revolve around chasing sleep, then that's gonna create a lot of time in bed trying to sleep, which only leads to more frustration and struggle, right? Because sleep is passive. So this can be a helpful behavioral approach for some people, particularly those who are spending huge amounts of time in bed. And I think the feeling of sleepiness is just a delicious feeling to have before bed. So there is some merit to this guideline, but not surprisingly, I also find there are a few pitfalls with this advice. And I think the main thing is that it can become a way that we try to control sleep. So we're continuing in the orientation of sleep as something you do versus something that happens. And this is really where things get dicey. Because when we start trying to create conditions conducive for sleep, not only can the brain then interpret sleep as something we need to prepare for, but it will often go into monitoring mode to see if the preparations are working. And by monitoring, I'm talking about a hyper-vigilant state of assessing. So this would be thoughts like Am I sleepy yet? Is this sleepy enough? Is this going to work? Is this sleepiness or fatigue? The brain stays on alert, monitoring for sleepy, which creates the paradoxical effect of less sleepiness. Now, another way I see the sleepy rule sort of backfire is that it's used as a means of avoiding whatever it is we don't want to feel when we go to bed. And this is different for everyone. Humans by nature seek pleasure and avoid pain. So if you're noticing that you're almost sabotaging your sleep, then it's likely because there's some feeling you're wanting to avoid. In the context of sleepiness, we unconsciously hope that sleepiness will override whatever difficult sensations are waiting for us when we go to bed. And again, I did this my whole life. And I think it's one of the main reasons I became such a night owl. I didn't want to feel the loneliness I felt around not being able to sleep when I went to bed at night. I've also seen this happen for people who have a pattern of dread around waking up. They will avoid going to bed to extend the feeling associated with getting up, but they don't really understand why they're doing it. So those are the pros and cons around going to bed only when you're sleepy. I'm typically not a big fan of this guideline because I usually see it turn into a rule. And in my view, there are no rules when it comes to sleep, only decisions. Trying to put rules onto sleep is like trying to put rules onto breathing or pumping blood, right? But we can decide how we want to influence our sleep. So sometimes that's making a decision to get up earlier or a decision to go to bed later. But ultimately, sleep is an effortless process that doesn't require rules. So if you're wondering when you should go to bed at night, the advice I always give my clients is if you're not in the pattern of chasing sleep, then go to bed when you feel like it. Or if it's helpful, you can use the guideline of when you went to bed before you had insomnia. If you've been awake during the day, you have everything you need to be able to sleep at night. Not everyone feels sleepy before they go to bed and they still sleep. Sometimes I feel sleepy and sometimes I don't. Either way, I sleep. This is the Mind Body Sleep Podcast. I'm Beth Kendall. I'll see you next time. Thanks for being here today. If you love what you heard on today's episode, don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe to the podcast. And if you need more support with your sleep, join me in the Mind Body Sleep Mentorship. This three month one on one program will transform your relationship with sleep so you can get back to living the life that you love free from the fear of not sleeping. Head on over to bethkendall.com for more details. I'll see you next time.