Why We Can’t Sleep: Insomnia, Anxiety, & the Call to Rest Well with Dr. Benjamin Long

Sleep is essential to our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being—yet for so many people, bedtime is filled with restlessness, anxiety, and frustration. In this episode of The Daring Well Podcast, Rita Mercer is joined by Dr. Benjamin Long, sleep medicine physician, seminary student, and creator of the Sleep Habits Journal, for a powerful conversation on why insomnia happens and how we can respond with compassion instead of self-blame.

Dr. Long explains the science behind insomnia, including how stress, burnout, and unhelpful sleep habits keep the nervous system stuck in fight-or-flight mode. Together, Rita and Dr. Long explore why forcing sleep often backfires, how anxiety becomes conditioned to the bedroom, and what it means to “cease” before bed in a culture that glorifies productivity.

This episode also weaves in faith-based practices, including prayer, reflection, and the Prayer of Examen, showing how spiritual rhythms can calm the nervous system and restore a sense of safety at night. Listeners will walk away with practical tools, deeper understanding, and renewed permission to rest well—without guilt or striving.

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1. Why We Can’t Sleep: Understanding Insomnia Without Shame

Dr. Long breaks down what insomnia really is, including predisposing, precipitating, and perpetuating factors. This segment helps listeners reframe sleep struggles with compassion and clarity instead of frustration.

2. Anxiety, Burnout, & the Nervous System at Night

This section explores how stress and overthinking activate the nervous system and interfere with sleep. Rita and Dr. Long discuss why high achievers and caregivers are especially vulnerable to restless nights.

3. Sleepless Night Rules: What Helps (And What Hurts)

Dr. Long shares practical sleep strategies inspired by CBT-I, explaining why forcing sleep, clock-watching, and long naps can worsen insomnia. Listeners learn how to gently retrain their brains for rest.

4. Breaking the Cycle: Worry Time, Doomscrolling, & Boundaries

This segment addresses common sleep disruptors like racing thoughts and nighttime scrolling. Dr. Long offers simple tools such as worry time, journaling, and technology boundaries to support calmer nights.

5. The Call to Rest Well: Faith, Trust, & Sacred Sleep

The episode closes with a reflective conversation on faith, prayer, and rest as acts of trust. Dr. Long shares how spiritual practices can transform sleepless nights into moments of connection and peace.

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Connect 

Sleep Habits Journal & Sleep Resources by Dr. Benjamin Long

https://thewholeheartedmd.com/sleep-habits-journal/

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Transcript

00:00

Doctor Longʼs Journey

Welcome to The Daring Well Podcast with Rita Mercer.

Because over and over again, we found that, regardless of what's causing your insomnia, coming back to those thoughts and behaviors tends to be the common point to help you and is an essential tool set that you need in order to address your insomnia.

Welcome, Dr. Benjamin Long. Thank you so much for joining The Daring Well Podcast.

Dr. Long, for all of our listeners today, Dr. Long, he's a sleep doctor by day, and he's a seminary student by night.

So I'm excited for him to share from the faith perspective, his integration of theology and sleep. Dr. Long is also the author of Sleep Habits Journal.

It talks about different ways of practices and prayers and devotions, so you can ease sleepless nights. He lives in San Antonio, Texas, with his wife and his son and his dog, Rolo. Did I say that name correctly?

You did.

Awesome.

Well, all right, wellness listeners, I'm excited for you to hear more from Dr. Long. All right, let's jump in today's episode.

So before we get in to the episode today about faith and sleep, can you share more about your backstory? So what inspired you to kind of go down this deep dive of looking at the Bible and how it intersects with faith?

Yeah, I'm so happy to be here. That's a great question. I think faith has always been an integral part of my life.

I grew up a preacher's kid in Southern Baptist Church in Georgia. And so every time the doors were open at church, then I was at church. So that is very core to who I am.

And then my grandfather was a pediatrician in Columbus, Georgia for a long time. And so that kind of, I tell a lot of people, I kind of just like take my dad and my grandpa and just kind of mush them together.

And that's like where I feel like my career has taken me. And so I knew from a very young age, I wanted to go into medicine and got through my medical training in medical school and residency.

And towards the end of that, I happened upon a sleep medicine rotation and I just fell in love.

It just clicked and I really enjoyed the opportunity to walk with families, particularly for children who are experiencing sleep issues and really giving them the tools that they need to kind of help their sleep move in the right direction.

But in sleep medicine, I'm certified for all ages. And so one of the kind of quick passions that I developed in my training was for insomnia and for my adult patients.

And as I was accompanying people in their journeys with sleepless nights, I noticed that there felt like some kind of a disconnect. And one of the first places that I turned to was my faith.

And I got curious about, does the Bible really say anything about sleep? And it turns out it does. And that just set me on this long journey that I'm walking.

3:22

Sleepless Night Rules

Cool, cool.

And when we think about the book, so the Sleep Habits Journal, when did you write that? Again, was there any inspiration that inspired you to write the book? Can you share about the book?

Just a little bit.

For sure, absolutely.

I think as I was continuing down this road, I kept on seeing so many similarities between what I was learning and how to manage insomnia, and then what I was learning in the Bible, and kind of what the Bible has to say about sleep and sleeplessness.

There are certainly differences there too, but I just saw this overlap that really inspired me to write the journal, which led into formulating the sleepless night rules.

And if you're familiar with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia, it sounds a lot like the Stimulus Control instructions, which is inspired by that. But I like to say it's oriented toward a Christian worldview.

So the sleepless night rules, essentially if you are facing sleeplessness, you can't fall asleep, you're in bed, and you're wide awake, it's kind of like, what do I do now?

And so kind of the step before that is not going to bed until you're actually feeling sleepy. And I, in the book, I say cease before bed, because for a lot of people, that's a whole barrier for some individuals.

It's just we're so busy and feel the need to be so productive and there's so much stuff going on our days that we don't have this firm line between I need to stop for my day and I need to start preparing for bed.

So some people are like, I'll get to bed whenever everything kind of gets done. So that's one hurdle for some people. So just ceasing, waiting till you're still actually feeling sleepy to lay down in bed.

When you lie down in bed, if you're not able to fall asleep, then get out of bed, rise out of bed. And that's a really another kind of hurdle to jump because people are like, I'm trying to sleep.

So why would I get out of my bed if I can't fall asleep? And then when you're out of bed, kind of waiting to feel sleepy again, but that Christian worldview kind of comes in where I invite people to connect with God.

And that's really the center and the meat of the sleepless night rules is, hey, I can put my sleep in this night before God, and I know that he cares for me, he cares for my sleep, and he can kind of turn this toward the good.

And so once you lie down, you repeat these steps until they're kind of working for you. And then the last step is resisting sleeping in and taking naps.

I love my Sunday naps. I love after church coming home and getting a nap.

Yeah, and everyone, they're like, oh my gosh, don't take away my naps. That's how I survive kind of a thing.

And so in the book, I definitely give guardrails, and the problem, the beautiful thing, but also the problem with sleep problems is it's so varied. And everyone's situation is so unique.

And that's what I love about getting a sleep history and getting to know someone's story and what's going on.

Because, you know, even if it's kind of the same problem, like maybe two people are taking naps and that's kind of taking away their sleep pressure from being able to fall asleep, sometimes just the other things that are going on in their life kind

of shade that differently. And I love just being able to kind of dig into that story and figure out, hey, what's going to be the best way forward for you compared to you?

Because there are some people that I'm like, no, we need, it sounds like we need to just take away naps all together. And then there are some people that I'm like, hey, let's just do a short little power nap.

Because there's research that shows if you take a shorter nap on the scale of maybe like 15 to 20 minutes, then that helps you to get a little bit of that refreshing boost from the nap without interrupting your ability to fall asleep later that

night. night.

7:09

Understanding Insomnia

Cool.

I like some of those sleepless night rules. Can you define insomnia? I think some people don't know what that clinical definition of insomnia is and when they need to seek out support.

Absolutely.

When we think about insomnia, we know that there are predisposing factors and they're gonna be precipitating factors and then perpetuating. So I tell my patients all the time to live is to experience precipitating factors.

Like you're gonna have stressors that are going to create barriers between you and good sleep. And so when we're talking about diagnosing chronic insomnia, that is when it is persisting.

And oftentimes you have adopted behaviors that work in the short run, but then actually are continuing your insomnia. So taking really long naps is actually one of those perpetuating factors that I address in the book.

So the clinical diagnosis would be if you are unable to fall asleep, whether that's at the beginning of the night or in the middle of the night, within about 30 minutes of your head hitting the pillow.

Or if over the entire night, whether it's both falling asleep and waking up, you're having difficulty maintaining that sleep too.

And we used to kind of split those apart into different things that are causing insomnia, but then we're kind of in an age of lumping that now as the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. And so now we just have the big umbrella of chronic insomnia.

Because over and over again, we found that regardless of what's causing your insomnia, coming back to those thoughts and behaviors tends to be the common point to help you and is an essential tool set that you need in order to address your insomnia.

But certainly, if I have a problem with alcohol or other substances, or I'm a child, and I'm like, I don't want to go to sleep, and I keep on doing the curtain calls and coming out like, Mom, I'm not tired.

You know, those are two very different insomnias. And so then you kind of get into the weeds of finding out and fine-tuning the plans for your specific needs.

Yeah, yeah, you kind of hit on some points that I was curious about too of thinking about the barriers to sleep or some unhealthy habits, unhealthy barriers, unhealthy habits. So what would you say when you think about ways?

So yes, I like the one about ceasing. So thinking about the unwind, I call it the wind downtime. So I tell clients when I see them in my practice, like the hour, two hours, even up to max three hours, like, what are you doing?

How are you starting to wind down your body and your mind to prepare for bed? So think about what are some ideas that people can do, or what are those things that they're doing?

So maybe it's the blue light, maybe it's watching a horror movie right before they go to bed, or CSI. Like, what are some unhealthy habits or barriers that impact our sleep? So you talk about the alcohol as well.

Right, yeah, I 100% am like, do not watch Stranger Things before bed, because you're going to get to that end of something like, oh, maybe one more episode, let me see what happens, or, you know, those kinds of TV shows.

There are an array of barriers that can occur, but some common ones, I like to break it down into almost like profiles or archetypes. A big one that we're talking about right now is the midnight mechanic, is what I call it.

And so that's the person who, I've got so many stuff on my plate that I just like sleep is not a priority. Or to kind of like a farther extent, this used to be more common.

It's, I think, slowly kind of going away, but it's that I'll sleep when I'm dead kind of approach.

There are definitely still people who have that mindset and have that approach to things, and then unfortunately pay the cost for that with their bodies 20, 30 years down the road. That's just like that.

The idea of spending a third of your life asleep horrifies them, and they're like, I need to achieve all these things.

And so that's where this really interesting thing coming into the intersection of Christian theology and spirituality and the sleepless night rules coming together, because we know, hey, yes, I'm not a machine.

People expect their bodies to be like a computer, and I hit the off button, and then I should be able to turn off. You're like, that would be so nice.

I would make so much money if I could just be like, oh, hey, here's this easy pill that just like turns everything off.

And oftentimes, people expect coming to see me as a sleep doctor that they're going to get a pill, and they're really surprised when I'm like, actually, the pill is not an answer. We got to get to the root of the problem.

At once, it's like exactly that. Minimum of about 20 minutes, 30 minutes. Everyone's different, so some people need a longer time to wind down, and that's totally OK.

But having an established bedtime, that's one thing that if someone comes in and they're giving me an answer of, sometimes I go to bed at 9, sometimes 10 o'clock, and then maybe on the weekends might be 1130, and I'm like, nope, let's give me an hour

and a minute exactly that this is going to be my bedtime. And that doesn't have to mean I'm asleep at that time.

That is, I have turned everything off, I have done my full routine, everything's ready for tomorrow, and I'm just in my bedroom quietly waiting to start feeling sleepy.

And so then once you kind of hit that, then it's like you have that anchor that we're trying to kind of get to.

And I think a lot of times people can kind of yo-yo with their bedtime because it's so if you experience insomnia, there are some times where you're sleepy at 8 o'clock, and there are some times you're not sleepy until midnight.

And so I think that really frustrates people, and that kind of works against establishing a healthy bedtime. And so that's why I'm like, don't put too much pressure on yourself.

So just give yourself, this is the time that I'm going to shut everything down. And then really then it invites that time where you can say prayers or read your Bible before bedtime or connect with God.

And so often in our crazy modern culture, we just don't have time in our day for that. And I know a lot of faith traditions, they love their morning, quiet time, devotional time reading, which is great. Don't want to take that away from you.

But this is an opportunity where that might just fit better into your day in this season by kind of doing that around bedtime. So the Midnight Mechanic, that's definitely one. And then a big one is the Overthinker, is a common one I see as well.

This can, I sometimes divide those up between the Overthinker who thinks about everything that's happened in the past and then the Clock Watcher who's thinking about my night to night as well as everything in the tomorrow.

Of course, everyone can be multiple of these profiles, things, you know, this is just kind of arbitrary a little bit, but definitely there's something to people who it's just I'm thinking about everything that went wrong today, everything that's

going to go wrong. If I don't get enough sleep tomorrow, I've got all this kind of stressful stuff.

And a real simple thing for people who are kind of worriers or overthink about that is actually to establish a worry time, which sounds really counterintuitive.

Tell me about that, I like that.

Yeah, yeah. People might tell them that they're like, you want me to plan my worrying? That sounds so counterintuitive.

But the purpose of this is one, is to disconnect your worry from being associated with your bedroom.

Because when we're talking psychologically about the sleepless night rules, then one of the reasons that we say actually getting out of bed is because over years and years and years of tossing and turning, getting frustrated and having this difficult

experience falling asleep, the bedroom has become associated with frustration and wakefulness. And so you can get what's called a conditioned arousal, where I can feel super sleepy on my couch.

And then the minute I either walk into my bedroom or lay down in my bed, then all of a sudden I feel wide awake. There's a theory that part of that reason is that conditioned arousal.

I've got a good example of that.

Yeah, disconnect that.

Yeah, I've got a good example of that. So when I think about when I was in grad school, I would stay up late working on papers. And so I would put my laptop on my bed, crisscross applesauce and just sit in the bed.

And then I'm like, I'm starting to condition my body and my mind to associate this bed as my work time. And I'm like, no, I've got to separate this. I've got to do all my work in a different room.

So when I come to my bed, it's my sanctuary. So yeah, that's a really good one. All right, good one, good one.

And so to schedule worry time, I tell people, don't do it in your bedroom for that same reason.

Do it at a different time. And then before that, that bedtime too. So either in your evening, sometime between dinner and bedtime, or some other time during your day.

And so what happens when you schedule your worry time, then oftentimes your worries start to increase. And so people come to me on the increase and they're like, doc, it's not working. If anything, this is making me worry more.

And I'm like, keep doing it, because eventually we're going to kind of get to that hump and come over. But the beauty of once you are practicing the worry time is when you're outside of your worry time, then you say, OK, I'm worrying about something.

I will write this down tomorrow at worry time. And that doesn't magically fix the worries.

But with practice and doing that over and over, then you're kind of creating this muscle where you're able to like slowly, you know, if you're thinking about your worries over a 24-hour period, slowly you're going to be able to compress them down to

that worry time. And then you find yourself in worry time where it's kind of like, oh, these things that have popped in my head, they either aren't coming back to my head or they're not important.

And that's one expectation I kind of set for people is, if it's really important and it's an important worry, you're going to think about it at worry time.

So, you know, if you're starting to worry about forgetting what you're worrying about, then we're getting into a weird cycle there kind of a thing.

I've had clients say that too. Yep.

And so then once they get over that hump, then they find themselves able to kind of then get all of their worries out sufficiently in worry time.

And then when they're at that point that I'm saying, hey, then you can use this time to plan, you know, like if your worries are realistic things that you need to kind of be working on or something like that, get all your worries out on a page, and

Yeah, I love that thinking about it from a mindfulness perspective of always helping clients to compartmentalize.

And so because everything doesn't have to like permeate your whole day, your life, your whole being. And so I like that idea, like almost like putting it into a pretty little box. Yeah, we're not going to worry about that.

We're going to make a note of it, and we're going to come back to it. Because you said, like you said, I have had people say that, don't want to forget about it. And so I got to keep worrying about it.

What's where the anxiety comes in. But yeah, I love the anxiety, the worry timer to help with that. So that was the over thinker.

You also talk about the clock watcher. I'm a clock watcher. I wake up in the middle of the night.

I'm like, oh man, it's 3 o'clock. And so I got that menopause thing where I'm like, waking up. Why do I get 3 o'clock?

And I'm like, and so I do what you said. I get up because I'm like, okay, this bed is not forcing myself to stay here is making it worse. So I get up and do a stretch, get up and get a drink.

And I find that my body is ready to wind back down. Tell me about the clock watcher and the doom scroller. You kind of already alluded to it a little bit too.

Absolutely.

So the clock watcher, that's the person who it can be that you are that chronic, oh my gosh, if I fall asleep now, then I'll have seven hours of sleep. Oh, now I'll have six hours. Now I have five hours.

So if you find yourself in that mindset, then that's just like really one of the practical things is find a way to get the clock away.

So actually removing the clock, putting something over it, if it's your phone, putting it in another room or something of that nature. To actually not have that anxiety that's then kind of perpetuating things. So exactly what you are already doing.

If I'm not feeling sleepy, just getting out of my bed and kind of waiting until I'm feeling sleepy, instead of that chronic, I'm just watching the time slip away because then that, you know, then oddly enough, worsens your insomnia and kind of

creates its own spiral as well. And then for the worries about tomorrow, that's the same kind of thing. You can try to, you know, compartmentalize that to your, your worry time.

There are some people that it's just like more of their to-do lists, especially when I am speaking with men. A lot of times they don't want to hear words like catastrophizing or anxiety or worries or stuff like that.

And so, but then when I asked them, tell me what's on your to-do list, then they're like, oh, I have 30 things that are constantly going through my mind and I'm always trying to keep them. And I'm like, yeah, that's called anxiety.

We're trying to ease into that a little bit. And so sometimes it really is just writing it down. And so there are some people who they don't necessarily need to have that scheduled worry time.

There are some people it's just like, oh, I've got this thing tomorrow and I just need to offload it.

So even if that's just you are writing that down on kind of like a little notepad or in your Sleep Habits Journal, then that's something that you can kind of look back to tomorrow. So that way you kind of don't forget it. That is kind of one thing.

And it's like if you find yourself intermittently doing that and you're you're noticing an improvement, then great. But then if it's like, no matter how much I'm writing down my worries, my worries are still here.

That's usually when I'm telling people to go over to the worry time.

21:20

Digital Habits Light

And then for the doom scroller, I mean, that's so many of us, you know, just lying in bed on my phone, going through kind of social media. The biggest thing here I usually just talk about is, you know, thinking about habits.

If we break down the basic steps of a habit, you have some kind of cue that, you know, is going to signal you to start your behavior, behavior itself, and then you get some kind of reward.

And so obviously, people who have developed social media and technology, they have hijacked that system. So you're getting all those little dopamine hits. So that way, you continue to just scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll.

And the real big issue with that, that I often talk about is, the algorithm is just as likely to serve up an adorable little cute kitten, and then something really scary, traumatic, that is happening as well.

And so with that unpredictability, you could find yourself where your fight or flight has kind of turned on, and then I am nowhere near sleepy. So really, I talked to people about how can we find ways to just move the phone in a different place.

And sometimes then that comes down to kind of the opposite thing for the clock watcher, where they are like, but I use my phone as my clock, and I am like, okay, go to Walmart, buy a $3 analog clock, and make that your alarm, and use that instead of

your phone. So that way, your phone is physically not in the room, it is somewhere else.

Oftentimes, you can even just create like a little box or a little something where, take this from John Mark Comber, who talks about kind of putting your or parenting your phone and putting it to bed.

So just like your kid is going to have a bedtime, treat your phone like a child. And it's like, okay, it is, you know, my bedtime is 930. Oh, it's eight o'clock.

It's time for my phone to go to bed. And so then I go and I turn that off and I put that in a box.

That's not necessarily going to work for everybody in every season of life kind of a thing, but definitely finding tangible ways to separate yourself from your phone can be really useful for those doom scrollers.

Heck yeah. I like those ideas. Those are super cool.

The idea to have just like writing it down, like you said, the journal that you have, just to mentally dump. And so just kind of getting it, I think just distancing yourself from your thoughts by putting it on paper.

One, you won't have to worry about forgetting it, but just like distancing yourself from those thoughts helps to free up some more mental space. And so when you're like, oh, I'm so anxious, I'm worried about everything.

Like that, that'll help you to free up some mental space. The other thing I thought about too, when you were talking the fight or flight mode, people sometimes will wake up in that anxious fight or flight mode.

And so I don't know if you can speak to anything about that, about like how to help them to.

So for me, I personally believe, so which is why you're the specialist, I'd love to hear you, but for me, I believe like it starts with not how we wake up, but how we go to sleep. How do we end the day? How do we wind down?

Because that kind of carries into our unconscious thoughts. And then how we're waking up in this fight or flight mode. So I didn't know if you had any thoughts about this waking up in this fight or flight mode.

Yeah, definitely have to get back to what is the root problem.

And obviously kind of getting into the whole context.

Because if I'm someone who has experienced trauma and having traumatic nightmares, that's going to be a very different approach compared to, I've had people who they have stress at work, and then they're dreaming about their stress at work.

And then they're not dealing with their stress in any way because they're so busy in their day. They don't have time to kind of process that. So those are two very different people.

And so getting that good history and understanding kind of what's going on, that's going to take me in a couple of different directions.

But absolutely, like what you are, you know, filling up yourself with during the day, if you don't have that time to process that, it is so often going to bleed into your dreaming, your sleep, and how well you're sleeping and things of that nature.

And that's why I really love in the journal, you know, trying to find ways to root people into connecting with God in order to invite God into that process of reflecting on what's going on in your day.

One of the practices is called the Prayer of Examen, not an exam like a school. So if anyone has like school, you know, kind of things, don't worry, it's not that.

Examen comes from when the like ancient scales and they kind of are trying to see if something is the right weight. The examen is that thing in the middle that shows that these two things are the same weight.

And so it's really more of a contemplative process to invite God to kind of reorient how you are thinking about your day.

So it's a practice where you are inviting God into this time with you and asking the spirit to realign as you're going through your day and just thinking about, in this moment, what, how close did I feel to God? How farther away did I feel from God?

And it's oftentimes for us as Americans, we want to go into, did I, was I doing right? Was I doing the good thing? You know, like we want to judge ourselves in those things.

And so like this is not a time for, you know, feedback like you would think of from a boss to giving an employee their feedback. But this is more of an in time to invite God to transform how you are thinking about their perspective on your day.

And then, you know, you then you'll be really surprised where you get to these moments, then all of a sudden, you're starting to think about, you know, oh, you know, I spoke this way to this person, but let me think about how God sees that person.

Or you might find yourself, you know, forgetting that you had this delicious sandwich at lunch and you felt it like the joy in your body kind of a thing, but then the stress of the rest of the day you forgot about that.

So it helps you to kind of, in a way, just kind of bring it back to the middle and try to realign how you're thinking about things.

Yeah, that's good. That's good, Dr. Long.

I think of a couple different examples with the sleep.

I think of, so me personally, I, there's times that I feel like I can't get to sleep in my mind, just like, so I go into the over-thinker archetype, but I will pray the scripture, which it's just a portion of the scripture, but it talks about, he

gives his beloved rest. And I promise you, it's like a magic wine, just literally, even though magic is not associated with God, but I'm just like, it literally just, next thing you know, I'm out like a light without no medicine.

So I think that's really fun. I use that scripture and that works.

I get thinking about too, like the unwind process, the wind down process of like saying, out of the busyness of the day, I'm paraphrasing, but out of the busyness of the day flows the issues of life.

And so kind of like allowing myself to intentionally do that unwind step, that wind down step, so that I'm not just jumping in the bed after I've had so much on my mind and not like settling my heart with prayer, settling my heart with scripture.

There's times I will literally just listen to the audio Bible before I get into bed. So that's part of my wind down routine. And so I love that you talk about the archetype.

And I guess I want to plug for you the quiz. So but for people that's wanting to jump into like understanding like their sleep patterns, I'm sure they could probably quickly put a pin in what their archetype is.

But I think even the sleep quiz that you have on your website. So do you want to share a bit about the website as we start to wrap up today?

Yeah, absolutely. So I have my personal website is the wholeheartedmd.com. And on there I have the nighttime thinker quiz.

I think the easiest way to get to it will probably be through the show notes here for anyone who's listening here or otherwise my link in bio in the Instagram.

And really it's just to kind of help find that relevant thing that's going to be helpful for you. Because what works for that over thinker is not going to be what the Midnight Mechanic needs to hear.

So it kind of sorts you into one of those common archetypes. And like I said, people can be multiple archetypes at multiple different times. And there's a lot of nuance.

So sometimes these attempts to categorize are not neat. But it at least points you to, once you kind of go through that quiz, then it has, hey, here are some activities that you can try.

There's like a little fun part that like, here are some famous people who I think might be these specific archetypes. And then it also points you to the Sleep Habits Journal. These specific activities are going to be really helpful for you.

And we were really intentional about when we were, I was writing this Sleep Habits Journal in collaboration with my editor and publisher and thinking about how can we make this really accessible to people.

And so the nice thing about it is you don't have to read a whole chapter and then wait for the questions at the end. Each activity is like bite-sized, that's designed to help you kind of move down your journey in your sleepless night.

And so if you're like, hey, I'm having a big difficulty actually just getting out of bed. Like I know I need to do it. I know I don't need to toss and turn, but there's that voice in my head that's like, what if I'm about to fall asleep?

And so you can go to that rise section in the journal, and then all of the activities in that section are going to help you with that specific step. So it's very accessible and very adaptable to your specific situation.

Sweet. Awesome. That's, that's super cool.

So really quickly, I'd love for you to share about your time in Alaska. So when I think about like mood and how it's affected by our seasonal. So a lot of people will say, I watched a TikTok video, and now I have seasonal affective disorder.

I'm like, first of all, don't give yourself a diagnosis that a clinical person has not assessed for you. But I think there's a lot to be said about a light and mood and circadian rhythms.

And so I don't know if you could speak about that one from personally living in Alaska. Or like how was that like having so much daylight and then are having the absence of so much daylight. So can you speak more about circadian rhythms and mood?

Yeah, it is a great embodied experience of just like feast and famine.

Because you get all this amazing sunlight in the summer and the culture of the street where we lived on. Someone would have like a fire and we'd pull up a chair and be talking. And then all of a sudden look down at our watch and like, oh, it's 2 a.m.

But it feels like it's like 6 p.m. Because the light's still out. We should all go to bed right now.

To the total flip side where in the kind of height of it in the winter, at least in Anchorage where I lived, you would go to work in darkness and then the sun's only up for maybe about like four or five hours to like the full extent and then go home

in darkness. And so definitely in that kind of environment, people are very often talking about bright light therapy and making sure that you're utilizing that so that way you're getting the light that you need.

And I definitely saw a huge uptick in my referrals for sleep problems around that kind of midwinter point as well. So we know that there is definitely a connection there, even more so with daylight savings.

We've talked to most sleep doctors, most of us hate daylight savings. We're like, let's just not try to play God and mess with time. Let's just stick to how it's supposed to be.

But we have evidence that shows that with that falling back, even though you're getting an extra hour of sleep, because how that shifts for a lot of people's schedules and getting darker earlier, there is an uptick in the week after daylight savings,

in suicidality, in mental health exacerbations. And so we know that there is this real kind of connection with mood and the amount of light you're experiencing.

So definitely, if you notice that in and of yourselves like, man, every time I'm getting into the winter, like that's when I'm, and it's not as, you know, we always think about like the worst case scenario of like being admitted for a psychiatric

diagnosis or something like that. It can be as simple as I notice, or maybe my family notices, I'm super moody as I'm getting into the winter time frame, or it's always around the winter time frame that I am thinking about seeking out a mental health

professional or things like that. And the problem with things that are related to seasons is it's a yearlong pattern.

And so it's not as quick of a feedback compared to if I do something that hurts me today, and then I keep doing it every single day, then it's like, okay, I figured out over about four or five days, I shouldn't do this thing to me because I get that

feedback real quick. Compared to seasons, you know, we're so busy.

And then you also kind of plug it in with like, oh, well, it was probably aunt so or so at Thanksgiving, they just rubbed me the wrong way, or it's the hecticness of the Christmas shopping and all this stuff, and we kind of put all these other

things. But that is a piece of the puzzle that can be really important for some people. So having that conversation with your physician, if you have access to a sleep medicine physician, talking to them about that.

Certainly, if you're living anywhere, whether that's Alaska or even if you're in just kind of northern part of the US, having an awareness of that and considering talking to your physician about Bright Light Therapy.

Cool. Thank you for breaking that down, making it not so complicated.

35:19

Actionable Sleep Tips

Awesome. As we start to wrap up, what are some practical mindset strategies? I think you've already given loads of them.

I don't know if you had any other wrap up mindset strategies for people.

I think the biggest thing, one, if you already know you have a problem, we've already talked about, go ahead and take that nighttime thinker quiz to see kind of what category you might fall in as your most common issue.

But if you're not even sure, you're like, I don't even know, I just know my sleep is messed up and I don't know kind of where to start. One of the things that you'll hear me say all the time is just get a sleep diary.

You can do that, like there's plenty of them online where you just record how much time you sleep over the course of two weeks and kind of take the average of that. Sometimes people wear wearables.

The longer you wear a wearable and it knows you better, the better it's able to predict kind of your average sleep time. Some of the other figures, how much rim versus non-rim and all that other kind of stuff, I'm not putting my money on that.

But the total sleep time, it can be a good rough estimate to match what you would do with like a sleep diary. And the nice part about that is it gives you that same anchor to come back to.

Because for so many people that I see, the problem is the yo-yoing back and forth between the two. I can't sleep, can't sleep, can't sleep, and then I swing and then I crash, and then I go beyond what my body needs.

And so that nice part about knowing your average total sleep time is, you're like, okay, for me, over two weeks is seven hours and 15 minutes. But for someone else, it might be nine hours and five minutes or something like that.

And so then that's going to help you match your sleep opportunity, your time in bed with what your body actually needs. So if you don't know where to begin, start with just kind of getting a sleep diary.

And if you're even more confused, then go into a sleep professional to kind of, they will definitely appreciate you coming in hand with a sleep diary. Heck yeah, heck yeah.

And I love that to the journal to be helpful for, one, identifying, also helping people to identify, to take away the shame, take away the fear. So I love that because there is support, like you just gotta reach out.

And so I love the book to be just a simple entry point to that.

And it's not meant to replace professional help or anything like that, but just I know there are not enough sleep health professionals to meet the demand for sleep problems. And so that was another reason of really making this journal accessible.

So that way, in each section, we have like a rest area that kind of is like, hey, let me just camp out here and I'm just going to track how long it takes me to fall asleep.

And so it has these trackers that are in it that are kind of like a sleep diary too, that you're going to get that same benefit. But the nice part about that with the journal is it's trying to kind of walk you through that at your own pace.

So especially if you're in kind of a sleep professional desert and you don't have access to that, then the journal can really be a lifeline for you.

Sweet. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Dr.

Long, for joining The Daring Well Podcast. I'd love for you to give your content information.

So I know you plugged Instagram and your website, but if you don't mind to say those again so people can find you and other ways that you can support them, also plug the book as well.

Absolutely. So the best place to find me is at thewholeheartedmd.com, and that's also where I am for Instagram and TikTok, is at thewholeheartedmd.com. If you Google Dr.

Benjamin Long, then I should be somewhere on that first page too. And then my book is Sleep Habits Journal. So you can just go to sleephabitsjournal.com to find where you can purchase that.

And I've already got it in my cart.

It's on Amazon. So I'm excited about getting that book for myself personally, but also for my... I also preach about sleep to my daughter who's got young ones.

And I'm like, you've got to get them on a sleep schedule. I'm like, it's going to mess up their mood if you look 10 years ahead when they're teenagers and when they're adults, early adults, like you got to address the sleep.

And so I love that you talked about every age range, every kind of scenario today. So definitely grateful for our time today. And I love how you intersected the faith piece.

And so different ways that we can intersect our faith. So that's super powerful. Awesome.

Well, thank you again, Dr. Benjamin Long, for joining. Thank you for making everything the complex.

Super simple because I think sleep seems like this hard thing that just can't be resolved. So I love that you shared so many tidbits for us.

Thank you for having me on.

Awesome. All right, guys. Thank you so much for joining the Daring Well Podcast.

Wishing you a beautiful day. Keep living, keep loving, and keep daring well. Take care, guys.

God bless. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of The Daring Well Podcast.

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