E028 Rest & Repair: Tired But Can’t Switch Off at Night? Why Your Mind Won’t Slow Down

If you have ever felt completely exhausted but your mind just won't slow down at night, this episode will help you understand why that's happening and where to start. We’ll look at why your body can feel ready for rest while your mind stays active and why switching off isn’t as simple as going to sleep. 

You see this play out in real life when you are tired all day, then the moment your head hits the pillow, your mind starts racing. If that’s happening for you, it usually means your body is still in go mode, even when you're trying to rest. The $7 Season Mapping Quiz will help you understand where you are right now and what your body needs next so you can start switching off more easily. 

Rest & Repair: Tired But Can’t Switch Off at Night? Why Your Mind Won’t Slow Down

In this episode of The GA Wellness Podcast, I break down why your mind keeps going at night even when your body is ready for bed. We look at what’s happening in your nervous system and how your day carries into your night.

📋 What we covered:

 • Why you can feel exhausted but still not be able to switch off
 • What “tired but wired” looks like in everyday life
 • What’s happening in your nervous system when your mind stays active
 • Why your brain keeps processing even when your body is ready for sleep
 • How your day carries into the way you rest at night
 • How mental load builds across the day without you noticing
 • Why pushing through the day often shows up when things slow down
 • The role of safety in helping your body switch off
 • How different seasons of life change the way you experience rest
 • What your sleep patterns can tell you about what your body is holding 

🧰 Rest & Repair: Night Reset Check-In

A simple check-in to understand what your body needs before bed so you can start winding down more easily.

👉 link coming soon

🧭 Season Mapping Quiz

A simple way to identify your current season and know what your body needs so you can start supporting it right away.

👉 https://gawellness.myflodesk.com/seasonquiz

🌟 Key takeaways:

 • Feeling tired does not always mean your body is ready to sleep
 • When your mind is busy at night, your body is still in go mode
 • Your day follows you into the night
 • Mental load does not disappear, it waits until things slow down
 • How you support your sleep changes depending on the season you are in 

🔁 Episodes referenced in this episode:

E027 Grounded & Growing: How Alignment Gives You Your Time Back & More Energy
E008 The Myth of Balance: Let’s Talk Seasons
E020 Create Calm On Purpose: Finding Intention and Equilibrium for 2026
E004B Guided Meditation for Nervous System Reset

🎧 Related listening:

E004 Self-Care Beyond Bubble Baths: Nurturing Your Nervous System
E009 Let’s Talk Integration: The Secret Ingredient to Real Change 

If your mind has been racing at night, this will help you understand what’s going on and give you a simple place to start. 

📱 Let’s Connect 

• All links, resources and ways to connect are here https://linktr.ee/GAWellness

🔔 If this episode spoke to you, lovely, please:

• Follow the podcast.
• Leave a quick review (it truly helps!)
• Share with a bestie who’s ready to reclaim wellness on her own terms.

 © 2026 GA Wellness with Georgia Ann™. All content is for educational purposes only and is not medical or psychological advice. 

Transcript

E028 Rest & Repair: Tired But Can’t Switch Off at Night? Why Your Mind Won’t Slow Down
Georgia Ann

Opening

You can be tired. You can feel exhausted all day and still find it hard to switch off at night.

In this episode, we unpack what’s happening in your body when your mind stays active, even when you’re ready for rest. We’ll explore how your nervous system, your energy and the season you’re in can all shape the way you experience sleep. 

Podcast Intro

Welcome to the GA Wellness Podcast. Small steps, lasting change. I'm your host, Georgia Ann, health coach, solo mum and a woman who's lived through the chaos, the curveballs and the craving for something steadier. After 20 years in the fitness industry and my own journey through grief, motherhood and starting over, I've learned that real wellness isn't about doing more, it's about doing what matters. Each week, we cut through the noise and get real with simple, doable tools to help you feel stronger, calmer and more like you. This isn't about perfection, it's about steady soul led progress because you deserve wellness that fits into your full life, not just one version of it. Let's dive in.

Welcome Back

Hey lovely and a big welcome to you. If you've been here for a while, welcome back to the GA Wellness Podcast. Before we dive in today, I just want to spend a little bit of time checking in with you. We're now halfway through quarter two. Like, seriously, how did that happen? So tell me, how has your year looked so far? I don't know about you, but I naturally fall into a bit of reflection at this time of year and at this time at the end of every quarter. I've even got a cute little annual journal that I buy every year and always come back to it around this time.

When I sit down with it, I'm not really looking at what I planned to do and what I planned to happen, I'm looking at what actually did happen because there's a lot more there than what you think. I start to notice and I start to find it's the little things that wins, the slow mornings, the days where I just threw the plant out the window and didn't think about what tomorrow was going to be. Really those are usually my favourite days and you notice that more when you stop and think about it. I also spent quite a bit of time at the beach with Ellie.
 
We're quite lucky here in Adelaide cause March and a little bit of April still feels like summer and thankfully the algae bloom has cleared so we got to go in and enjoy the water, which was beautiful. Actually, I think because all the beaches had to be cleaned it was probably the clearest I've ever seen the ocean here. It just felt fresh.

Grounded and Growing Reflection

So over the past few weeks, we've been moving through the Grounded and Growing arc together. This arc was really about understanding how your brain is wired and how this plays out for you. We spoke about how some of those patterns actually begin in childhood, like the things you were naturally drawn to, how you played, how you approach things without overthinking everything. When you stop to think about it, this didn't just disappear.

It carries through how you think, how you process information and how you solve problems now as an adult. We also spoke about what happens when you stop trying to force yourself into structures that drain you and start shaping things around the way you naturally work. We find that when we look back, a lot of us ended up in those environments because life kind of led us there or because we thought that's just what were supposed to do. I shared a bit of my own experience with this, too. Just noticing where my energy feels different depending to what I'm doing and depending what's led me there and what brain activity I was and have been operating in. There are things that take a lot out of you and there are things that actually give you something back.

Alignment and Sleep

I invited you to look at this for yourself, to look at what you were drawn to growing up and what might be showing up for you now. When you start paying attention to that, you kind of notice small shifts with a little bit more clarity, a little bit more energy or specifically to what I refer to in that arc as energy transference. I do go into that in a little bit more detail in those episodes. So please go back and have a listen for context. There's one part I want to bring back into this conversation. When things start to feel more aligned, you find you're not using the same level of mental effort. You go through your day and when that happens, it creates space.

When you get a bit of space back, you actually get some of your time back. When I introduced this concept over the arc, I had so many beautiful people from this community reach out to me over the past couple of weeks, saying that those episodes felt like a light bulb moment for them. I had others who also mention that even though things might feel a little bit more aligned now, they still feel tired. I totally get that. These two concepts really do go hand in hand. This is why last week I mentioned that were going to go into sleep next and discover what that might look like for you and what that might unpack for you.

Introducing Rest and Repair

This is actually really exciting for me and I'm really looking forward to unpacking this because I haven't really explored sleep on the pod yet. We've touched on it in bits and pieces across various arcs and standalone episodes, but we haven't really given it the space it deserves. I want you to take a moment to really think about this, how much do you think your sleep affects what you do? Just take a moment now think about how it might affect the way you think, the way you feel, the way you move through your day. There's a lot there. So, this is why over the next few weeks, we're going to properly unpack this together from a few different angles.

I've noticed, both in my own life and in conversations with so many women, that once you start to understand alignment and how you use your energy, sleep starts to matter in a different way. You begin to see it differently. It's actually a very fascinating concept and you'll see what I mean or I hope you do, as we unpack this from various angles. 

You probably know by now, or if you haven't, I'm a huge advocate and a huge fan for Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and sleep sits right at the base. So I believe that with alignment, it does help you use your energy more wisely. Alignment alone can't restore your capacity. Your brain and your body still need time to repair, and this is really what one of those basic of needs are. So that repair happens when you sleep, which is why sleep is right at the base.  

I've noticed so many conversations that I have with people, or so many conversations I have with women is ‘I'm so tired’. ‘I never have enough sleep’. ‘My phone always goes off’. ‘I can't switch off’. ‘I know I should be going to bed early, but then what am I supposed to get everything done?’ Sound familiar? You might even be thinking some of that right now and I totally get it.

Why Sleep Matters

So this next arc we're moving into is called Rest and Repair and this is going to be a deep dive. We're going to talk about what's happening in your brain when you sleep. We'll look at your nervous system and why that matters so much.

Plus, we'll chat about how all this actually plays out for what you when life is busy, when your mind feels full and when you're trying to function on less than what you actually need. We'll also look at habits, the patterns and the stories we tell ourselves about sleep, me included because when your sleep is being supported, you do notice the difference. So, yes, this is a big conversation and I want to give it the time that it deserves. So if you've been here for a while, you've probably noticed that a story was coming. I mean, how good is the story before you go to bed?

Alignment, Equilibrium and Growth Season

Did you see what I did there?

That was very intentional, but this is actually a really good example of what we're about to talk about, because you can be in alignment, things can be flowing, you can feel like you're in a really good place for the season you're in on your own version of an equilibrium. If you haven't heard this before, please go back to episode 008 and 020 when you can and have a bit of a listen, because I do go through this. What I'm pretty much saying here is that this is your own version of what's working really well for you right now. For me, that's exactly where I'm at. I've recently started a new project and I'm not kidding, I am so into it.

I feel lit up and it's amazing, the feeling you get when you have something new to work on. I feel challenged in a really good way. My brain is just on, before I say….can you guess what season I'm in? Yep, I am totally in growth season. Here's what I've noticed. Even though everything feels aligned, my nervous system is quite activated and my brain is buzzing like, I've literally got ideas firing from everywhere and seriously, why does it always happen when I'm in the shower or when I'm under a barbell and can't write anything down? I would never understand that. I'm also now all over my food prep thanks to Chatty G and my running is back on track. I'm in perfect alignment at the moment, but going to sleep is actually getting to be a little bit challenging.

When Switching Off Gets Challenging

Don't get me wrong, I've got all my usual things in place. My phone goes on night mode, my watch gets charged into another room because that goes off quite a bit as well. I've got water next to my bed, so I'm not getting up during the night. It's literally all the things, even with all of that, switching off at night is actually getting to be a little bit harder and there's a lot of really good ideas, like happening. And you've probably know this as well. So I know that the way that I approach sleep now has to change. So even though things are feeling really good and I do have the energy, I know that this isn't something that I can sustain and I'm going to crash eventually. This is where things can get really interesting.

So why is that you can feel so aligned, things are working, you've got energy and then you go into bed and your brain's like, absolutely not! We're not done yet. Even for me in the moment, once Ellie goes to sleep, I've actually started doing yoga at night, which, if you know me, it's very out of character because I'm usually a morning workout person. So I'll get to bed at a reasonable time. I'm physically ready, but it just doesn't happen. On the flip side, I've actually had the complete opposite thing happen. This could be you right now. You know, the moment that where you've got competing priorities. Maybe you're a single parent like me, or you don't have family backup, and then someone just says to you, ‘just go to bed earlier or just prioritise your sleep’.  It can get quite irritating because it's not that you don't want sleep at night is usually when a lot of this thinking happens.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

This is where I always think of I Don’t Know How She Does It with Sarah Jessica Parker, because it is so true. We sit there, we make mental lists and we go through our priorities, go through what we haven't done, go through what we need to do with solving things. All of that is firing off. If you're like me during the day and especially on weekends, you want to spend your mental energy with your loved ones and I want to spend my mental energy with Ellie. I want to go to the beach, go for little trips, you know, unplug a bit and actually be present. I'm okay with that.

It also means that I understand why my sleep looks different in different seasons. What I've just described are two sides of the same coin because in both those situations, my nervous system and your nervous system is spending more time in that alert state. Right now mine is more in a growth capacity because I'm completely activated. I want to pause here for a second and normalise this, because a lot of the time we feel those stress signals in our body, we assume something's wrong. What I've just described is the same response to different situations. Your body doesn't really separate stress from excitement and it creates the same response in your body. I actually had a colleague tell me the other day that she had new furniture arriving and she didn't sleep properly for three days because she was so excited.

The Sympathetic Nervous System

It's the same system. So this is your sympathetic nervous system, this is the part of your body that switches on when you're stressed, excited, nervous, buzzing, even playful. It's also the system that helps you focus, solve problems, get things done. It's basically your go mode. If you link that back to what I was saying, at night, when you're sitting there and going through lists, that's the solving problem stage. So that's where that comes in. In small amounts, it's amazing. It's what helps you train, think clearly, actually show up for your life. When you stay there for long periods of time, especially when your brain is constantly being stimulated, your body doesn't get a clear signal to switch off. This is where I've had to be really honest with myself. I know I can't sustain this pace.

I've started looking at how I can redirect my energy, especially at night, before I go to sleep. This links back to what we spoke about earlier with energy transference. I know that if I don't pay attention to this now, my body will only keep up for a certain period of time, but it won't go forever and it will eventually crash. It doesn't crash straight away. There are signals that your body gives before this happens.

They're quite small at first. So, for example, could be waking up feeling tired even after being in bed long enough, energy dropping. Earlier on in the day, patience feels a little bit shorter and the body feels tight or heavy or just not quite right. You start wondering why, especially when it feels like you're doing all the things. So this is what I was saying in terms of me. I know that this is what's going to happen and I know I need to pay attention to those signals. If you're not sure what's going on at that time, then you might miss what these signals mean. So this is my way of bringing that back. Then you can see what that means and you can see what those early signals are like and this is where it starts to make sense.

Alert Hormones and Rest Mode

Essentially, your brain is still active, your body's still producing those alert hormones like cortisol. Your mind is running through ideas, planning, problem solving, which I've mentioned before, and your brain is getting little dopamine hits from it. So it's kind of like your brain's being rewarded for staying awake. So, and of course, in this situation, switching off can feel quite hard. You haven't given yourself the time to actually shift into the rest state yet. When you do get into that shift, or when you do and get into that state, this is your parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest and repair mode. I mean, this takes time, and for some of us, it can take a lot of time. When you feel yourself relaxed, you'll find that your breathing slows, your heart rate drops, and your body begins to relax.

It doesn't happen the moment your mind hits the pillow. If we don't give our body the space to transition into that state, it keeps running into the same pattern. Over time, that's where your body starts asking for change in its own way. You might notice the subtle signs at first, which is the ones that I spoke about before. If you don't notice them, your body will step in and take over. This is where I've started looking at what needs to shift for me in this current season. One thing I've noticed, both for myself and with other women I've worked with, sleep actually starts quite a bit, like maybe an hour or two, before you've even gone to bed. This is the part that can change even when you already have good habits in place.

Wind Down Signals

What worked before doesn't always land the same way now. So instead of making my routine better, I've just changed how I wind down. For me, I started doing extra things like yoga in the evening, which I've mentioned, or something a little bit different. Like I've actually started now doing my meditation from episode 004B and what happens in that period of time is when your brain is exposed, your thoughts are a bit calmer and your body is moving at a slower pace. So your system starts to actually pick up on that. If you carry the same energy from your day into night, your body and your mind will just keep carrying that when you want to go to sleep. So this is where those small wind down signals matter. They help your body move into that rest state.

This part will look different for everyone because what feels supportive in one season can change in another, which is what I've mentioned as well. So which is why right now I'm treating this as something to explore. Okay, so just for a moment, I want to ask you what does sleep actually look like for you right now? How important does it feel in this season? Do you feel you're getting enough of it or are you just getting by? These are just some questions to just sit with, because being aware of what you need can bring a lot of clarity. It's usually the first step towards building habits and rituals that actually work for you. Okay, so you've probably heard me mention seasons quite a few times and wondering what I actually mean by seasons.

Season Mapping Quiz

I'm talking about the different stages and different states your body moves through. There are times where you have more energy, like I do right now in grow season. There are times where things are feeling a little bit harder to manage and what used to work doesn't always land the same way. You might be starting to wonder what season you're in or what might actually be helping you right now and this is why I created the Season Mapping Quiz. It's a simple way to understand what the four seasons are. The ones I teach are rest, growth, survival, and transition. Each one of them has their own patterns. What helps each one of them is very different.

This is also why I haven't really given you a step by step in this episode, because I don't believe there's one way that works for everyone. We're all coming this into different needs, different routines and different life stages. So the most helpful, the most important next step is understanding where you are now, your baseline. If you're curious, the quiz is a really good place to start. It will give you a bit more clarity around what's going on and what might actually be supporting you. If you want to come into a bit deeper, this is also the connect part of my C.A.L.M Pathway and where that sits. It's also where we start looking at small habits and rituals that fit into your day and support you in a way that feels realistic. The Season Mapping Quiz is the best place to begin. It's your baseline or it sets your baseline. 

Full Circle Summary

All right, lovely. Let's bring this one all together. Today was really understanding why sleep can feel harder even when things in your life are actually going well. We spoke about what happens when your inner season, where your energy is high, your mind is active and things feel aligned, and then how that can keep your body still going in that go mode, especially at night. I shared about how that's been looking for me lately. Feeling really lit up in the grow season, having all the things happen in place and still noticing that switching off at night can feel a bit harder than usual. When we unpacked that it started to make a lot more sense.

We spoke about how your nervous system doesn't really separate excitement for stress and how both can keep your body in alert or more alert than you realised. We look at what's happening in your body when the alert system stays switched on, how your mind keeps running through ideas and planning and why your body doesn't just instantly move into rest the moment we go to bed. 

Then we brought it all back into the day to day life. Looking how sleep starts before you actually go to bed and the way you use your energy at night can help shape how your body can transition into rest. We spoke about that even though we've got good habits in place, sometimes they just need a little bit of a shift or a little bit of a tweak depending on the season you're in.

What supports you when things feel steady can look quite different when your mind is active and your days are fuller. That's where those small wind down moments start to matter. 

Where We’re Heading Next

This is where we're actually going to go next. Once you start noticing those moments at night when your body feels tired but your mind is still going, the next question is so what is actually happening once the I fall asleep and once I get into that rest and repair mode. Sleep isn't just switching off and that's it. Your body's still doing a lot in the background, your brain's still processing your day, your nervous system is still moving through everything you've experienced, even the things that didn't really fully notice or things that didn't make sense at the time.

Sometimes that's exactly why you might find yourself waking up in the middle of the night. So the next episode we're going to gently unpack that. We'll talk about what your brain is actually doing while you sleep, how your sleep cycles work and how your sleep load can show up in those early wake ups. So until next week, stay safe, take care of yourself and I'm so glad you're here.

Outro

Thanks for being here. Lovely. If today's episode gave you a light bulb moment, helped you feel seen or sparked a small step, I'd love to hear about it.

Tag me over on Instagram @gawellness and share you in so I can cheer you on and if there's a woman in your world that needs this kind of support, send this to her because wellness feels better when we do it together.

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Until next time, take a deep breath and take care of you.

With love,

Georgia Ann

© 2026 GA Wellness with Georgia Ann™.

All content is for educational purposes only and is not medical or psychological advice.