Why Sleep Hacks Aren't Working

Trauma can teach your body that sleep is unsafe—even when the danger has passed. This episode explains why nighttime hypervigilance can overpower ordinary sleep hacks and offers a simple Safety Signal Reset to help your nervous system recognize that it no longer needs to stand guard. 

Transcript

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To Night Shift with Justin asking how to transform your life one night at a time. This week I've been participating in a six-day challenge from The Tapping Solution. It's a website, an app, not sponsored. Just something I've been exploring. And for today, day five, they mentioned trauma. And specifically, trauma can affect sleep because sleep requires vulnerability. You can close your eyes, you stop monitoring the room, you give up conscious control. And if your nervous system learned at any point that letting your guard down was dangerous, specifically at night or during sleep, it may resist sleep even when you are exhausted. That can look like racing thoughts, tight muscles, waking at every sound, nightmares, or feeling tired all day and selling alert when your head hits the pillow. This is why another supplement, breathing technique, or sleep hack may not solve the entire problem. Those tools can help your body relax, but they may not change the deeper message it isn't safe to let go. And for tonight's night shift exercise, the exercise is called the safety signal reset. What you should do is sit in bed or on the edge of the bed and slowly look around the room. Don't close your eyes yet. Identify three pieces of evidence that you are safe right now. Maybe the door is locked, the room is quiet, you're an adult with choices, the event is not happening. Then you can gently tap over your collarbone and say, right now I am here. That was then, this is now. My body has worked hard to protect me tonight. Tonight, I am safe enough to rest. You're not forcing yourself to feel perfectly safe. You are giving your nervous system updated information. If you want to start to explore tapping as a way to help make you feel safe, you can Google or search YouTube for different tapping videos or check out tapping solution.com. And that is it for tonight's episode of Night Shift. My name is Justin S. King, and I help entrepreneurs find peace tonight, tomorrow, and for the rest of their lives through sleep optimization, motion regulation, and discovering their purpose. Good night.