Sleep Strategies - when you're tired but wired

Ever found yourself lying in bed at 3 a.m., replaying the to-do list, worrying about the weather, or planning tomorrow’s jobs? You’re not alone.

In this episode of From Stress to Strength: Navigating Life on the Land, Steph dives into one of the first things we sacrifice when life on the farm gets hectic — sleep. It’s not a luxury or something “soft and fluffy.” It’s fuel. The thing that keeps our bodies and minds running well enough to get through the day (and all those long nights).

Steph explores:

• Why sleep matters more than we often admit
• How stress messes with our ability to switch off
• Practical strategies to help your body and brain wind down, including progressive muscle relaxation, yoga nidra, and cognitive shuffling (yes, it’s a real thing — and surprisingly effective)
• Simple wind-down habits that actually work for farm life

Whether you’re feeding out, in the header, or wide awake at midnight, this episode offers small, doable ways to rest, recharge, and reclaim some decent shut-eye.

Listen to Episode 8 now:
🎙 From Stress to Strength: Navigating Life on the Land — part of Farm Life Psych with Steph Schmidt.
Proudly supported by Ski for Life, promoting mental health, wellbeing, and suicide prevention across rural communities.

Find more tools for your Farm Life Handbook here:

- www.farmlifehandbook.com.au

Connect with Steph online:

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/stephschmidt.farmlifepsych/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephschmidtfarmlifepsych/

Resources mentioned:

• Progressive Muscle Relaxation (free guides on YouTube or Insight Timer)
• Yoga Nidra sleep meditations (Spotify/Insight Timer)
• “The Pocket Psychologist” on Instagram for cognitive shuffling tips
• 
  

If you’re struggling with ongoing sleep or stress, reach out for support.
Lifeline 13 11 14 | Regional Access 1300 032 186 | Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Our sleep, it's kind of a nice to have. It's not the soft and fluffy thing. It's not selfish that we want to sleep more. It's the fuel that we need to keep on going. Welcome back to From Stress to Strength, a special series of the Farm Life Psych podcast. I'm Steph Schmidt, a farmer psychologist and mum of three wonderful boys. This series is proudly supported by Ski for Life, a wonderful grassroots organisation here in South Australia who do incredible work raising awareness, reducing stigma, and supporting mental health and suicide prevention across rural communities. Today I want to focus on something that is 100% important and something that often we sacrifice first during tough seasons on the farm. Our sleep. Now I did do a little mini episode, I reckon it was probably last year, actually, on sleep, but I wanted to dive in with a few more ideas because we all know that our sleep matters. We know that our sleep is vital, but so often it's the first thing to go. Whether it is practically like during harvest or seeding, we are just working longer hours so that we're sleeping less. Or also like mentally and emotionally, sometimes we might be heading to bed, but our mind is so wired, it's tired, but it's wired and can't switch off. So we're sleeping less. And it ends up being that we might be struggling to go to sleep, we might be waking up through the night with those thoughts racing through our mind, or we might be waking in early morning and not being able to get back to sleep. And so that sleep often becomes that elusive missing piece that just when it's not going well, it makes everything feel even harder. And our sleep really is vital, and good sleep is vital because it gives our brain and our body that time to rest, reboot, recharge. It's when our both our mind and also parts of our digestive system, our all of our different um systems within our body almost go through that reboot stage that gets rid of the crap and brings in and refreshes ready to go for the next day. And look, sometimes I know I we probably get caught in this as well, but sometimes on the farm, having that lack of sleep can almost be a bit of a badge of honour. Being up working, and I think maybe this is within different generations, but through harvest, pulling long days, we used to we had a worker at one point who was like, Oh, I can go 24 hours, and we're like, Well, yeah, that's fine if you go 24 hours, but then the chances are you're gonna need another 24 hours to catch up on that. It's not sustainable in the short term, but also when that kind of disrupted sleep is ongoing, it starts to impact everything. So our tolerance and our patience get a bit frazzled, our decision making, our coping with stress. So when we have too many late nights or disrupted sleeps or just not getting enough hours sleep, those little things that normally wouldn't bother us so much start to become really overwhelming. And so sometimes we can find that we do need those times in the afternoon for a quick top-up of sleep, or it's on the weekends sleeping in a little bit. It's not always just the hours that we're giving ourselves to sleep, but it's the stress itself which becomes a sleep killer. So when our brain and our mind gets really full of all of the what-ifs, or replaying the problems that have happened during the day, or replaying the what-ifs of what might happen down the line, it's not switching off because your body's tired, it's just keeping on going and going and going. So we find ourselves lying in there in bed at three o'clock in the morning, or lying there as we're trying to go to sleep at night, replaying those conversations or running through the mental to-do lists. So if that's happening to you, you're not broken, there's not something wrong. You are a human under pressure with a mind that's trying desperately hard to fix it, but not doing all that well of it. So, a couple of the practical strategies. I'm going to share a couple of the practical ideas and then move into a few other techniques that I really, really love and that can be really beneficial. I think most of us have heard a lot of the practical strategies. Within psychology or health, they're often called sleep hygiene strategies. They're just those things that we can do to help ourselves get to sleep at night. And so, yes, it is about protecting that one-down window, creating that routine that tells your body that hey, I'm getting ready to go to bed and go to sleep right now. So it might be giving yourself 20 to 30 minutes before you go to bed without checking emails, without going on your phone. Almost like thinking of it as that kind of cooling down your machinery after it's been running for a long time. You might not switch it off instantly, you give it time to cool down before you switch off. That might be when you have a hot shower, have a warm cup of tea. And I guess importantly, the research on this, it used to be very much like don't go on your phones for the hour or two before bed. But more and more it's becoming, it's not so much the phone that's the problem, it's what we're doing on it that's the problem. So reading a book on your phone, watching a long movie, like watching something like a long movie, not a Netflix series that just keeps rolling next one into the next, using your phone as a tool for listening to meditations, mindfulness, relaxation exercises. It's not so much the phone that's the problem, it's what so if you're sitting on YouTube flicking through all the shorts or on Instagram or TikTok, flicking through all of like 15-second grabs that really wire up your brain, you're not going to get to sleep easily. So trying to move into that more sustained, slower, relaxing content. Another thing that you can do is get those worries and thoughts out of your head. So having a notebook by your bed, again, you can use your phone for this as well. Um, and if your brain is racing with lots of to-dos or ideas or thoughts, when your brain's racing over all of those things, jot down the to-dos, giving yourself permission to deal with them tomorrow. You might even put an action point next to them. So you don't just write the worry list down and then forget about it. It's like you write the worry list and then put a couple of strategies next to them. So you've you've kind of dealt with them a little bit. So instead of having the sheep kind of running a mic through the paddock, you've yarded them and put them in the yards. You don't have to keep chasing them around in your head. Also, kind of setting those light or rhythm cues. So, especially now as we get into the summer season, this is a pretty easy one to do when you get up in the morning, getting out into daylight straight to set your body clock, just to let your body know that right, this is daytime, it's ready to go. Two strategies that you can do when you are in bed, and these are ones that I have used myself, are techniques, evidence-based, there's science that shows that these are helpful things that can help people to get to sleep at night. One of us is our body, and the other way is a good way of using our mind. And there are lots and lots of example exercises of these, and that you can tune into as well. So the first one is just progressive muscle relaxation, and all you do is tense and release each muscle group one by one. So you might start with your feet and squeeze your feet kind of tightly for five seconds and then release them. Move up through your body of tensing your legs, hold it for five seconds and then release it. Doing this all the way through as you get to doing your full body, kind of tense up and hold your whole body five seconds and release it again. And just that process of tension, then relaxation again signals to your body that it's safe to relax. I also find that because you're consciously thinking of going through all the different body parts, it's giving your mind something to focus on. So another really similar exercise that you can do with that is called Yoga Nigra, and it's basically sleeping yoga or a deep sleep practice. You can do it when you need that bit of rest and recuperation in just like 15-20 minutes during the day, but it's also a great way of helping your body to go to sleep. Again, lots and like if you just search on Spotify or use an app like Insight Timer, there are so many, find a voice that resonates with you. And it just leads you through noticing all of the different parts of your body, and so you might say to yourself, it's it's basically going like right hand thumb, first finger, second finger, third finger, fourth finger, fifth finger. You go through your whole body in that way. Again, it's giving you something really concrete to focus on, and it's kind of you might find at times, and this is why it's helpful to do it with a guided exercise because you find your mind's being pulled away, and then next minute that voice is reminding you what to bring it back to. But it it gives you that chance to kind of move into sleep naturally, but even if you find you don't go to sleep, you go through the whole exercise for half an hour and you're still not asleep, you're still giving your body that restful time. And now, this last one, I only actually heard about this oh a few weeks or months ago, and I love it. I use it all the time now, and it's for when your mind's like just thinking about stuff. And I'm not I'm not what I would call a worrier at night. And I remember I always used to have problems going to sleep when I was little, and my mum would be like, Oh, what are you worrying about? I'm like, nothing. My mind just jumps here, there, and everywhere. Um, it's just thinking, and so this one is great because it's just providing really like shuffling thinking. You have to think about it, but you're also not you're not going through the problems or you're not going through the day. So, what you do with cognitive shuffling is you pick a seed word. So, where I first found out about this was on an Instagram account called the Pocket Psychologist. Follow her, she is amazing, she has all these amazing like 60-second reels of tips from a psychologist. And so her seed word was pocket. I did this for ages before I realized that pocket didn't actually have to be the word, but I've kind of stuck on pocket now. So you pick the seed word, and then all you do is go through each letter and think about how many words that you can pick that start with that letter. So, say if you use pocket and make sure it's like a neutral word, you're just thinking of words that start with that seed word. So it might be potato, it might be pen, it might be Pinocchio, whatever it might be. So you just continue with that letter. You can even add in a visualizing step. I don't usually do that, I just think of the words. Think of it until you can't think any more words for that letter, then move to the next. So then it's on to O. I introduced my son to this last night and he chose goats as his C word. And we were going through, and what was the I don't know, one of the letters. We were like, we couldn't think of anything. Maybe it was an A. But you can just keep going through. You might get through if your C word is really short, like goats, you might get through all the letters. Uh it sounds silly, but the research shows it's really effective in helping to get you to sleep. You effectively bore yourself to sleep. And also, it's a really neutral exercise. So it's not stress-inducing, it's not kind of trying to problem solve through your worries or anything like that. It's just shuffling through these random thoughts, random words that aren't linked to anything. It's probably my favorite sleep strategy that I have found. So, yeah, cognitive shuffling. Choose a seed word, like a really simple word, then work through each letter of that word, thinking of all of the other words that you can think of that start with that letter. Alright. So, wrapping up, I think one of the main ideas when it comes to our sleep is that it is really important. There are going to be times and seasons on the farm which, for whatever reason, whether it's just the practical amount of hours in the day or that the stress is building up, that our sleep does get compromised. So you don't need to do everything at once to try and fix that. But it is important to recognize just how vital our sleep is. So if you're finding that it is like you're not getting enough sleep just due to the pure amount of stuff that you're trying to do, work out one or two ways you can kind of bring in a bit more time and get to bed just a little bit earlier each day, just to give yourself that bit more. If you're also finding that you're not getting to sleep when you're in there, not trying to fix it completely, but just pick one strategy to test out. It might be doing a brain dump of the what-ifs or the thoughts, it might be trying that progressive muscle relaxation, or give cognitive shuffling a go next time you find your mind raise over all the to-dos at 3 a.m. in the morning. And let me know how you go. I'd love to hear it. Our sleep, it's not kind of a nice to have, it's not the soft and fluffy thing, it's not selfish that we want to sleep more, it's the fuel that we need to keep on going, it's what we need each and every day. And we can get by with less in small amounts, but if we're going massive amounts of time or into more chronic situations with not much sleep, everything gets harder. So even just with a little more sleep, I hope you'll notice a difference in how you handle that load that you're carrying. Thank you so much for tuning in again to another series of From Stress to Strength. Again, this series is proudly supported by Ski for Life, whose wonderful work in promoting and supporting mental health initiatives across rural South Australia is really making a great difference. If this episode helped you or a couple of the ideas struck, please share it with somebody else. Send them an email, message it to them, share it on social media. We all need those little reminders when we're running on empty. I'd love to hear back from you as well if you found it helpful. Send me a message. Even if you can leave a review, it really helps to get the word out about the podcast. So until next time, take care of you and don't forget to fill your silo.