How to Calm Your Mind Before Bed: Anxiety Relief for Sleep‑Trouble Nights | Ep. 467

In this episode, Kimberley Quinlan shares a gentle, science-backed approach to calming nighttime anxiety by shifting away from forcing sleep and toward helping your nervous system truly rest.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why anxiety and intrusive thoughts often feel louder at night—and why that’s not a personal failure 
• The powerful mindset shift that makes falling asleep more likely (without trying to force it) 
• How slowing your body, breath, and reactions can calm nighttime anxiety 
• Simple bedtime routines that support rest instead of increasing pressure 
• What to do if you’re wide awake in bed and sleep just isn’t happening 
• How practicing self-kindness can reduce fear of exhaustion and improve sleep over time

How to Calm Your Anxious Mind Before Bed

Four science-backed shifts to help your body rest—even when sleep feels hard

If you’ve ever climbed into bed hoping for rest, only to find your mind suddenly running marathons… you’re not imagining things.

The house is quiet. The lights are out. And yet your thoughts are loud, fast, and relentless. Worries show up. Intrusive thoughts pop in. Your chest feels tight. And the harder you try to make yourself sleep, the more awake you feel.

In this episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit, anxiety and OCD specialist Kimberley Quinlan shares a gentler, science-based approach to calming your mind before bed—without forcing sleep or fighting your thoughts.

Let’s walk through the key insights and practical tools she teaches.

 

Why Anxiety and Intrusive Thoughts Get Worse at Night

Many people assume nighttime anxiety means something is “wrong” with them. In reality, there are very real reasons anxiety ramps up when the lights go out.

1. Fewer distractions

At night, there’s no noise, no tasks, no movement. That quiet creates space for thoughts to feel louder—even if they aren’t more important.

2. Pressure to sleep

The moment we tell ourselves “I have to fall asleep now”, the nervous system goes on high alert. Pressure releases cortisol and adrenaline—the very chemicals that keep us awake.

3. Thought suppression backfires

Trying to push thoughts away often makes them come back stronger, especially at bedtime when the brain is already tired.

Understanding this alone can be incredibly relieving. Nighttime anxiety isn’t a failure—it’s biology.

 

A Fundamental Shift: Stop Chasing Sleep

One of the most important changes Kimberley teaches is this:

The goal is not sleep. The goal is rest.

Sleep is not something you can force. It’s something that happens when the body feels safe enough to let go.

The more we try to control sleep—watching the clock, calculating hours, panicking about tomorrow—the more activated the nervous system becomes.

Rest, on the other hand, is something you can allow.

Even if you’re awake, resting your body without fighting the moment is still deeply restorative.

This mindset shift alone often reduces anxiety at bedtime.

 

Step 1: Practice Rest (Not Control)

Instead of asking:

• “Am I sleepy yet?” 
• “How long until I have to wake up?” 

Try gently redirecting to:

• “Can I let my body rest right now?” 
• “Can I stop wrestling this moment?” 

Letting go of the struggle creates the conditions for sleep to arrive naturally.

 

Step 2: Slow Everything Down—On Purpose

Kimberley invites us to imagine becoming a sloth at bedtime—slow, gentle, and unhurried.

Slow your body

Move more slowly as bedtime approaches. Walk slower. Change clothes slowly. Get into bed without rushing.

Slow your reactions

Intrusive thoughts and worries may still show up—but your response doesn’t need urgency.

Instead of:

“Oh no—you’re right, this is bad.”

Try:

“I’m noticing a thought. I can respond slowly.”

Fast reactions keep anxiety spinning. Slow responses calm the system.

Slow your breath (especially the exhale)

Short, shallow breathing tells the brain danger is near. Longer, slower out-breaths signal safety and help activate the parasympathetic nervous system—the one responsible for rest.

 

Step 3: Create a Safe, Calming Bedtime Routine

Sleep hygiene isn’t about forcing sleep—it’s about easing your body toward rest.

Reduce stimulation before bed

• Limit screens and bright lights 
• Avoid high-energy games, intense music, or late caffeine 
• Begin winding down at least an hour before bed 

Think of bedtime as a transition, not a switch.

Release physical tension

Many people carry stress in their shoulders, jaw, and brow all day. Gentle stretching or progressive muscle relaxation can help the body soften before rest.

Give yourself enough time

If you need to wake up early, build in extra time for winding down. Rushing into bed increases pressure and anxiety.

If you can’t sleep—get up gently

If you’re wide awake, it’s okay to step out of bed and do something quiet:

• Read 
• Listen to calm audio 
• Do a puzzle 
• Have non-caffeinated tea 

Return to bed when your body feels ready. This prevents your bed from becoming associated with stress and struggle.

 

Step 4: Be Unconditionally Gentle With Yourself

This step is essential.

Frustration, anger, and fear about being tired often make sleep anxiety worse. Instead, Kimberley encourages practicing kindness as the primary goal.

Validate the hard parts

• “Of course this is frustrating.” 
• “It makes sense that I’m tired and worried.”
  

Validation calms the nervous system. Judgment fuels it.

Make peace with being tired

Many people fear exhaustion itself. But tiredness isn’t dangerous—it’s uncomfortable.

When you trust yourself to care for tomorrow-you:

• You reduce fear tonight 
• You stop catastrophizing sleep loss 
• You create more safety around rest 

Kindness makes rest possible—even without sleep.

A Note on Rumination

If nighttime anxiety is fueled by constant mental replaying, planning, or analyzing, Kimberley recommends strengthening anti-rumination skills during the day.

CBT School offers a focused, on-demand course designed specifically for this:

CBT School – Rumination Reset
A practical mini-course with tools you can practice anytime, so your mind has less to wrestle with at night.

 

Key Takeaways to Remember

• Rest—not sleep—is the goal 
• Slow your body, breath, and reactions 
• Create a bedtime routine that works for you 
• Be gentle with yourself, no matter how the night goes 

You don’t need to win at sleep. You just need to stop fighting yourself.

And that shift—toward rest, slowness, and kindness—often changes everything.

The podcast is made possible by NOCD. NOCD offers effective, convenient therapy available in the US and outside the US. To find out more about NOCD, their therapy plans, and if they currently take your insurance, head over to https://learn.nocd.com/youranxietytoolkit

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Transcription: How to Calm Your Mind Before Bed: Anxiety Relief for Sleep‑Trouble Nights

Welcome to your Anxiety toolkit. I’m your host, Kimberly Quinlan. This podcast is fueled by three main goals. The first goal is to provide you with some extra tools to help you manage your anxiety. Second goal to inspire you. Anxiety doesn’t get to decide how you live your life. And number three, and I leave the best for last, is to provide you with one big fat virtual hug because experiencing anxiety ain’t easy.

 

If that sounds good to you, let’s go. How to calm your mind before bed. It’s bedtime. You’re laying in the dark. The world is quiet, but your mind is so loud. You have racing thought. You’re worried, you’re having tension in your chest. Maybe you’re being hit by intrusive thoughts. The more you try to get to sleep, the harder.

 

Feels and the more discomfort that you have. If this is you, you are not alone. Here is what is on our agenda. In this episode number one, I wanna talk to you about how you can calm your anxious mind before bed so you can actually get some sleep. And I wanna talk to you about one fundamental change that you are going to have to practice as you do this.

 

Welcome to your anxiety toolkit. This is a podcast where I teach you. Everything I know about anxiety so that you can suffer less in your life. My name is Kimberly Quinlan. I’m an anxiety and OCD specialist. I am a cognitive behavioral therapist and my mission, as I’ve already said, is to help folks suffer less with anxiety and depression and other mental health struggles.

 

Now, as you probably know, sleep and anxiety have a very complex relationship. Often we think the solution to falling asleep is forcing it is to sort of like I have to fall asleep. And you push yourself to do that, but that in almost every case backfires. And let me kind of go through here with you on why that is the case.

 

Now I have a new approach for you. One that is gentle, that is validating and is based in science. So let’s take a look at why anxiety and intrusive thoughts get worse at night. Well, number one, there are fewer distractions at night when the lights are out. It kind of creates space for more thoughts or for the thoughts to feel at least a lot louder.

 

There’s also this added pressure. To sleep, which ends up causing you to have more anxiety. The more pressure we place, the more cortisol and adrenaline gets released. And then again, it’s gonna make out it hard for our body to slow down into sleep. And the last thing is, if you’ve been practicing thought suppression or you’re practicing thought suppression while you’re going to sleep, you’re probably going to have more of the.

 

Thoughts or the anxiety that you’ve been trying to push down, creating a, again, a more problematic nighttime sleep routine. Now, as always, with your anxiety toolkit, I try to give as many concrete skills as I can, and so today I’m gonna give you. Four core things I want you to focus on if falling asleep is something that you are struggling with.

 

So let’s take a look here. I’ve got the four steps. They’re all based in research. Number one is, again, the goal is not to sleep. The goal is for your body to rest and that pivot. Is a foundation of the work that we’re doing here. The more you force yourself, I have to get sleep. I’m going to be so tired tomorrow.

 

I have to get this to sleep before this time. Oh no. I looked at my watch now it’s only gonna be five hours until I wake up. Now it’s only four hours till I wake up. That mentality is. Making it so much worse. So what I want you to do is to redirect the goal away from sleep, to just resting, even if you’re not sleeping, as long as you have given your body a moment of rest where you’re not resisting and wrestling.

 

And. You know, getting really angry and frustrated. We’re going to be creating a, the most restful experience as we can, whether you’re sleeping or not, and that is going to achieve the goal. ’cause really, at the end of the day, your body mostly just needs rest. Okay, but let’s take a look. Step one as we know is rest now.

 

Sleep isn’t something you do, it’s something that happens. It’s not something you can force yourself to have. It’s something that you fall into and again, trying to control it increases arousal, increases anxiety. If you’re having a lot of release of cortisol, adrenaline, all of those anxiety hormones, they actually alert you, you know, keep you hypervigilant in case danger arises.

 

So it’s going to make it a lot harder to fall asleep. So we wanna switch this to one where we’re not trying to control, but instead again, we’re moving to a model of just rest. Now, instead of we’re practicing allowing rest, even if sleep hasn’t arrived yet, we’re not gonna focus on when it’s coming. Am I getting sleepy?

 

Because every time you do that again, you’re gonna spike that anxious arousal. Making it harder to fall asleep. Now, step two is to slow down. We’re already starting this in step one, but I wanted it to be a major step here that you have to remind yourself slowing down. I want you to imagine that you are a sloth.

 

I love sloths. They’re so slow and gentle and kind and curious and open, and that’s how I want you to be. Now, slow sleep a lot, and that’s probably because of how’s. Slowly move, right? And so I want you to slow down your body physically actually move slower as you move towards bedtime. And once you’re in bed.

 

Now I also want you to slow down your reactions. To any intrusive thoughts that you’re having, any difficult emotions you’re having, no matter how fast they’re going, even if they’re popping up like whack-a-mole all over the place, I want your response to them to be slow. Now, this is what I mean. Let’s say you’re laying in bed and your brain’s going the to-do list, like, or tomorrow you’ve gotta do this and you’ve gotta do that.

 

And oh my gosh, that test is coming and that presentation and oh my goodness, it’s popping through, right? If your response is like, oh my God, you’re right. Holy crap. And you’re like. Responding speedy. You’re actually keeping that wheel rolling. You’re really revving that machine. And so what we wanna do instead is when you have those thoughts or those emotions, you wanna slowly respond right by going, okay, I’m observing a thought.

 

I’m going to respond slowly. I’m not gonna respond with. Urgency. I’m not gonna respond with more catastrophes or catastrophic thinking. My response to these thoughts and this anxiety is going to be low too. And again, a part of you slowing down is actually slowing down your out breath, not your in breath.

 

Usually when we’re stressed or we’re anxious, we do very shallow breaths and we do them very quick so that we can get enough oxygen in our, into our body. But what we wanna do is we want us. Slow that breath down as well, especially the outbreath. And that sends a message to our brain that we’re okay and we’re safe, and that we’re gonna slow that parasympathetic nervous system down.

 

And that’s what we’re looking for. Okay? We don’t wanna increase arousal, we wanna increase that calm. Okay? Now, one thing I wanted to offer to you is if you’re someone who is. Spending a lot of time in bed ruminating. We have an entire course called the Rumination Reset. It is a mini course. You can go to cbt school.com and learn all about it there.

 

That is there for you. If you really struggle not to engage in all of that thinking, that is gonna be there for you. It’s a three and a half hour mini course, and it is just one of my favorite courses that I’ve ever made. So we’re going to go now into step number three, where we create a safe. Bedtime routine.

 

Sleep hygiene is so important when it comes to sleep. Not that we’re forcing sleep. We’re not really, again, we don’t want, we just wanna rest, but that sleep hygiene can help us slowly ease in. I had a conversation with my son the other day, and he was on the iPad playing a computer game and then. I said, it’s bedtime.

 

And he went to go into bed and he was all wriggly, like he was moving around and he was joking and, and I said, it’s bedtime, it’s time for us to start slowing down. And he’s like, I can’t, I feel like all this jitter in my body. And I mentioned to him, if you’re gonna play high speed games. Where I think he was like moving these like balls around and really quickly with his finger, um, that’s going to create a hyper arousal in his body.

 

It’s not slow and slowing down into a gradual like relaxed day. And so we wanna create a bedtime routine that really fosters this practice of slowing down. Resting and so let’s take a look of what that means. So we wanna limit screen exposure and high stimulation before bed. That also includes like jumping around and listening to like really, really bouncy music.

 

And having caffeine. We wanna blow our actions down. Limit screen time before bed. We also can, if you want, practice progressive muscle relaxation. That’s where we are dropping the tension. Softening our body often. By the time we go to bed, we’re like very, very tense. We’re very clenching and shoulders hurt because we’ve been holding them up around our ears all day and our brows forward and we’re very, very tight all over.

 

And so doing some kind of progressive muscle relaxation can also help just slowly ease you into rest. Okay, so if you are looking for effective OCD or BFRB treatment that’s covered by insurance. I’m thrilled to announce to you this week’s sponsor no cd. No CD provides live face-to-face video sessions with licensed therapists who specialize in OCD and related conditions.

 

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Give yourself plenty of time to fall asleep. If you know I’m someone who needs eight hours, like I get teary and emotional, I kind of turn into a mess. Anything less than six hours. And so I need to make sure that if I have to be up, let’s say at six o’clock in the morning, I’m not gonna go to bed at 12 because it’s gonna take me some time to wind down.

 

I know I’m gonna, not giving myself enough time. For that wind down period. For some it takes up to a couple hours. And so what I want to remind you is give yourself plenty of time. If you need to be in bed by, let’s say 10, make sure that you’re giving yourself time, starting maybe at nine where you s.

 

Start to slow things down. You are starting to brush your teeth. You’re starting to turn down your bed, get into your pajamas, maybe having a shower, like you’re getting that going. You’re not starting the routine when really you wished you would get starting to like go into sleep mode. Okay. And the last thing is, if you can’t fall asleep, if you are in bed and you are wide awake and you cannot fall asleep, it’s totally okay to get up.

 

Remove yourself from the bed, go and do something quiet. Read a book. Listen to gentle audio book or gentle music. Have a, you know, a cup of non-caffeinated tea if you need, or warmed milk, whatever feels good to you. And then try again. The reason you don’t want to associate your bed as a stressful place where you pressure yourself to fall asleep.

 

So you go back into your bed given another shot. If you’re still wide awake, you can get up again. Maybe. I remember I went through a season where I wasn’t sleeping. I would do jigsaw puzzles, so I’d get up, I would do like 10 pieces. I go back to bed, try, see how it goes. If not, I’d get back up, but I wouldn’t be angry.

 

Now, that brings me to step four, which is to be. Gentle. We’ve talked about going slow, but now we want you to be gentle and what that means is you’re gonna be kind to yourself and we’re going to be kind to the situation. If you are starting to notice a lot of frustration and I should be going to sleep and I’ve got so much to do tomorrow and this isn’t fair, like I should be sleeping.

 

This is, I’m gonna be a mess tomorrow. That was literally me when I had babies. So afraid of not sleeping because it’s true. When I don’t sleep, I’m an emotional mess. It’s true, but what I found was when I practiced not sleeping and when I didn’t sleep, and if I was really tired, but I promised myself I would take care of myself when I was tired and I wouldn’t judge myself for any emotions that arose.

 

Being tired wasn’t scary anymore. A lot of my clients and students report they’re really afraid of being tired. They’re afraid of the exhaustion that will, they’ll feel when those are not dangerous emotions and sensations. So let’s talk about it. Number one, no matter how hard it gets, we are committing to focusing on kindness as our only goal, right?

 

As we’re trying to rest. We’re also committing to kindness unconditionally. We’re also gonna soothe any distress we have. So as anger arises, we’re going to soothe it and go, yeah, I understand. This is really frustrating. We’re not gonna get all aroused and upset because that’s only gonna make it harder to fall asleep.

 

We’re just gonna slowly lay there and let that discomfort rise and fall. Rise and fall. Rise and fall. Oh, I’m planning to feel scared about tomorrow. We’re going to soothe that fear. We’re gonna allow that fear. We’re gonna acknowledge it, and we’re gonna validate and say, I’ll be there for you tomorrow no matter what.

 

We’re also gonna be committing again to that tired you tomorrow. So I remember when I had kids, maybe I got three hours. Sleep, maybe 30 minutes in some evening, I would say, okay, because I didn’t get enough sleep. I’m not gonna abandon myself or bully myself into doing all the things I was gonna do. I’m gonna give myself lots of grace and I’m gonna do what I can and I’m gonna let people know I didn’t sleep very much last night.

 

I might be a little groggy. I mightn’t be totally on it. And I found that the world had a lot of. Grace for me in those times, and now even when my kids are grown and teenagers, if I know I’m not sleeping, I know that tomorrow I will take care of myself. I’ll nourish myself, I’ll take water, I’ll take a walk, get some sun, and I’m gonna try not to make it worse, so that tonight is hard.

 

Okay. Now let’s review what we’ve learned today. Number one, the goal is not sleep. The goal is rest. Number two is you must slow down. It’s so important that in your body language is slowing down. Number three is we wanna find a routine that works for you. Not for Auntie Martha. Not for Uncle Joe, but what works for you?

 

And that will be you experimenting with when you need to turn tech off, what really helps you, what music, what sounds, what smells, what bed attire, what temperature you sleep best in. Find a routine that works for you. And then number four is unconditionally be gentle with yourself. Whether you sleep or not, whether you’re tired or not, whether you do well with this or not, just do your best to be an observer to those thoughts.

 

And as you’re trying to sleep, if there are a lot of intrusive thoughts, have a solid plan of how you handle those and that you can practice during the day. Now, as I mentioned to you before. We do have the rumination reset. If you’re someone who ruminates a lot and wants to strengthen that during the day so that you can use those tools at night, head over to cbt school.com and we will be there to help you with that and get you enrolled and everything.

 

It is an on-demand course. You can watch it as many times as you want. You have unlimited access to it. It has a whole workbook. I think you’ll really, really love it. Now as always, thank you for being here with me. I know your time is very valuable and so I’m so honored you chose to spend your time with me.

 

I hope you found this really helpful and I cannot wait to see you next week. Alright, take care everybody. Please note that this podcast or any other resources from cbt school.com should not replace professional mental health care. If you feel you would benefit, please reach out to a provider in your area.

 

Have a wonderful day, and thank you for supporting cbt school.com.