When a client comes in wanting to be coached on sleep issues, I ask a question I stole from my coach mentor, Jeff Copper. “What’s your brain entertaining itself with at night?”
If you’re having a hard time getting up in the morning because you’re so tired, we need to look at why you’re not getting enough sleep. And 9 times out of 10, it’s because some sort of device is capturing your attention so intensely, you only sleep once you’ve passed out from exhaustion, often way past your intended bedtime.
To bring the title back into play, we may get a lot of “neurotypical” advice about keeping the room dark or having comfortable sheets, but a dark room doesn’t do anything when we’re scrolling on a glowing screen til all hours or comfy sheets in the bedroom don’t cut it if we’re still in the living room at 1 am while Netflix auto-plays.
I definitely am not writing this from my own high horse. I struggled with going to sleep for years before I figured out what worked for me.
So let’s talk about what’s going on past the obvious. What exactly does ‘going to sleep’ entail? This late-night activity asks us to lie still, eyes closed, and WAIT for sleep to come. Just wait. This sounds like an ADHD nightmare! Bodies still and staying in one place, bored? Absolutely not.
What traditional advice doesn’t take into account is the idea that boredom is physically painful for ADHDers. So asking us to sit in pain at the end of the day on a regular basis is a terrible solution for going to bed.
Inside, we need to solve the boredom.
The coolest part of my job is that often my ADHD clients DO have a solution for this, but they’ve been shamed into thinking it’s wrong. It’s usually that we need to tweak the tool, not throw out their whole system.
A distinction that my clients know instinctively is what kind of activities grab their attention and hold it hostage until all hours of the night, versus what kind of activities they can find themselves falling asleep/nodding off while doing.
Scrolling on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are popular answers for apps that demand attention. (Remember, they are literally BUILT this way; we are not wrong for getting sucked into them).
Reading, listening to podcasts, doing crosswords, and watching shows they’ve seen a million times before are everyday head-nodding activities.
I’m here to say there is no shame in needing some stimulation to fall asleep. Remember, ADHD brains are always searching for dopamine, so we’re trying to solve for the root cause of the issue.
Looking at this issue requires us to have some real-talk with ourselves and own that we cannot play Candy Crush before bed and instead need to listen to Friends or New Girl for the 100th time (these are my personal examples).
You’re not alone if devices or scrolling are keeping you up at night. If you’re ready to figure out an alternative, our Center Coaches would be happy to help. Meet any of them for a free Get Acquainted Session here. And sweet dreams!
Riley Karbon, PCAC
ADHD Coach and Life Coach, Executive Skills Coach