← Sleep Magic: Sleep Hypnosis & Meditation for Sleep Podcast
Sleep Magic: Sleep Hypnosis & Meditation for Sleep Podcast
The Danger of Caffeine, Negative Expectations & Decluttering Your Home 💌 March Magic Mailbag
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Jessica Porter
Refreshing Wild Cherry Cola meets Smooth cream, the treat you deserve. Pepsi Wild Cherry and Cream Treat yourself. Hi everyone, I'm Jessica Porter, and welcome back to Sleep Magic, a podcast where I help you find the magic of your own mind, helping you to sleep better and live better. Hi everyone. Welcome to this month's Mailbag episode where I will do my best to answer questions that you've sent in. But before we dive in, a few things. First, I'm not officially expert on any of these topics except hypnosis, and I'm not even sure I would call myself an expert on that. I. I just know it. I'll give you my experience, my perspective, but I may not know the answers to these questions, and I won't pretend to know stuff that I don't. If you need professional help with any of these issues, I encourage you to seek it out. And finally, if you fall asleep, because that's what happens when you hear my voice, that's fine too, as long as you are in a safe and comfortable position. If you after falling asleep, want to get the details later, listen to this. Taking a hike or cleaning your apartment or something. Just not operating heavy machinery. Does anyone operate heavy machinery? Some people do. Okay, all right, our first question from Noel Hi, Jessica. I find that I have a lot of expectations when it comes to sleep, mostly connected to my previous experiences. These include the expectation that I'm going to have trouble sleeping if I have something I'm anticipating the next day traveling, for example, the expectation that if I go to bed a little early, I'm going to have even more trouble falling asleep than usual, and the expectation that I'm going to wake up at least twice in the night. I know I'm making it harder for myself, essentially creating a self fulfilling prophecy. So my question is, how do I stop? Well, Noel, I think this is a great question and a great opportunity to talk about how the mind works. So within your subconscious mind is your imagination. And the imagination is constantly creating these silent and sometimes not so silent expectations of things. The imagination sort of rolls out a mental red carpet for you to walk on. It's like pre paving your life. So, for example, if I go to a party expecting to have a good time and I imagine having a good time, I'm much more likely to do those things and give off the energy that helped create a. A good experience. By imagining the good time, I'm sort of bringing the good time to the party. Conversely, if I show up at a party having imagined feeling awkward or rejected or nervous, I will feel more of those things. Now that doesn't mean the party can't become wonderful and move me in a whole different direction and change the mood in spite of my expectations. But the party kind of has to get over my resistance in order to do that. So your mind is always doing something. Even when we meditate, the mind is doing something. Sure, it can experience periods of stillness, but even a long period of stillness for an experienced meditator is rarely more than several seconds. So once we understand that the mind is always doing something, one of the benefits of hypnosis is that by going into deep relaxation, we can make more intentional choices about where the mind goes. We actively roll out different red carpets. Okay, so here's a little sub note. If you identify like you have Noelle, that you have a set of expectations that feel like they're causing you problems, the answer is not to negate them or cut them down or push them away. The answer is to simply roll out a better, more positive red carpet and focus on that. And there's an important principle behind that. The subconscious mind doesn't really compute negation. So if I say I will not eat chocolate, the image that comes to mind is chocolate. So I've just reinforced chocolate. I haven't Pushed it away. In fact, I've brought it towards me. So we all have an opportunity to create these new positive red carpets in our minds that we're rolling out and walking down mentally and emotionally. Now, you've already identified that your mind is doing certain things. It's throwing up a dirty red carpet. And I think the fix over time is to develop a different set of expectations. Slowly, gently, patiently. Your new red carpets might sound something like, no matter what time I go to sleep, I sleep well. Or I fall asleep quickly. No matter what I have to do tomorrow, I sleep deeply. And then you start imagining that and saying it to yourself when you're in deep relaxation, reinforcing the new red carpet, practicing it. And it's a discipline, just you taking yourself into relaxation, maybe using some of the things I say here in Sleep Magic, and then offering yourself new suggestions. From now on, no matter when I go to sleep, I fall asleep quickly and easily. No matter what I have to do tomorrow, I sleep deeply and fully. So that, Noelle, is one part of my answer to your question, but I do have a whole other take on that. And I hope this doesn't feel like I'm walking back. What I've just said, what I've just said completely stands. But I don't actually think that the problems you're describing are uncommon or bad. In fact, it's very common for the subconscious mind the day before you travel to feel a certain degree of alertness and vigilance, because it knows that when morning arrives, it's going to be in a completely new set of circumstances, handling deadlines and pressure, moving through time and space in a way that. That is not your normal routine. So I don't want you to judge yourself for that or think you should be a perfect sleeper every single night. No one is a perfect sleeper every single night, and I don't think that should be the goal. And if something is interrupting your sleep because the next day is pressurized or unusual, it doesn't have to ruin your whole night. By training here at Sleep Magic, you're learning that you can apply the skill of relaxation under all sorts of circumstances that you may not have realized were workable before, including this one. So let's look at the mind on an even more micro level. If you go to bed and start worrying about the next day, or even worse, you start noticing that you're worrying about the next day, like worrying about worrying and noticing that it's harder to get to sleep than it was the night before, then you start to freak out. And then you freak out that you're freaking out. And that is the self fulfilling prophecy that you mentioned. That does get momentum. Then it becomes like, oh God, I can't do this. What's wrong with me? And suddenly you have a whole snowball rolling down Stress Mountain. But no matter how big that snowball gets, no matter where you intervene upon it, the solution is always to relax. And that simply means, Noel, let your shoulders drop, let the muscles of your face let go. Literally relax parts of your body. Because where your body goes, your mind follows. And then your mind may pick it up again and say, but wait, I'm traveling tomorrow and I can't sleep. And as soon as you notice, the mind is off to the races again. You relax. Let your legs feel heavy, open up, your hands, just let go. Listen to Sleep Magic and relax. Okay, Jessica? And then your mind gets all excited again. Of course, that's what your mind does. That's okay. You relax again. That is always the answer. The way to slow down the mind is to slow down the body. I just want to address a couple more things that you've said. I know I'm going on here, but your question got me going. Now, you also mentioned that if you go to bed a little early, you expect to have even more trouble going to sleep. Well, I mean, unless you're truly tired, unless you're feeling what sleep experts call sleep pressure. If you're just adding an extra hour on one end because you have to get up earlier and maybe you're not actually sleepy yet, then, yeah, you may have a little more trouble falling asleep. But you shouldn't have any trouble relaxing. Remember, here at Sleep Magic, we don't aim at sleep, we we aim at relaxation. Because relaxation lives right next door to sleep. And sleep takes care of itself. It comes sneaking in when you are deeply relaxed. So if you go to bed early, the new expectation is not, I must sleep now. The new expectation is I am going to relax. I have this extra hour to relax deeply. You go to bed early, you practice your relaxation, put on sleep magic, meditate, do something that lets your mind and body unwind. And even if you don't fall asleep a full hour earlier, by relaxing, your body is resting and you're getting many of the benefits of sleep. And that relaxation will eventually pull you into sleep. And finally, Noelle, when you say that you expect to wake up at least twice a night, I want to ask, what exactly do you mean by waking up? Do you mean waking up and being fully alert and reading for an hour? Do you mean waking up to go to the bathroom? Or do you mean simply surfacing, rolling over and going back to sleep? Well, first of all, it depends on the person, their age and their physical condition. But many of us wake up at least once a night to go to the bathroom. That's just a physiological reality. What I do is that I keep a little night light, like a very, very soft light in the bathroom so my brain doesn't encounter any major lights. And I just surrender to the idea that I have to go to the bathroom and I crawl back into bed. I do not, anywhere in that little break, consider it a failure or a problem. It's simply part of sleeping and being alive. In fact, I'm amazed that my bladder wakes me up. That's like a little miracle. Second, I feel moved to remind all of us that no one sleeps eight hours straight. We sleep in cycles, little slices of sleep, and they're usually about 90 minutes to two hours. So you and everyone else in the world, unless you're taking something that knocks you out, will surface every couple of hours, roll over, yawn, stretch, maybe blink your eyes, and then move into the next sleep cycle. So again, if that's what's happening and you've decided that it means something's wrong or imperfect, let's shift those expectations. Maybe the new red carpet is I'm gonna surface a few times in the night and that is absolutely normal and I will relax into the next cycle and imagine yourself doing that. Personally, I kind of like it when I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm like, oh, here I am. Sleep cycle, boom. And I go back to sleep. So yes, Noel, you do direct your mind. And we can go into self fulfilling prophecies that are bad and we can do it for outcomes that are good. You can create new suggestions for yourself and I encourage you to do that not only around sleep, but around all sorts of things in your life. So good for you for identifying your not so positive expectations. But also understand there's no perfect sleep. This is not a competition. No one is watching. It's really about your relationship to your own body and your own self. And the softer, kinder and gentler we can be with ourselves, not only around sleep, but around all things, the better. Because in that soft, kind and gentle place, that's where a lot of your power is. All right, thank you so much, Noel, for your question and for putting up with my incredibly long answer. Okay, next from Anonymous. Hello, Jessica. I'm single and divorced as of last year and most of my possessions have been in storage for over a year. I get pretty annoyed when people suggest that if I've lived without something for this long, I don't need it. My goal over the next couple of months is is to go through everything with friends and donate about a third of it, but I feel very stressed just thinking about tackling this. Do you have any words of advice or encouragement about decluttering? Yes, Anonymous, I absolutely do, and I think this may qualify as the question that really possessed me most this month, so I'm going to go into some depth here.
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Jessica Porter
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Jessica Porter
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Jessica Porter
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Jessica Porter
Coaching your sixth grader soccer team. Go Girls. And carrying all the groceries in one trip. Try Quaker Protein Instant Oatmeal Granola and Bars. Great taste and a good source of protein. Quaker Bring out the good first of all, I think it's important to understand that we only have so much decision making energy in a day. And you can actually look into the neurology of this. The average person can only do so much decluttering because every item requires a decision and sometimes it's a difficult one. And decision making burns a ton of glucose in your brain, so it's sort of exhausting. Now the experts say it's best to make decisions earlier in the day because after a while what they call decision fatigue sets in. And then consider this Anonymous this isn't just like cleaning up your kitchen. These objects you're going through don't prompt decisions like is this recycling or compost? Many of the items you're going through carry sentimental value or memories, so there's a deeper level of emotional energy that comes into play. And you may be thrown into feelings that are quite unexpected as you go through this stuff. So I think I want to start by encouraging you to respect this activity. Don't just think of it as oh my God, I have all this extra stuff. How can I get rid of it? It's not just stuff. It represents parts of your life, of you. And that's not always easy to let go of. So here's what I do when a task feels daunting. First I create a reward for doing it so that I have an incentive beyond the task itself. And I mean a reward every time you do it. Not for the whole job. Maybe you go to the storage space for a while, then give yourself a manicure or take yourself out to lunch or call a friend. Something that Feels good to you. That signals to your subconscious mind that you have achieved something that's important. It reinforces the behavior. Second, I set a timer and I make the amount of time I'm willing to work on the task very limited, especially at the beginning. In fact, sometimes I want the time limit to be so short that I'm guaranteed to have an appetite to continue later. I don't want to exhaust myself because then I won't feel incentivized to come back to it. So Maybe you spend 50, 15 minutes decluttering the first day. That might be enough. Maybe 10 minutes, maybe five. I don't know. Those minutes could throw you back into high school, your marriage, infancy, make you think about people who've died. That's a lot. But by keeping the task short, you're guaranteed to achieve it. And it will also give you a sense of accomplishment, a sense that you're tackling something meaningful. And then the reward puts a bow on it and reinforces a behavior. And then there's another technique I use sometimes called bookending. I call someone supportive before I start a hard thing, and I call them again when I'm done. That creates sort of an emotional vessel in which I'm doing the task. An emotional set of mirrors, so to speak, giving it a supportive beginning, middle and end. You could also try FocusMate. FocusMate is a service website, probably an app, where you connect with a stranger somewhere in the world. You both set a time while you're doing two separate tasks, completely unrelated tasks, and then you finish at the same time and you check in with one another. But just feeling like another human present is very powerful, and this is important. We secrete dopamine simply by being in a shared space with another human. And that even extends into the digital space as long as what we're doing is live. So those are my tips and techniques on breaking down a big task. But I also want to address this one year rule. I want to say to your friends who say that if you haven't used something for a year or more, it should go, because I disagree pretty vehemently, actually. Now I do think the one year rule applies to random office supplies or clothes you never wear. Sure. But if something is a memento or souvenir, those words literally mean to remember. Our memories are part of what help us remain ourselves. Our lives are ours because they contain our unique experiences and memories of them. Of course, we live in the present moment. That's important. I'm the first person to advocate for being in the present. But we've also lived lives that have been filled with adventures and relationships, previous present moments. And some of those people aren't even here anymore. So mementos are important because they trigger the neural pathways of the past. It's like your subconscious mind is a vault of experiences, but it doesn't bring them to the surface constantly. A souvenir or memento acts like double clicking on a memory, and it activates those neural pathways and brings them into awareness. Now, some people might argue that if something's truly important, you should be able to remember it without any object. But most of us aren't wired that way. There wouldn't be a souvenir industry in every single country if we were. So keep what matters to you. That said, I'm not trying to enable any hoarding instincts. We do need to let go of some things in order to avoid spending a King's ransom on storage. So you may want to take photos of some of your important items and then donate the item. And those photos can trigger the memories too. Just be sure to back them up. Put them on a distinct area of your phone or your computer or a thumb drive so you know where they are when you want to enjoy them in the future. Now, obviously I don't want to spend every day of my life reliving my past, but talk to me when I'm 80. It may bring me great comfort to remember things I did, people I knew and loved, and times when my life was completely different. My father's getting older and I watch him go through his papers, journals, and photographs. In fact, I'm very envious that he's kept a journal his entire life, and I watch him editing them and pruning them. And I know it keeps him connected to the life he's lived. And it's been a big life and this phase of it is very limited in comparison. Now, not everyone wants to live in the past or, you know, do that kind of reminiscing. But if you do or suspect that you will, I think that the one year rule is inappropriate. So one final thing, Anonymous Be kind to yourself as you go through this. As much as you're expecting this process to be hard and sucky, maybe imagine it being sort of leisurely and loving. Play music, have fun if you can. This process can be a meaningful reflection on where you've been and who you've shared your life with. And please don't expect yourself to move too quickly. In fact, whatever timeline you imagine, double it. This process deserves and requires time and support. Actually, before we Let go. Anonymous I forgot that you wrote a second part of your question completely unrelated. You said, I've been a regular listener for years and recently I had a cool non bedtime experience with self hypnosis. I was getting a tattoo and decided to use hypnosis to relax while the artist worked. I became so relaxed that it was the most comfortable tattoo experience I've had. And I think I even fell asleep for a while. Yay. I love this. I do something similar at the dentist. I challenge myself. I say, how relaxed can I get with someone's fingers in my mouth? And I literally, you know, drop my shoulders, let my arms be heavy, let my legs be heavy, let the muscles of my face that I can relax let go. Do the eyelid fake out. I mean, I really go there. And you did it with your tattoo, which I've never experienced. I don't have any tattoos, but I absolutely love that you did that. Thank you for sharing. And there's actually a physiological reason that this works, because discomfort lives in two places. First, there's discomfort at the site of the injury or the problem. And then there's the nerve signal that reports to the brain. And when we tense up in response to discomfort, we intensify the signal to the brain. But if we consciously relax, if we're able to, we reduce the intensity of that report to the brain and we may even trigger endorphins instead of stress hormones. When we tense up, the cycle escalates. More pain, more tension, more pain. But if we relax and let the sensation simply exist at the site, you notice it. It's like, oh, tattoo happening. It's not like you go numb, but if you just dial everything down. But what's happening at the site, without emotional drama or resistance, you can go even deeper into relaxation just as you did. That's the magic of your mind. Well done and thanks for letting us know. Next, from Theresa. I live with a hereditary connective tissue disorder that largely rules my days, along with financial stress and a demanding job. My biggest obstacle to sleep is my nervous system constantly wondering what might happen next. Will I have to cancel plans because of pain? Will someone need my care? Will I have the energy to show up? Will someone become angry or loud for no reason? I've done a lot of work with counselors and I meditate regularly. Yet the free floating anxiety still shows up at bedtime. How can I calm this storm? Thank you for sharing that. Teresa and I want to address this from two different angles. And the first angle may not apply to you at all. But I need to say it. Whenever someone describes their nervous system sort of blinking like a neon sign, random fearful thoughts just invading like flickering lights, I ask about caffeine. Is there any caffeine in this picture? Because most humans on this planet consume it daily, and people sometimes say, yes, but it's just tea or just one cup of coffee before noon. But people metabolize caffeine very differently, and it can appear in many places. Protein drinks, soda, energy drinks, dark chocolate, milk chocolate. So if caffeine is present anywhere in your life, I strongly encourage you to let go of it. And yes, when people quit caffeine, they experience a headache for a day or two and even fatigue for a week or two. But after that, the well of energy in the body actually becomes much deeper and more stable because caffeine doesn't actually give us any new energy. There's no energy in caffeine. It simply causes us to spend our existing energy faster. It's like writing checks against your own future. So if caffeine is part of this picture, removing it may dramatically calm your nervous system, even at night. Now, now I want to answer as if there's no caffeine involved. Just assuming that in that case. One of my favorite tools around this issue is the fear inventory. And what I mean by that is I write down every worry, every resistant thought, and I don't do it every night anymore. But I used to. For years, I let every fearful or resistant thought slide right out of my brain right before bedtime. And I slept like a baby. So let's take your concerns and rewrite them slightly to express the fears beneath them. For example, instead of, will I have to cancel plans? I would write, I'm afraid of having to cancel plans because of pain. It kind of makes your subconscious mind imagine it and then let it go because it's not happening right now. Now, people sometimes worry that naming fears will somehow manifest them, but I found the exact opposite. I had a friend who was getting married, and she came to me like six weeks before the wedding as a full on freaked out bridezilla. I mean, she felt pressure about every aspect of the wedding and she was not enjoying any part of this experience. It was awful. And I said, you need to write down your fears. Get them out. They're owning you. And she really, really resisted. She was like, I refuse to give them power. I refuse to make them real. And I was like, honey, they've got power. I'm experiencing it right now. They're very real. I feel them in your presence. So she came back about a week later, and she had surrendered to this exercise, and she had written out out her fears, and she was like a different person. She was in the moment. She was handling things one at a time, and she was genuinely looking forward to the wedding, which may be the most important part anyway. So if you think that writing down your fears will somehow cause those things to manifest or give them power, I say they have power when they're stuck in your subconscious mind, not when they become conscious. That's the whole thrust of therapy and meditation. Let the unconscious material become conscious and it basically loses its grip. Writing down fears removes their power. Think of it like pulling tissues out of a box of tension and throwing them away. And at first, your list of fears might be three pages long. That's fine, that's good, even. Get them out, and one fear will naturally connect to another in your mind, and you will dump a whole can of worms. But as you repeat this exercise and the fears repeat, you begin noticing that many of the fears don't ever come to fruition, and the nervous system starts to relax its grip. And this isn't just about calming down. This practice actually helps me move into the unknown, into tomorrow with more confidence. Because we're designed to grow, to expand, not just react to fears. We need to step into the future. And by removing any resistance that we're throwing up, we can do that much more easily. Because when I don't release my fears, they become like a map inside of me, and I don't want that. I hope those help. Teresa, let us know how it goes. Next question from Georgie. I'm 17 years old and I feel a bit like the odd one out in my friend group. They like to drink every weekend and party hard. I'm a huge extrovert and love socializing, but drinking and crazy music makes me anxious. And I'm not really interested in getting drunk every weekend. Is it weird that I genuinely have much better things to do, like learning lines for Elle woods, singing practice, homework. I don't mind being different. I just don't know if I'm missing out on my youth. Georgie, I love this question, and I totally relate. I mean, not as a teenager, but I didn't party or drink or smoke anything. From about the age of 22 to 32. I basically skipped an entire decade of what people think is typical young adult years full of young adult behavior. I didn't go out to bars. I didn't go out to dance clubs. I didn't, you know, do those normal things. And I didn't stop because I had a problem. I didn't do those things because I was simply more interested in other things, in spiritual exploration, personal growth, understanding the mind. So while my peers were partying and dating and doing the usual things, I was doing something different. And yeah, that sometimes made me feel like the odd man out. But I realize now that those explorations were part of my path. And what you're drawn to, Georgie, the theater, singing, learning lines, those are threads of who you are. And later in life, you'll often look back and realize that your adult path grew directly and out of those early interests. So, no, you're not missing out on your youth. It's your youth and you get to live it your way, following your intuition and interests. And just so you know, the things you're doing, theater, singing, performing, those are actually consciousness altering activities too. They're just altering your consciousness without saying substances. Your friends are altering their consciousness by drinking. And the desire to alter your consciousness is a very strong drive. It's very real. But we do it in many, many different ways. So let yourself just fly in the ways that feel good to you. That's so important. And don't worry, life will bring you challenges and new experiences. You don't have to force them. They'll come to you. And that ability to feel comfortable being yourself at 17, I mean, some people don't get there ever or for decades. So well done. Be yourself, have fun. And thank you for writing. This next question is sort of similar in some ways from Lauren in Bournemouth, England. How can I stop existential questions taking over my life and my brain every day? I question my life's purpose and whether I'm living the way I'm supposed to. Part of this relates to my complex PTSD and beliefs about myself that come from trauma. But questioning the meaning of life every single day is ironically interfering with my life. I'd love your advice on how to manage existential questions in a healthy way. Wow, Lauren, this is very interesting. If you want to hear my full answer and advice on this question, you can listen to the extended premium version of this episode by subscribing to Sleep Magic. Check the show notes for more details. So that's it for today. We do this monthly with extended episodes for subscribers. So please submit your questions in the next few weeks so I can answer them in the next episode. And remember, you can ask me anything. Whether it's about an issue you're having, a question about me, or just a question about life. I'm open to trying to answer as many as I can, so be sure to send them in. If you listen to Sleep Magic through the Sleepiest app, or if you're subscribed on Apple, send your questions to HelloLeepMagic FM. That's HelloLeepMagic FM. If you listen on any other platform, go into the Show Notes and find the Super Cast link. Click on that and you'll find an Ask Me Anything feature and you can put your questions there. I really look forward to hearing the new questions. Please let us know in the reviews what you think of this episode. And I'm sorry that I can't get to everyone's question every week, but we try and push them into a pile and spread them out over time. So thank you, thank you, thank you for listening and have a good night.