HealthyGamerGG - How to (finally) Get Better Sleep

Episode Date: June 1, 2022

Today Dr. K talks about sleep and how to get better at it! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you look at some of these old dothoric traditions and things like that, they'll say that anything that is kept within you will grow in strength. And anything that is ventilated out will diminish. This is why mantras in certain esoteric meditation techniques are kept secret. Because as long as you keep it in here, it starts populating your mind. Does that make sense? Is this normal? Happens to me almost every night.

Hey, congrats on making it to 35 years old. You must be really tired. Do you asleep yet? Yeah, almost asleep. Remember back when you were in the third grade and no one gave you Valentine's card during the class Valentine's Day celebration? No one liked you and Jessica was just pretending to be your friend out of pity. People still don't like you. Oh my goodness.

Okay. Let's talk about sleep. Let's understand like why the hell the brain does this. Okay? So there is so much that we have forgotten about how our minds work. and how sleep works. So we're just going to explain this very simply, okay? So our mind has thoughts and thoughts have a certain energy to them. And our mind tends to do a couple of different things with thoughts. Okay? The first thing that it does is indulge the thought.

So if I think to myself like, oh, I want pizza, my mind is like, ooh, pizza. Like, I'll get it with this and I'll get it with this and I'll be like, oh, it'll be great. Like, I'm going to eat this and I'm going to, oh, maybe I can have this and then I'll have a drink with it. And so one thought propagates other thoughts, right? It's almost like thoughts breed. Second thing is sometimes when we have thoughts, what we tend to do is distract ourselves. So if we distract ourselves, the energy of the thought goes dormant. So we don't resolve it.

We'll start doing something else. And then that thought energy is like kind of there and sort of goes dormant over time. The next thing to understand is that a lot of times our thought, since our mind is so occupied, there's no space for the dormant thoughts to come up. Okay? So what this sort of means is like if I'm watching, if I'm playing video games all day, my mind really likes it in a sense because the mind gets occupied with lots of thoughts. And then what happens is like all the thoughts that I shoved away because of the video games are still they. there in some way. And then when my mind creates a time of silence, or when my mind is empty and does not have any sensory stimulation, because remember, think a little bit about where

thoughts oftentimes come from is like sensory stimulation. So when I'm lost in a video game, like I'm getting a bunch of sensory input, it's harder to get lost in a video game that I'm playing if it's muted. And it's harder even if the monitor is off, right? If I have no sensory input from the video game, like I can still technically be playing, but I'm just not, I'm not going to be thinking about it. Does that make sense? It's like such a simple experiment that you can do, where cut away your sensory input from a video game and see what happens to the video game and how much you think about it. If I play League of Legends, but the only time I played it, I was muted and the monitor was off. How long do you think I would play League of Legends?

Right? Does that make sense? It's kind of weird. So why does this happen when we sleep? It's because sleep is the time that we don't have any sensory input. So we've got all this crap that's left there that starts to like fill this vacuum. And our mind starts thinking about like random stuff that happened a long time ago. And then it interferes with our sleep. Because we want to go to sleep. But like, but this is the problem.

Is this the only dormant time our mind has gotten? So now what I want you all to do is think a little bit about the nature in which our, our, our, mind evolved. So for millions of years, what kind of sensory input did we get? And how much empty mind time did we have? So the reason that our mind does this is because it evolved in a society or circumstance where there was plenty of time to like process or think through the things that we experience on a day-to-day basis. We weren't censorily bombarded all the time. And you even see this with, like, people who will develop technology, right? Like, they'll make the technology as infectious as possible.

Notification. Notification. Oh, by the way, did you see this thing? And now, like, if you, like, so Netflix used to show you stills, right? But now they show you video. So, you know, like they're more and more engaging. Ads used to be, like, pictures. Now they're video.

So more and more sensory engagement, right? And that's pretty cool. Like when I log on, like, I watch like some like 30 seconds of a clip, I'm like, oh, that's like, that looks like a good show. And then it engages my mind. So if you want to stop doing this kind of stuff where your mind like populates things before you sleep, the most important thing is to give your mind some space to let it's like let the pent up stuff out. So this is why like going for a walk before bed can be very good.

But if you go for a walk, ideally don't listen to music and don't participate in conversation. If you want to talk, you can. Because even then, like, if you have like sort of a light conversation, it's like stuff is going to be coming out. There's also why, you know, people have very profound shower thoughts, right? Why is that? Same principle. It's because your mind actually has space to think. And the one thing that we've deprived ourselves of, we even pay people to take away from us, is the space to think.

And as long as you don't give yourself space to think, any time your mind finds space, it will think at you. It'll burst out. And so even if you, like, we can understand this principle, even in therapy, where, like, therapy is, like, literally the place that you go that creates a space for you to bring out stuff

and, like, process it. And then as you process it in the therapy room, you leave, and then it's, like, kind of gone. It's like, cool. that works. There's even a spiritual element to this, where if you look at some of these old dothoric traditions and things like that, they'll say that anything that is kept within you will grow in strength and anything that is ventilated out will diminish.

This is why mantras in certain esoteric meditation techniques are kept secret. Because as long as you keep it in here, it starts populating your mind. Does that make sense? Because the whole point is that you didn't process this thing that happened when Vicky didn't give you a Valentine's Day card. So it pops up a thought in your mind. And so when we do techniques like mantra is what we're actually doing is trying to engage this exactly. When you do a mantra properly, what you're doing is this thought is the mantra instead of a negative thing. And when you have a mantra instead of a negative thing, it actually like works for you.

So then anytime you have a quiet moment, there's something like some positive mantra that comes out. And like instead of this, it creates like a positive emotion. That's kind of how mantra works. And we also kind of know this because people who vent what they do, that diminishes an energy. Right. So if you vent a trauma, like that hopefully diminishes the energy of the trauma. If you vent your brand new business idea, it diminishes the energy of the business idea and the business never comes to fruition. And we know this.

So if you're someone who has random thoughts as you fall asleep, give your mind some space before you go to sleep to vent whatever random crap you want. Do that for half an hour, 45 minutes, and then you'll be surprised. It'll be easier to go to sleep. So this is a good question. How to differ between overthinking and maladaptive daydreaming and healthy processing? Very good question. So the main question here is, does the thought lead to more thoughts or does it diminish more thoughts? So when you process something healthily, you kind of let it go.

Right? You kind of like let it pass through you and it's kind of like gone. Whereas in the cases of maladaptive daydreaming and overthinking, if you go back to like the beginning of this question, one thought propagates another thought. when you daydream, each thought creates an additional thought and creates an additional thought. That's what happens in the daydream, right? It's kind of starting with like a single like Lego and then you're building stuff with it. And the more that you build with it, the bigger it gets and the more it occupies your mind. I'm going to build a house. Oh, I have a house. Now I need a window. Now I need people. I'm going to put people in there. Oh, now the people need a garage. So I'm going to build a garage. Now the garage needs a car.

so I'm going to have a car. Now the car needs a place to go to, so I'm going to make an airport. Now I have an airport. I need an airplane. That's maladaptive daydreaming. One thing propagates another. You can create an entire fictional universe in your mind.

Whereas when you emotionally process, you feel kind of tired at the end of it, and you're done. Enough. And your mind moves on to other things. So very important distinction. So someone else is saying, I usually read before bed,

is that distraction? Usually yes. Now, there can be other benefits to reading before bed, like other kinds of things, because it's like physiologically, it's a calming activity. You can engage your parasympathetic nervous system. You're not looking at a screen. So if you're not looking at a screen, you're not inhibiting melatonin production. So melatonin can start ramping up while you're reading. So there's a lot of good reasons to read before bed. But when you're reading, you're not really giving space to your mind, if that makes sense, right? You're still occupying it with something. Okay. Does that make sense?