Tossing and turning during the night can sometimes happen, and it’s normal. However, when you have all night looking like this, it is time to explore why this happens and how to stop this behaviour. Practice shows that women usually have more difficulty sleeping than men. That is because of our different hormone levels, noises, overloaded minds or any issues. But the fact is, regardless of your sex, tossing and turning during the night is unpleasant and can make it hard to go through the next day.

Why Do We Toss and Turn?

Before exploring how to deal with tossing and turning all night long, let’s first learn what can cause this behaviour. It is also known as sleep restlessness which is annoying and disruptive, leaving you tired in the morning. This behaviour usually keeps us active for many hours, making it harder and harder to fall asleep, not talking about having a quality night’s rest. In most cases, tossing and turning is the physical manifestation of stress, anxiety, depression, fear and racing thoughts. Below you will see other potential causes of restless sleep:

Anxiety

Some mental health disorders like anxiety and depression (in some cases) can cause restless sleep. That is because of stress that doesn’t allow us to relax and, therefore, fall asleep.

Stress

Even if you don’t have anxiety, if it is a stressful day, you will likely experience tossing and turning since you have racing thoughts and fear. Chronic stress can also lead to physical symptoms that can cause you to move around while trying to fall asleep.

Overstimulation

Things that overstimulate you during the day, and especially before sleep, can make you restless. This may include stressful situations, events, light, sounds, responsibilities, exercises and using mobile devices before sleep.

Not following a sleep schedule

If you have to work in a company in different time zones from yours and work late, you probably won’t have any sleeping schedule. However, this always results in restless sleep.

6 Ways to Deal With Restless Sleep

Don’t Stay in Bed 

It may sound funny, but if you are tossing and turning and don’t think you are able to fall asleep, wake up and go to another room. If you can’t fall asleep within 2-30 minutes, it is time to get out of bed. You don’t want to associate these anxious and tossed feelings with something cosy and relaxing. Go into a living room and do something that can help you distract from stress and nod off, like reading, meditating or listening to relaxing music. It is worth noting that you don’t need to do anything that can stimulate your brain, like checking your social media accounts and exercising.

Get Back as Soon as You Feel Sleepy

When you feel sleepy, it isn’t recommended to fall asleep on the sofa. People start to get worried since it is getting too late and they won’t be able to have enough sleep, but the trick is to wait until you really want to fall asleep. If you go to bed too early, you will repeat the same behaviour, and anxiety may even appear since you worry about not falling asleep. To let this trick work, do your activity until you are really ready to fall asleep. And once you are ready, run to bed and finally achieve quality sleep.

Relax Your Mind 

In case you wake up during the night and can’t fall asleep, try to relax your mind, reduce thoughts and calm down worries. There are many ways you can achieve a calm state. For example, a nap app can produce the sounds of rain, which has been shown to eliminate stress and racing thoughts.

In addition, you can try a mesmerize app that offers a new dimension of meditation with engaging visuals, soothing psycho-acoustic music and expertly crafted guided meditations to ease your body into a state of relaxation and promote restful sleep.

Avoid Poor Sleep Behaviours

People who have chronic sleep issues tend to develop poor sleep habits. This may include napping or oversleeping during the weekends, checking phones during the night since they can’t fall asleep or laying in bed for hours until they finally can fall asleep. Even though we all have these habits from time to time, when we use them every night, our sleep issues will only worsen.

If you don’t have enough sleep during the day, don’t try to cover all these restless nights during weekends. We should follow a consistent sleep schedule to achieve healthy sleep, so even on weekends, you should sleep only 7-9 hours. 

Follow the Sleep Schedule

As we already mentioned, our organism loves consistency. Having and following a sleep schedule will help you improve your sleep quality, allowing you to quickly fall asleep and wake up refreshed, even if it’s early morning. That is because when you fall asleep and wake up at the same time, your brain knows when to release sleep-indusing and awakening hormones.

If you have to wake up ear;y during the week for some reason, you will slowly train your body to get up early — even on weekends. If you sleep in for two or three more hours, it can confuse your inner clocks and ruin the schedule, resulting in restless sleep next time.

Avoid Using Devices Before Sleep

In addition to running off the lights before going to sleep, try to avoid using any devices at least 1 hour before sleep. These include the lights of your TV, computer, tablet or smartphone. Lights produced by gadgets before sleep confuse your circadian rhythm and make it harder for you to fall asleep. That is because your body doesn’t understand what time it is and slows down the melatonin release. If you need your gadgets before sleep for some reason, download an app that will block these lights.