If you ever lie awake at night thinking “I can’t sleep, overthinking again”, you’re not alone. One of the biggest differences I see between people who sleep easily and those who struggle is surprisingly simple: good sleepers hardly ever think about their sleep.

They don’t lie there analysing the night before. They’re not panicking about what time they went to bed. They’re not scrolling for hacks. They just get on with their day. And when they’re tired at night, they go to bed. That’s it.

How Overthinking Starts the Spiral

Once sleep becomes something you’re “working on,” it’s easy to slip into over-monitoring. Watching the clock. Counting how long it takes to nod off. Noticing every wake-up. Wondering if you’re somehow doing sleep wrong.

And the cruel part is that monitoring keeps your brain switched on. Sleep isn’t something you can reason yourself into. The more the prefrontal cortex lights up, the further away unconsciousness drifts.

I often compare it to digestion. You don’t need to think about how to digest dinner. Your body handles it. Try to take charge consciously, and you’d probably just make yourself ill. Sleep works in the same way.

“But I Can’t Stop Thinking About It”

I hear this all the time, and it makes sense. If you’ve been through a rough patch with your sleep, of course your brain pays closer attention. It thinks it’s protecting you. But that very vigilance is what traps you.

Take one of my clients, a teacher in her 40s. After a stressful year she developed chronic insomnia. She tried everything from books, podcasts, sleep trackers to endless bedtime rituals. She was worn out before she even got into bed. When we worked together, the first step was stripping it all back. No more rules. Liberation! No more pressure to “sleep well.” We anchored her mornings instead: a consistent wake-up time, daylight, routine. Slowly, as she stopped checking and controlling, her sleep found its way back.

The Goal: Sleep Amnesia

Good sleepers rarely remember much about the process of drifting off and that’s how you know it’s working. They’re not timing it, not aiming for perfection, not holding themselves to account. They’re just allowing sleep to happen in the background.

If you’re trying to reset, start here:

• Keep your wake-up time steady.
• Get out of bed and begin your day, no matter how the night went.
• Accept that some nights will be lighter, some heavier.
• Give your brain less to focus on, not more tools to add to the pile.

Remember, if you can’t sleep due to overthinking, the answer isn’t more effort. Don’t wrestle yourself into sleep, it won’t work anyway. But you can step out of the trap of watching it so closely that it slips away!