Wired but Exhausted: Why You Can't Switch From On to Off

I'd been hearing a strange bird call from somewhere past the creek, so last night I recruited Chris to come out on the back porch with me to help identify it. He's an experienced hunter and knows far more about the animals around us. We've had some great horned owls around this summer, and we've been listening as their calls changed from a rather undignified juvenile screeching stage and are now properly hooting, but this little guy was different.

We were sitting there listening for my mystery bird when far in the distance the coyotes started up. That set off every dog in our section of the cove to howling. Then the donkey up on the hill apparently had something to say about the dogs. The poor little mystery bird we'd originally gone out to hear didn't stand a chance. It was a whole country cacophony-symphony out there.

It's not usually quite so lively. Most evenings it might be a couple of barred owls and a bat or two, with Chaco (our old-man Labrador) lying beside me. There's something about sitting there as the darkness settles in, smelling the night air, feeling the cooler breeze coming down off the mountain, maybe catching the last bit of sunset and a lightening bug or two. These are signals the human body has been responding to for a very, very long time: the active part of the day is ending.

And although I hadn't thought much about why I do it, I've realized this is one of the ways I wind down from 'wired-but-exhausted' and put myself to bed.

Most of us know the opposite feeling, too. You're exhausted, you finally lie down. There is nothing left in the tank—and yet it's one more article, one more video, one more note to yourself so you don't forget something tomorrow. Your body is lying perfectly still ready to conk out, but internally the mental engine is roaring.

One patient described it as "pressing the gas and the brake at the same time". You're spending huge energy, but you're not getting anywhere. And sometimes the same thing happens in reverse: it's morning and time to get moving, but everything feels heavy. Getting yourself going requires coffee, obligation, a deadline or plain old willpower.

That's the problem: you can't stop when you want to stop, and you can't go when you want to go.That's a pretty good everyday description of a nervous system that's having trouble changing gears.

My husband is a paramedic and has been doing that work for more than 20 years. A 12-hour shift means emergencies, frightened people, rapid decisions, intense conversations and being responsible for another human being when something has gone terribly wrong. At the end of twelve hours, the clock says, "You're off duty now. " But the body takes a little longer to get the message. Over the years he's developed his own ways of making that transition.

That's an extreme example, but I think many of us are living a smaller version of it every day. We move from work to emails to traffic to dinner to bills to family challenges to texts to news to a tiny glowing rectangle containing essentially every piece of information in the known universe. Then at 10:00 we announce, Okay, body. Sleep. As if there's an OFF button.

The book Between Heaven and Earth describes two ways of working with a body: the mechanic and the gardener. A mechanic will run the machine until something breaks, drag it into the shop, fix what is broken, then go back to running the machine the same way. When something is acutely wrong, a broken bone, an infection, a heart that stops, you want a mechanic, fast and decisive.

But sometimes the problem is that the whole environment has drifted out of balance. That's where the gardener's attention matters more than a mechanic's toolkit: daily check-ins to observe what needs to be adjusted to boost the healing growth. Is there enough light? Too much? Does this need water, pruning, or to be left alone?

Sleep is a perfect example, because you can't mechanic your way into it. You can lie there thinking I HAVE TO FALL ASLEEP RIGHT NOW, but good luck with that. What we can do is tend the conditions until our body recognizes that sleep is the natural next thing.

That's what I've learned to do. I like the phrase "sleep hygiene," but I think of it more as training Pavlov's dog (though I use bath products instead of a bell). I've spent years teaching my body: oh yes, I recognize this — these are the things that tell my body we're done for today.

FIVE WAYS I TELL MY BODY THE DAY IS OVER

1. I let the outside world tell me what time it is. Sometimes that means sitting on the porch in the dark listening to owls. The point isn't that everyone needs an owl or a donkey. It's noticing that the world has changed. The light is gone, the temperature has shifted, the daytime creatures have quieted down. Even ten quiet minutes outside feels remarkably different from ten more minutes staring at a screen.

2. I change the atmosphere inside, too. We turn down the lights, in winter we often have the fireplace going. We use a few kinds of incense that I associate with evening. I change clothes, wash my face, put on those nice little serums and potions I absolutely will not feel like fooling with once I'm half asleep. They're all little signals: We're changing gears now.

3. I have rituals I actually enjoy. I love a bath enough that my family has been trained to give me bath products for birthdays and Christmas, and I order bath salts in 50-pound bags. This is not a casual relationship with bathing. I'll make my tea, cue up an audiobook, and make an entire little Michelle ceremony out of it. Your version doesn't need to involve fifty pounds of anything. The point is to find something you genuinely look forward to (knitting? listening to music? brushing the dog?), so winding down doesn't become another virtuous chore you're supposed to accomplish correctly.

4. I use the same cues over and over. I arrange my pillows a certain way. Chaco-pup gets his ramp up into the bed, Lucy-pup settles down beside it, and I turn on the same Spotify 'Deep Sleep' playlist every night. I used to set it for about 36 minutes until I realized I never heard most of the songs. These days I usually make it about 16 minutes before I'm asleep. Same music, same sequence, night after night. Eventually the body recognizes the script.

5. I put the infernal phone down. There. I said it. I don't think any of us needs another lecture about our phones. We know. They're very good at offering a tired but still-revving brain exactly what it wants: just one more. This may actually be the hardest habit of all.

There will always be one more interesting article, one more email, one more thing you suddenly remember to add to tomorrow's list. The internet never closes. The work is never completely finished. There is no bell that rings and announces that you've officially accomplished enough for today.This is still a huge challenge for me as well, but at some point we have to draw that line ourselves.

I try to think of it less as depriving myself of that "one more thing" and more as setting tomorrow's self up to succeed. Because when I string together a few nights of actually getting enough rest, it's amazing: I have more natural energy, I'm more creative and patient, I have more to give my patients and the people I love, with even enough left over to smile and be friendly to the person bagging my groceries instead of silently wishing the world would please stop requiring things of me.

My sweet friend Bonnie calls this “getting in stance.” Get yourself situated. Set things up so that when life arrives tomorrow, you're ready to meet it. Maybe getting in stance for tomorrow doesn't start tomorrow morning. Maybe it starts tonight, when you decide you've done enough for today.

No more "one more." Turn down the lights. Put the phone away. Go listen for an owl. The rest can wait until morning.