Dear Awkward: How Can I Turn Off My Magnificent Brain?

Dear Awkward,

I struggle with insomnia. My mind will simply not “turn off” at bedtime as I have to analyze my day. For example, I’ll wonder if I said something bad about someone behind their back. How do I turn off my magnificent brain?

Sincerely,

Magnificent

Dear Magnificent,

When I was in elementary school, my science teacher, Mr. Lohr, gave us a large packet of science ideas and experiments that was a good 50 pages long.

One page explained what a “black box” was. There were several drawings: each showed a black rectangle with two buttons, one on the right, and one on the left. Arrows showed how pushing the right button would affect the left button.

For example, pushing the right button in two inch would send the left button out four inches. Or pushing the right button in one inch would bring the other button back in one inch. There were at least five different boxes.

Because each box was “black”, you couldn’t see the insides, meaning you didn’t know what combination of levers, pullies, springs or magic elves might produce that particular box’s result. My challenge was to come up with a schematic for each box that would plausibly make it work as described.

Oh, Magnificent, I hated that page.

The project was open-ended and overwhelming. How should I know what was going on inside? I knew nothing of real-life machines! It was not fair for Mr Lohr to expect me to come up with schematics. Wasn’t this the job of my teacher, to teach me things?

All that to say: I think your magnificent brain (and mine) are a kind of black box. Except instead of two buttons they have about a bajillion.

However, the buttons are not just going in and out inches at a time. Instead, our buttons are keeping us up at night, picking at old wounds and exploring new ones, making mental lists of no particular use, happily ignoring our entreaties for them to just shut the hell up.

And like me as a fifth grader, it’s tempting to throw our hands up and say, How should I know what is going on inside? Let’s just shut this whole thing down.

But I have to say that I think that the black box exercise, however much it maddened me, has a kernel of brilliance in it.

It is this: sometimes in life we are given black boxes, and we have to act like scientists and engineers, however overwhelmed we feel. We have to be brave and assume that if we just try we might learn something we didn’t know before.

Your insomnia is your black box experiment. And like it or not, you can’t turn off the black box. You can only guess at what’s going on inside.

Here’s a for-instance. For a long time, when I could not sleep, I threw up my hands in dismay and just drank some alcohol to make the problem go away (in other words, trying to turn off my magnificent brain). However, when I realized that I was finishing liters of rum with no help from my husband, I paused. Out of desperation, I simply began to pay attention to the nights I had trouble sleeping. In other words, I became a scientist.

I noticed quite quickly that insomnia plagued me for a week each month, and that week was immediately followed by my period.

Hormones, I realized. My insomnia is linked to hormones.

This was the first successful black-box experiment, but by no means the last. I discovered my insomnia was not one single black box, but many, and the inner workings, as best as I could discover, made me draw schematics of:

• Pain from an achy hip,
• Anxiety from old trauma,
• Lack of boundaries,
• Poor emotional tools,
• Pain from a chronic condition,
• Anxiety about that chronic condition, or
• Anger, grief, or other strong emotions.

As I get older, I’m sure I’ll acquire other things that keep me awake, and I’ll need to closely observe them too. When I observe, I imagine the inner workings of my black box. What makes it tick? What affects it or eases the struggle?

Once I have possible schematics, I find it easier to cope. I may not be able to make the problem magically go away, but I can face a sleepless night with less bitterness.

In other words, I stopped trying to turn off my brain and instead tried to understand it.

Before I began seeing my insomnia as a science experiment, I felt like my brain was betraying me. I was not interested in learning from my brain, because I did not trust it. I didn’t think it had anything to teach or tell me. I just wanted it to go away, like a dreaded school assignment.

I think this is an incredibly reasonable reaction, except that it does not help anything.

Oh, Magnificent, I do not know why your brain decides to review your day in detail at 11 pm. That is your particular black box. Having social anxiety surface at night sounds really familiar to me. There could be any number of things going on:

• You need to repent of saying unkind things behind peoples’ backs and work on controlling your tongue, AND/OR
• You are blowing the situation you’re reviewing out of proportion, and need to be kinder to yourself, because you are confusing your imperfections with grave sins, AND/OR
• You need to work on relationship skills and boundary setting in therapy, AND/OR
• You have hormonal fluctuations that make it hard to keep perspective at certain times of the month, AND/OR
• You have a brain chemistry imbalance that manifests as anxiety, AND/OR
• You need to journal to get all those feelings out before bedtime, AND/OR
• You need more exercise to help regulate your sleep, AND/OR
• You need to take up knitting or skeet shooting or cosplay.

I really don’t know. This magnificent brain of yours is YOUR black box, not mine.

What I do know, Magnficient, is that your brain is giving you clues. It is saying it is worried, that it feels like you’re doing something wrong, and that it wants to learn how to deal with that wrong thing. What the wrong thing is, and how to deal with it is your homework assignment.

You can’t turn off your brain. But you can take care of it. Especially when I’m awake at night, I am astonished by the power of simply treating my body kindly.

• I get myself food if I’m hungry.
• I stretch if I’m tense.
• I get up if I need a break from bed.
• I lay in bed if I’m too exhausted for anything else.
• I write my thoughts down if they’re spiraling.
• I cry if I’m upset.
• I ask God for guidance if I’m bewildered.
• I bathe if I my skin hurts.
• I read if I need distraction.
• I play iPad games if I feel sorry for myself.
• I watch an old favorite show if I need silly comfort.
• I play solitaire if I need to put things in order.

I used to feel anxious and bewildered at those black box exercises because I was convinced I would never figure them out. But we are more capable than we assume we are. All you have to do is try. You can ask God: What would make me feel better right now? and then do that thing. That’s it.

And when you feel better, I’d bet you’ll learn something about the source of whatever is keeping you from sleep.

I am sorry that sleep has been so hard to come by. I am sorry for the frustration that you feel. But in the end, I think however frustrated and angry we are, we have to begin to treat our bodies like friends instead an enemies. Even when our bodies are in pain, or sick, or otherwise not being “normal”.

Our bodies, no matter the situation, are incredible gifts. And being kind to them is one of our great spiritual tasks. Whether or not they do what we expect or want, our bodies are the only way that we can love, worship, praise and celebrate on earth.

Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash