With such a clever clickbait headline, I'm certain everyone will be falling all over themselves to read this post :) Joking aside, I recently discovered the most amazingly effective cure for insomnia. For me, this simple technique has worked more quickly and consistently than any other intervention I've ever tried - including pharmaceuticals.

Requisite crappy drawing to accompany clickbait headline

I have been an insomniac for as long as I can remember. I can still picture eight-year-old me lying in bed, watching the flickering red lights on my "P'jammer" clock radio change from 9:59 to 10:00, and realizing that I'd been trying to fall asleep for two hours and counting. I used to get frustrated to the point of tears.

Anyone else have one of these in the 80's? I wish I still had mine!

As I became a teenager, insomnia gave way to some serious night owl tendencies, because honestly, when it routinely takes hours to fall asleep, it becomes much less stressful to just stay awake doing things until you drop from exhaustion. These night owl tendencies continued through my university years and into adulthood. For a couple of decades, it was really no big deal. I caught up on sleep with catnaps and lazy weekend lie-ins. But now, in my late 30's and with two young kids, I just can't do it anymore. Sleep deprival is impacting me well beyond simply being tired.

Enter diphenhydramine, aka Benadryl. Allergy medication, anti-nauseant and inducer of drowsiness. I've tried this on and off, over the past year or so, in an attempt to force myself back onto a normal sleep schedule. But the problem is, it lingers in my system and leaves me drowsy and barely functional until about mid-day the next day. Not so good when you have to get up and deal with small, active children. It also doesn't work consistently enough to be worthwhile. Sometimes I end up lying in bed for an hour or two, feeling drowsy and lousy, but still unable to drift off.

Then, last month, I stumbled across a life-changing sleep technique, called the Cognitive Shuffle. Naturally, I was skeptical. After all, I've been an insomniac for literal decades, and I feel like I've tried everything from sleep hygiene improvements to drugs. How could something so simple possibly be so effective. And if it was effective, why had I never heard of it.

What is the Cognitive Shuffle?

Quite simply, it is a method of generating a "random" series of images, which you focus on for two to three seconds each, until you doze off.

How do you come up with the random images?

Well, there's an app for that (of course), but I don't find it difficult to do it on my own. First I come up with what is called a "seed word." This is a short four to six letter word that ideally doesn't have any repeating letters. For example, the word WHALE works really well as a seed word, whereas BANANA does not.

Starting with the first letter of the seed word, I think of as many words as I can that begin with that letter. However - and this is key - the words have to be words that you can associate with a mental image, and they must not belong to a theme or category (more on that below). I think of one word and image at a time, for two to three seconds, then move onto the next.

For example, using the seed word WHALE, I might think of:

Whale
Wagon
Wise (picture a person that I consider wise)
Windshield
Watermelon
Winter (think of snow)
Water...

I would not want to come up with a list of related or categorizable words, such as: whale, walrus, warthog, wallaby... (all animals). It works best when words are totally random and don't share a category, other than their starting letter.

When I struggle to come up with W words, I move onto the next letter, H. And so on. Thus far, I've never gotten past the fourth letter before I was out like a light.

Instead of using a seed word, you could also just proceed through the alphabet, picking up where you've left off from the previous night. For example, A through D the first night, E through G the second night, and so on.

So, how exactly does this work?

The researchers who developed the method and the associated app have written a great explanation of the science behind it, which you can read here: https://mysleepbutton.com/support/the-cognitive-science/

But if you're looking for the TL;DR version, allow me to explain. In essence, this method does two important things:

1. It randomizes your thoughts, which cues the body that it's sleepy time. If you've ever noticed what your thoughts are like as you drift off to sleep, they are typically random and nonsensical. These amazing researchers figured out that causation works both ways: getting drowsy promotes nonsense thoughts, AND thinking nonsense thoughts promotes drowsiness. Brilliant!

2. It prevents you from thinking insomnolent (sleep-stopping) thoughts. Most of us go into bed sleepy, but then we cannot quiet our minds. We start to mull over mistakes and problems, and suddenly we find ourselves wide awake. When you occupy the mind with a deliberate task, such as conjuring up a series of random images, it prevents the mind from thinking wakeful thoughts. Meditating or counting sheep can accomplish this part of the equation, but neither meditation nor counting are somnolent; that is, they do not actually promote sleep; they merely stop the mind from stopping sleep with other thoughts.

So in short, the magic is in the combination of countering insomnolent thinking, and thinking somnolent thoughts.

The Cognitive Shuffle has been effective for me 100% of the times I've used it. Are you an insomniac? Give it a try and let me know if it works for you!

ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz!