Do you lie awake at night, wondering why you can’t fall asleep? Can’t stop thinking about your day or a television show you watched? Sleep challenges might have more to do with your personality than your brain.
A good thing about being extraverted is that you generally find new situations to be interesting and easy and you aren’t particularly uncomfortable meeting new people. You also like being in groups and usually feel energized by social interactions. The drawback to being out-going, however, is that it can be difficult to turn off your brain off at night.
Sleep difficulties are becoming a national problem with more individuals taking sleep aid drugs and more functioning at a chronic sleep deficit. Studies show an increasing number of traffic accidents are caused by people who go to sleep at the wheel. Sometimes these problems with sleepiness–caused by sleeplessness–are caused by over-full days and too much to get done. Americans’ average amount of sleep per night is falling from the eight to nine hours we used to get several decades ago to current six hours a night.
Sometimes, however, in addition to crammed schedules, some people just can’t turn their brains off when they do lie down to sleep. If you rule out physical problems, sleep difficulties are frequently be caused by emotional stresses. Your job’s a hassle or your marriage is on the rocks. But when all these externals are okay and you still can’t sleep, the problem may be that you don’t know how to shift to an internal experience of relaxation.
Many people have poor sleep routines. They always go to bed with the television on or they eat heavy meals late in the day. But even if you don’t stimulate yourself by exercising late at night and you know to keep your bedroom at a comfortable temperature, you still might not be able to sleep. If so, you might want to ask yourself if the problem is related to your habit of always seeking external stimuli. People who are significantly extroverted can be afraid of the dark, afraid of being alone and afraid of dying. All moments when the external world is shut off and you’re alone with yourself. Now, the dying thing is understandable. Lots of people are afraid of that, but put these anxieties all together and you might have an under-developed inner self.
If you’ve always got the television on, always play the radio in the car and have your ipod or your cell phone glued to your ear throughout the day, you may need to learn something about silence. Extraverted folks don’t usually see the point of silence. It isn’t so much that you have to learn yoga or become a Zen Buddhist, but silence is pretty much a necessity if you’re going to learn to hear your own thoughts.
Sleep is an internal experience. You can’t take anyone with you. In order to sleep, you must be alone in your own head. This doesn’t have to be a scary thing. Self-awareness can be liberating and can offer you a source of personal information that human beings need. Situation after situation requires us to hear our own gut reactions. There is evidence that if we listen to our own thoughts, feelings, and reactions, we can make better decisions.
So get used to your own personal silence. Its only scary at first. Many people actually crave being alone and there’s a reason for this. If you can shift into yourself to be aware of your internal, you’ll more easily be able to disconnect from external stressors…and will more easily fall asleep. Better than drugs…learn to listen to yourself.