There’s a mean lady in my head. She doesn’t scream. She doesn’t stomp her feet. She doesn’t even sound angry, she sounds reasonable, like someone patting you on the knee while quietly telling you you’ve fucked up. And she appears only on days after bad sleep, like she’s been patiently waiting in the wings for the curtain to falter so she can give her verdict. On those mornings, before coffee, before glucose, before I’ve fully put words to the day, she’s already talking. “Of course you’re behind.” “Other people manage fine.” “You should know better.” She frames tiredness not as a state but as evidence: evidence of sloppiness, lack of discipline, failure. She doesn’t care what I actually did yesterday. She only cares that my nervous system didn’t show up the way it should have. Here’s the thing: when I do sleep well, that voice is barely audible. I move through the day with a kind of quiet patience I barely notice. Mistakes feel like data, not indictments. My own body feels like an ally instead of something I should bend into submission. The default voice in my head is gentle, not because I’ve summoned it, but because there’s space for it. But when I don’t sleep well, the buffer disappears. The mean lady pounces. I don’t just feel tired, I feel unworthy of rest. I feel like I’m disappointing the version of myself I should be. I feel as if every slow moment is a moral lapse. The inner dialogue turns sharp and immediate, like a critic who’s spent years memorizing every one of my flaws and only needed one unsteady hour of sleep to make her move. And here’s the part that makes me uncomfortable to admit: sometimes I believe her. Not because I’m weak, but because I’ve felt enough cultural pressure to treat rest as a luxury, a metric, a symbol of worth. Our world treats productivity like a currency and sleep like a tax you pay only after you’ve proven yourself. When it comes to rest, we carry a ledger in our heads instead of a pillow under our heads. This isn’t abstract for me; it’s the very thing I built my work around: helping people disentangle real vulnerability from the internalized demand to perform resilience. It’s helping people recognize that exhaustion is not character, that softness isn’t failure, that the nervous system doesn’t negotiate the way the ego does.

There’s a particular kind of tired that doesn’t lead to sleep. Your body feels heavy. Almost spent. But inside, something is still moving fast. You lie down, and instead of settling, you notice a kind of urgency. Thoughts start circling. Small things suddenly feel important. There’s a sense that if you don’t stay alert, something will be missed. A lot of people describe this as their mind “not shutting up.” Others just say they feel restless, irritated, done with the day, but unable to leave it. What tends to happen next is very familiar. You try to be still. You try to relax. You try to make sleep happen. Sometimes you scroll for a bit. Sometimes you lie there getting more frustrated. Sometimes you reach for something to help you switch off. None of this is strange. It’s what makes sense when you’re exhausted and just want the day to end. But if you’ve been living in a fairly alert, responsive, switched-on way all day, it’s worth noticing something: Your system hasn’t actually had much practice stopping yet. So when night comes, it doesn’t quite know what to do with it. That wired feeling isn’t a problem to get rid of. It’s more like a signal that things haven’t landed yet. Instead of asking yourself how to fall asleep, you might try a different question tonight: --> What would help my system feel that it doesn’t have to stay on right now? <-- Just as a genuine check-in. One simple thing you can try, if it feels right, is to write. Take a piece of paper and put down whatever keeps pulling at your attention. Things you don’t want to forget. Loose ends. Thoughts that keep looping. You’re not fixing anything. You’re just letting your system know that this is being held somewhere else for now. When you’re done, pause for a moment. See if anything shifts, even slightly. A breath that moves lower. A bit less pressure in the chest. A tiny easing of urgency. That’s often enough. Sleep tends to come more easily when vigilance softens, even a little. If you’re beginning to notice how much your nights seem to respond to the way your days unfold — and you’re curious about exploring that with support — this is the kind of space I work in with people.

One of the most frequent questions that I see is "How many hours of sleep is needed for the body?" 😊 You must have heard the magic number 8 for sure. 🌟 I would like to quote an analogy here. If you have a car, does the car give the same mileage? 🚗 The answer is No. 😄 Similarly, the requirement for sleep is not a constant number at all. 😴 A fun fact: day and night are equal only 2 times a year. 🌞🌚 I was listening to an interview with Tracy Hannigan, who emphasized the fact that the more we obsess about the perfect number, the harder it becomes. 🎙️ So, for people using a sleep tracker, use this just like you use your mileage tracker, and not to impress the software with numbers that you had a perfect night's sleep. 🛌📊 What do you think about sleep trackers, and what is your view?

Grab a cup of tea, make yourself cosy and join tonight for a free weekly Dream Circle. Tonight (Monday) at 7pm UK time (8pm CET) we gather for an hour to discuss dream, lucid dreaming and dream interpretation. This is an open space in which I share some tools for better dream recall, and help you make sense of your dreams so that you can start engaging with your unconscious in a meaningful way. You don't need to have great memory of your dreams yet to join. Often, even talking about dreams helps to boost dream recall. Everyone is welcome. Link: meet.google.com/bod-qqru-gnz See you there!