How To Avoid A 'Midnight Meltdown' During Late-Night Overthinking

It's easy for negative thoughts to spiral late at night. Here's how to overcome your restless rumination.

By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | March 01, 2024

Picture this: You are trying to sleep peacefully at night. Your bed is comfortable, the temperature is just right and your mind begins to wander. As you recall the day's events, one negative experience stops you in your tracks.

You begin to analyze it from all possible angles and, suddenly, you are now feeling miserable. The emotion triggers memories of other recent unpleasant experiences, and they snowball into a recollection of all the negative events you have ever faced, including the traumatic ones. Now it's 2 am, and sleep feels like a distant dream.

Our brains have evolved to prioritize survival—a remnant of times when our lives were constantly threatened. Although the modern world poses less immediate danger to our well-being, our brains still focus on negative thoughts, emotions, and behaviors more than positive ones—a tendency we know today as the negativity bias.

One study suggests that rumination can cause negative emotions, even without depression or anxiety, and might create a vicious cycle where rumination begets more rumination.

This can impair your ability to think and process emotions, disrupt sleep patterns, prompt impulsive behaviors, intensify stress and lead to health problems. Here are three ways to stop rumination from turning into a habit.

1. Hold Good Memories Close To Your Heart With Gratitude

In our fast-paced lives, it's easy to get caught up in the proverbial hamster wheel and forget to appreciate the good moments. One way to counter this is by creating an exclusive "gratitude journal," where you record positive experiences that might otherwise slip by unnoticed.

These moments can be as small as a kind word from a colleague or as significant as achieving a long-term goal. By intentionally focusing on the good in our lives, we can cultivate a greater sense of gratitude and well-being.

You can also reach out to old friends or family and reminisce the happy memories or create new ones. Making digital or physical memory banks or time capsules to store your precious moments can prompt you to revisit them and remind yourself that good times exist and tough ones don't last forever. Our memory can fail us when we are spiraling and visual or text records of our cherished moments can act as a lifeline.

2. Practice Mindfulness To Enhance Self-Awareness

Mindfulness is the practice of being present in the moment and paying attention to your thoughts and feelings without judgment. It can help you become aware of your negative thoughts and emotions and also teach you the art of letting them go.

Whenever you have negative thoughts, practice self-awareness and challenge your negative thoughts by asking yourself if they are based on reality or if they are reactions to memories or even imagined scenarios. Approach negative thoughts with rationality, consider multiple perspectives to see the complete picture and consciously reframe them into positive ones.

A 2018 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that acceptance of emotions and thoughts without judgment is linked to better psychological health. Mindfulness can help avoid impulsive reactions to negativity and introduce in its place a cool detachment that can help you recenter yourself. Once your spiraling slows down, you can then begin the process of reflecting on your emotions with objectivity and without the fear of catastrophizing.

3. Use Distraction And Problem-Solving To Avoid Rumination

When negative thoughts threaten to consume you, distract yourself and redirect your focus to engaging activities or tasks. This can be especially beneficial when the activity has nothing to do with the thoughts that are haunting you. For instance, physical exercise is a great way to get out of your head and back into your body. Exercise releases endorphins, which are natural mood-boosters, and can help to alleviate stress and anxiety.

Even light stretching or a short walk around the block can be beneficial in lifting your mood. You could also engage in an activity you enjoy, such as reading a book, listening to music or practicing a hobby.

Another effective technique for dealing with troublesome thoughts is tackling the issue head-on through problem-solving and taking action. It is helpful to separate different problems going through your mind and breaking them down from bigger issues into smaller ones. By taking on one problem at a time, you can create a specific step-by-step plan that can be implemented immediately and get you from thinking to taking action.

It's important to remember that negative thoughts are a natural part of life, and it's okay to experience them occasionally. However, if negative thoughts persist and interfere with your daily life, it may be helpful to seek support from a therapist or mental health professional.

By actively choosing to change our thought patterns, we can change our behavior and habits and transform our lives in a meaningful way.

Do you also stay up at night, replaying your worst mistakes over and over in your head? Take this test to know if it's a cause for concern: Mistake Rumination Scale

A similar version of this article can also be found on Forbes.com, here.