Time’s Jamie Ducharme has a great read on the biological basis for why so many of us feel bleaker, darker, more anxious at night.
He includes this key bit of research:
The longer you’re awake, the more your body wants to sleep. Certain biological signals keep you alert and ward off sleep throughout the day, but those signals drop off at night.
If you’re awake as they drop and “sleep pressure” builds, cognitive function often suffers, [Washington University of St. Louis Professor and researcher Dr. Rebecca] Cox explains.
Among other consequences, these effects seem to make it harder for your brain to regulate emotions, she says.
And that’s why our decision-making tends to be worse at night – which may explain the link between increased rates of self-harm and substance abuse at night.
There are other reasons you’d probably guess, including the fact there are fewer distractions at night to keep us from our minds’ diseases.
For example, it’s easy to see how those of us prone to OCD can find it worsen at night (Studies have shown that OCD can both keep us from sleep, and that lack of sleep then heightens our OCD).
Our obsession, whatever it might be, seems to draw fuel from the vacuum of activity – like a hurricane hovering over the warm water. The sleepier we get, the more demanding the obsession.
Now, obviously it doesn’t take academic studies to explain the phenomenon of anxiety of night (I spent innumerable nights at 5 years old, tied to my bed in dread, while my mind wandered to the most anxious of thoughts), but it’s good to know the mechanics behind it – that the phenomenon isn’t your fault. Your body and brain were just meant to go to sleep, and your disease has other ideas.
But what are some tips to getting a better sleep with anxiety?
The University of Pittsburgh’s Medical Center offers these:
– journal
-take a warm bath before bed
-turn off the news and electronics 30 minutes before bed
-practice diaphragmatic breathing exercises.
-soothing music.
You’ve likely heard those, as well. For some they might help, for others, they might fall flat.
Now the pink elephant, considering this is is a Christian site.
As Christians, we can add prayer and reading to the list of things that might help get us better sleep, alleviating our nighttime anxiety.
But…
If that doesn’t help, don’t beat yourself up. Failing to feel the peace of God at night doesn’t mean your faith has failed.
Prayer and reading Scripture involves the mind, and if we have minds that have difficulty slowing down or draw energy from the silence – well, even prayer and reading Scripture can send us on long and counterproductive thought trails. Even if they start out in a good place.
Sometimes, prayer and reading at night can send us to deeply nourishing places; other times, we might get utterly stumped over questions of theodicy, or some other spiritually intellectual thing that either intrinsically interests or vexes us (The story of Abraham almost sacrificing Isaac – that’s a tough one, even if we understand the symbolism behind it. And there’s plenty more where that came from).
And then there’s this.
If we have generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and feel dread over completely pedestrian things in the day, it makes sense GAD’s effects would extend to our spiritual lives.
As Zach Eswine writes in his book, Spurgeon’s Sorrows, “Religion offers both a challenge and a help to those who suffer mental disorders…. Suffering one form of depression makes the addition of others harder to bear….if someone struggles already with biological or circumstantial depression, they are more vulnerable to spiritual sorrows.”
So I don’t want to be one of those Christians who claims that that if you pray, you’re guaranteed with 99.99% satisfaction or your money back to find your anxiety lessens. Because that’s certainly not always the case for me. If you’re reading this site, probably not for you, either. You’re not alone.
But I can certainly say that it sometimes is, and both my hardest and sweetest spiritual moments have come in that nighttime vacuum.
As Van Gogh said: “Often it seems to that the night is even more richly colored than the day.”
In her book on the Compline, Tish Warren’s Prayer in the Night writes:
“Night is a time when we hear the whispers of a crowded cosmos and wonder about hidden spiritual realities. Our imaginations run wild with possibilities – every culture on earth is filled with stories of ghosts and other spirits that appear in the night.
This nighttime prayer [the Compline] calls us back to the supernatural. In it, we brush against the uncomfortable reality of a universe beyond what we can see, measure, or control.
Prayer itself, in any form, dates us to interact with a world beyond the material realm, a world filled with more mysteries than we can talk about in urbane company…. practices of prayer, like the practice of sleep, are a way to enter a posture of resting in God in the face of our utter frailty, with no promise of how or when morning will come. This is the ergonomics of salvation, the way we learn to walk in a world darkness.”
Amen.
I’ve written about the life-transforming but seemingly impossible task of surrendering to God – in every part of our lives.
Not just for the salvation of our souls, but for the salvation of our days.
The human urge for control manifested with man’s first sin (to be as God) and continues with my own insatiable need to control (to be as God). And that means trying to find comfort and peace in what I have and can do, and not what God has done and will do.
And if Satan couldn’t stop Jesus from defeating death, then we don’t have much of a shot against God’s plans either, no matter how much we think we know better than he.
I’m so far from surrender.
But what really matters is whether we leave God in the dark, because it’s simply too dark and we can’t take it anymore, or decide to try to draw closer. Strangely, also because we can’t take it anymore.
So we pray to the Lord, “Take my mind” and land on “all is grace” as Brennan Manning writes, and whether God grants us his peace on a particular night, well, it’s up to the one who’s responsible for all grace.
(Also, remember, if we’ve been prescribed medication and it helps, well, no matter how outside the realm of spirituality an anti-anxiety med might seem, it can also indeed be a manifestation of God’s grace. Certainly has for me).
So if you’re anxious, depressed, or struggle with any aspect of mental health…
For readers from the United States….
Find a psychiatrist here.
Find a therapist here.
For readers, internationally, seek help from a local resource.
For salvation, Christ and Christ alone.
[Painting: The Flight Into Egypt, Adam Elsheimer, thought to be the “first naturalistic rendering of the night sky in Renaissance art.”]
