Why Counting Sheep Doesn't Work

One sheep, two sheep, three... and you're still wide awake. Counting sheep is the oldest sleep trick we have — so why doesn't it work? It turns out the problem was never the sheep. Sleep is an automatic process, and the moment you start trying to make it happen, you switch on the very system that holds it off. Psychologists call it the ironic process: the harder you chase sleep, the more it runs. The cure isn't a better trick. It's permission to stop trying. — Sources — • Wegner, Schneider, Carter & White (1987). Paradoxical Effects of Thought Suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(1). • Ansfield, Wegner & Bowser (1996). Ironic effects of sleep urgency. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 34(7). • Harvey & Payne (2002). The management of unwanted pre-sleep thoughts in insomnia. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 40(3). • Espie et al. (2006). The attention–intention–effort pathway in psychophysiologic insomnia. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 10(4). • Frankl, V. (1946). Man's Search for Meaning — paradoxical intention. #sleep #insomnia #psychology