Why Your Personality Keeps You Awake at 3 AM
(And How 15 Minutes Can Fix It)
its 3:47 am and I'm writing about sleep. The irony isn't lost on me
So apparently your personality type determines whether you sleep like a normal person or lie awake cataloging every awkward interaction from 2019. I learned this after my 900th sleepless night when I finally googled "why can't i fucking sleep" at 4:12 AM
Emergent Skills has this thing about Rest & Recovery being an actual skill?? Like you can learn it?? In 15 minutes??? I was skeptical but also desperate so
OK so there are 3 types of bad sleepers apparently
Type 1: The Ruminator
This is me. Brain turns on the second my head hits the pillow. Suddenly need to solve every problem that doesn't exist. Remember that email I sent with a typo? My brain does. At 2 AM. Every night.
Last week I literally spent 2 hours mentally defending my career choices to my high school guidance counselor. She retired 10 years ago. Why is my brain like this
Type 2: The Controller
These people have spreadsheets for their sleep. SPREADSHEETS. My coworker tracks his REM cycles and gets genuinely upset when his "sleep efficiency" drops below 85%
He has blackout curtains that cost more than my rent. Still can't sleep. Because turns out when you turn sleep into another KPI, you're gonna fail your performance review every night
Type 3: The Avoider
You know when you're exhausted all day but suddenly at 10 PM you're WIDE AWAKE and reorganizing your entire phone? That's this type. It's called revenge bedtime procrastination which sounds way cooler than it is
these people aren't night owls they're just avoiding the vulnerability of trying to sleep and potentially failing. I get it. I spent 3 hours watching tiny cooking videos last night. They made a pizza the size of a quarter. Why did I watch it 4 times
The weird train thing that actually works
So Emergent Skills taught me this technique where your thoughts are trains and you're standing on the platform and you just... let them go by? Without getting on them?
I know how it sounds. But it works like 70% of the time. The other 30% I end up thinking about Thomas the Tank Engine which. Is not helpful. But whatever
For the spreadsheet people (controllers) they have this "good enough" protocol which is basically accepting that 6 hours of meh sleep is better than 0 hours of tracking your sleep failure
Avoiders get this "one tiny thing" approach. Pick ONE bedtime signal. My friend says goodnight to her phone. That's it. That's the whole routine. Mine is
actually I don't have one yet I'm still in the watching-tiny-cooking phase of my life
The thing is, 66% of us are burnt out and regular sleep advice assumes we're robots. "Just stop worrying!" Oh cool let me find my OFF switch real quick
Emergent Skills gets that these are personality things. Not character flaws. The 15 minute session figures out which type of disaster you are and gives you tools that actually work with your specific brain chaos
Does it work perfectly? No. Last Tuesday I still spent an hour planning a conversation I'll never have. But MOST nights I sleep now. Like an actual semi-normal person.
Which is weird to type at 4:23 AM but here we are
Look if you're reading this at 3 AM you already know everything I'm saying. Your personality isn't broken. You just need different tools than those mythical "good sleepers" who don't exist anyway
This is skills training not medical treatment btw. But you knew that
ps - I just remembered I have a 9 AM meeting. Fuck.
