According to the Sleep Foundation in America, a conservative estimate is that 10 to 30 per cent of adults experience chronic insomnia or problems with sleeping. One common way this manifests is through difficulty falling asleep in the first place, especially due to anxious thoughts whizzing about. Indeed, a study from the University of Oxford found that a key difference between insomniacs and controls was the content of their thoughts at bedtime, with the problem sleepers being more focused on worries and concerns as compared with the healthy controls who tended to think about nothing in particular.
Anecdotally, many of us have had the experience of falling blissfully fast asleep in front of the TV, only to find that when we stir and take ourselves to bed, we lie there wide-awake with anxious thoughts racing through our minds. This common scenario neatly encapsulates one of the main reasons our heads fill with worry at night – it’s the lack of distraction.