Falling into sweet sleep is one of the pleasures in life, but sometimes our minds just won't turn off when it's time for bed.

Welcome back to savvy psychologist.

I'm Dr. Jade Wu and every week I'll help you meet life's challenges

with evidence-based research, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment.

Today we'll talk about five ways to work with instead of against your busy brain

and get some good sleep. So how did you sleep last night? This

question seems to be on everyone's mind. When we ask ourselves about sleep it's

almost as if we're taking stock of our overall state of mind.

How do I feel? Am I 100% here? And no wonder, it can be frustrating and

frazzling when all we want is the soothing

balm of sleep to heal the stresses from our day.

But infuriatingly, when we lie down to sleep,

we cannot turn off our brains. Paradoxically, sometimes the more stressful

our days are the harder it is to quiet the brain for sleep at night. If this

happens to you you're certainly not alone. Over 30% of people

have bouts of insomnia in any given year and the overall rate of insomnia has been

going up in recent years.

Even if you're one of the lucky people who usually have no problem with falling or staying

asleep, I bet there are nights when you toss and turn, unable to turn off your brain while it nags at you with

to-do lists, worries, fantasies, plans, doubts, and replays of embarrassing moments and replace of songs that make you want to bang your

head against a wall. That certainly happens to me sometimes. And struggling to turn off your

brain is actually very normal.

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