We’re not getting enough sleep. Most of us are sleep deprived, and rarely, if ever, get a full night’s sleep more than one day in a row.
There are many issues that lead to these difficulties, and addressing them can take time as we determine why they’re occurring and work individually with how to solve them. Yet some of the potential causes of sleep difficulties, including racing thoughts, metal to due lists, and emotional residue from the day can interfere with the onset and quality of sleep.
Sleep hygiene practices are, at least theoretically, designed to address this. By giving yourself a habit/routine to help you fall asleep, you should be able to calm your mind and ease off easier than if you simply go straight to bed with your phone in your hands.
But, of course, sleep is more complicated than that, and there are plenty of times when our brains stay highly active and we have too much on our minds to relax.
Why the Brain Struggles to Transition to Sleep
Before examining journaling, it’s important to understand why sleep onset is disrupted. One of the most well-documented factors is heightened cognitive arousal – essentially, excessive mental activity in the pre-sleep period. This can include:
Persistent planning or problem-solving thoughts
Unresolved emotional tension from daytime experiences
Anticipatory anxiety about the following day
New ideas you want to remember or to-dos that you would like to prioritize
Research shows that these thought patterns correlate with activity in the default mode network (DMN), a neural system associated with self-referential thinking. High DMN activity at bedtime is associated with longer sleep onset latency and lighter sleep cycles.
Because journaling externalizes internal dialogue, it has the potential to reduce DMN activity and shift the brain toward a state more conducive to sleep.
The Power of Sleep Journaling
In these situations, you may want to consider keeping a sleep journal next to your bed.
Sleep journals are, essentially, journals where you can write down anything and everything that is on your mind when you are trying to go to sleep at night. It doesn’t necessarily matter what you write down, and you never need to force yourself to write down anything if you’re feeling tired (it differs from a gratitude journal in this way, as those types of journals are designed to be completed daily).
Rather, it’s a place for you to put your thoughts on paper in order to get them out of your head.
Journaling at night can reduce mental overactivity and create psychological closure that supports sleep onset. This practice is not simply about venting thoughts onto paper. The type of journaling, the structure, and even the timing all contribute to how journaling interacts with the brain’s sleep-regulating systems.
What Happens When You Journal Before Bed
Journaling operates at the intersection of cognitive restructuring and emotional regulation. Several peer-reviewed studies have found that the right form of journaling can measurably affect key variables tied to sleep, including sleep latency (how long it takes to fall asleep) and overall sleep quality. For example:
A 2018 study published in Journal of Experimental Psychology found that individuals who wrote out specific tasks they needed to complete the next day fell asleep significantly faster than those who journaled about completed tasks.
Another study published in Behavioral Sleep Medicine showed that expressive writing – where individuals write about their thoughts and feelings – reduced symptoms of sleep-onset insomnia in people with anxiety.
Keep in mind these are examples of *different* benefits. The first study looked at something called “cognitive offloading” where moving thoughts out of your mind (your working memory) and onto paper basically tells your brain “don’t worry, you can’t forget, it’s written down on paper” which frees up additional resources and helps the brain disengage from active processing.
The second study showed that writing out our emotions and feelings is a form of processing. Anxieties and stresses often occur when emotions feel unresolved, or when they’re bouncing around in mind without being fully processed. Writing out these emotions help us process them, allowing us to have some closure and, eventually, sleep.
Remember, these thoughts may not all be stressful. Imagine you’re someone that loves writing, and – when you’re supposed to go to sleep – you have this great idea for a story. Your mind can’t relax if you’re worried that you may forget the idea. If you write it down, your brain knows you can’t forget it, and you can hopefully relax better and ease yourself into sleep.
Addressing Sleep for Mental Health
Sleep may not be directly responsible for the entirety of our mental health, but it becomes extraordinarily difficult to cope with stress and address our psychological challenges if we’re not also prioritizing sleep. Journaling may not solve all your issues, but if an active mind is keeping you awake, consider taking out a journal and testing out those benefits.
In the mental health world, the term “obsessions” has a very different meaning than it does in casual conversation. In casual conversation, “obsessions” are things you want or desire. They’re things you’re happy to think about often, or things that you like to do.
In the mental health world, “obsessions” are very different. They are typically thoughts that you *do not want* that “intrude” your mind over and over again. Most of the time, these thoughts also cause distress, as they’re often on topics and subjects that a person finds upsetting.
One of the challenges of obtrusive thoughts is how hard they are to control. The more you try to push them away, the more they come back. This is actually by design. Our brain is, in some ways, specifically designed to make sure that the more you try to stop a thought, the more often the thought will occur.
Why Can’t We Stop Intrusive Thoughts?
Psychological studies have shown that it takes a lot of mental energy to avoid thinking about something. So much energy, in fact, that your brain needs to remind you of it in order to remember not to think about it. There are different terms for this, but one of the most popular is called the “Pink Elephant Problem.”
What is the Pink Elephant Problem?
The Pink Elephant Problem is a study that shows that if you tell half a group of people to think about a pink elephant, and half a group of people not to think about a pink elephant, the group told not to think about it ends up thinking about it more than the other group. It takes so much energy to avoid thinking about a topic, that you end up thinking about it more.
What Does the Pink Elephant Problem Have to Do With OCD?
Imagine you have an intrusive thought that causes you distress. Because it causes you so much stress and anxiety, you try to push it away. You try your best not to think about it. Suddenly, you’re running into the pink elephant problem. Your brain spends so much energy trying not to think about it that it ends up thinking about it more and more often.
How Do You Break This Cycle?
Part of overcoming these intrusive thoughts is breaking this cycle and making it so that you *can* forget. To do that, you have to actually embrace the thought. Remind yourself that your intrusive thoughts do not define you. Remind yourself that pushing the thought away does not work. You may even want to think about the thought on purpose in order to make it something that you no longer obsess on.
Is That All There is To It?
No, addressing OCD does take a lot more energy and effort. You may have to address the initial causes of the obsessions, the compulsions, what causes you the most distress, and even forgiving yourself for your thoughts. Those all take time and energy, and benefit from working with a therapist.
But if you stop attempting to push down those thoughts, accept that you have them, and focus on moving forward, then the thoughts not only should occur less – they should also cause less distress when they do occur.
Ready for OCD Help?
If you are someone that struggles with obsessive compulsive disorder or intrusive thoughts, reach out to a therapist today. Through therapy, you can gain more understanding of the cause of these thoughts and develop cognitive tools to help you control them. Contact us today to learn more.
There is something scary about parenting these days – arguably scarier than at any time in the past. We can talk about how social media may play a role (triggering fears about missing or exploited children, or sharing stories of child tragedies). We can talk about the current political environment around schools. We can talk about how much more stimulation there is, or the possible rise in developmental issues like ADHD.
We can talk about COVID. We can talk about rising prices.
We can talk about a lot of things, but in any/all of these situations, the main takeaway is that parenting is difficult, and many, many parents are finding themselves anxious. That anxiety can become its own significant problem:
Anxiety can make it more difficult to be present with your child, leading to missing out on milestones or making it harder to love them the way you want to.
Anxiety can be contagious, unintentionally teaching children to be more anxious and causing them to develop more anxiety as they get older.
Anxiety can be life altering. When we’re always worried, it can not only touch everything we do – it can change our brain chemistry to cause anxiety disorders, depression, and more.
So while parenting anxiety may seem like a normal, maybe even healthy part of parenting, it is often anything but. That is why it is so important for those that are struggling to seek out help. You don’t need to have a diagnosable disorder to see a therapist. What matters is that you’re not where you want to be with your mental health, and you need someone to help you move forward.
Therapists for Parenting
Parenting IS stressful. It is hard. It is time consuming and, for many, it can lead to anxiety and other mental health challenges. Dr. Sadi Fox of Flourish Psychology even offers on some occasions a parenting group for post-partum moms that is specifically about adjusting to the mental health components of parenting for that very reason.
Yet, whether you’re part of a group or on your own, there is immense benefit to taking this anxiety seriously – learning to address your feelings and make sure that you’re getting help. These moments are precious, and they move quickly. The last thing you want is to find that your child is turning 4, or 7, or 18, and you’ve spent much of their childhood feeling more nervous and more stressed than you needed to be.
Don’t be afraid to seek out a therapist for parenting just because “all parenting is hard.” Parenting is hard, but you still deserve to feel your best so you, your child, and your partner are in the best place possible. Learn more about our psychotherapy or group services for parents in NYC by reaching out to Flourish Psychology, today.
We talk about anxiety as though it is always a debilitating disorder – one that people struggle with *immensely*. Certainly, some people do have anxiety that makes it difficult to function, unable to leave the house or experience a happy and productive life.
But for others, anxiety is not a debilitating condition. It is a manageable one. Their anxiety affects their life, but it doesn’t control them, and so a person with anxiety can still manage relationships, work, parent, and perform normal tasks.
The thing is, that itself can be a problem.
When a person has this type of anxiety, they may be hesitant to treat it. Why see a therapist when you are still married, or you still work, or you have friends that you see regularly?
Yet, we know a few things to be true:
Everyone deserves to live their best, happiest life, and that is often not possible when a person has anxiety.
Someone that has more manageable anxiety now may not have manageable anxiety later. Untreated anxiety is at risk for getting worse over time.
Anxiety may seem manageable because your life seems normal, but if you didn’t have anxiety, your life would be very different.
Individuals with this type of anxiety are sometimes referred to as having “high functioning” anxiety or being “high functioning.”
High functioning anxiety is not a clinical diagnosis, but rather a term used to describe individuals who appear outwardly successful, organized, and composed, while internally experiencing persistent worry, self-doubt, and emotional distress. These individuals often meet personal, academic, or professional expectations while privately struggling with anxiety symptoms that are either unrecognized or dismissed due to their high level of daily functioning.
This form of anxiety can be difficult to detect because it doesn’t disrupt responsibilities in obvious ways. In fact, it can drive people to be more detail-oriented, more dependable, or more productive. But beneath the surface, the emotional toll can be significant.
How High Functioning Anxiety Differs from Other Anxiety Presentations
Typically, a person that is high functioning with anxiety are still touched by the condition. Generalized anxiety disorder, for example, causes people to feel anxious more generally, without necessary a specific fear or issue. At work, they may feel anxious about meetings, but they’re still *at work* and doing their job, and to others they may just appear a bit more shy, or their heartbeat goes up a lot but they are otherwise able to manage their experiences. When dating, they may have more fears about “screwing up” a date, but they may otherwise be able to go on dates and just feel high stress and high anxiety throughout the time – possibly overthinking later.
Yet even though they’re functioning, they’re still being affected by their anxiety. They may, for example, be less likely to ask for a raise at work. Or they may be less likely to act confident on a date. Or they may be overly worried about their child running into a street. Their anxiety still touches everything they do in some form.
Compensatory Behaviors
Some people with high functioning anxiety go a step further. Unlike generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), which may interfere visibly with day-to-day functioning, high functioning anxiety may be marked by compensatory behaviors that mask internal distress. People with high functioning anxiety may manage their anxiety through over-preparation, perfectionism, and rigid routines – behaviors that may be socially rewarded but are mentally and emotionally draining.
They are often described as:
Responsible
Ambitious
Reliable
Detail-focused
Self-motivated
But internally, they may also feel:
Constantly worried or tense
Afraid of failure or disapproval
Overwhelmed by routine decisions
Exhausted from overthinking or over-planning
Anxious even during rest or downtime
While the outward appearance may suggest control and capability, internal symptoms often include:
Racing thoughts or chronic overthinking
Difficulty relaxing or feeling “off duty”
Irritability or restlessness, especially when unproductive
Fear of disappointing others or being judged
Over-scheduling or trouble saying no to requests
Perfectionism and fear of making mistakes
Sleep disturbances, especially trouble falling asleep due to mental activity
Physical symptoms such as muscle tension, headaches, or gastrointestinal discomfort
These symptoms may not be severe enough to stop the person from functioning, but they can contribute to long-term stress, burnout, or emotional fatigue.
Why It Often Goes Unnoticed
High functioning anxiety often goes unrecognized for several reasons:
The behaviors it drives – such as punctuality, attention to detail, and overachievement – are socially reinforced.
The person may not describe their experience as “anxiety” because they are not having panic attacks or visibly falling apart.
Friends, family, and coworkers may see them as capable or calm, unaware of the internal pressure they are constantly managing.
In many cases, individuals don’t seek help because they believe their anxiety is simply part of their personality. They’re used to it. And because their life feels fairly normal, at least in the eyes of society, then they do not feel like they are in need of additional help.
Risks of Leaving High Functioning Anxiety Unaddressed
When high functioning anxiety goes unrecognized or untreated, it can lead to long-term complications such as:
Chronic stress or burnout
Increased risk of depression
Relationship strain due to emotional unavailability or irritability
Avoidance of rest or difficulty enjoying downtime
Difficulty adjusting to failure, change, or reduced productivity
Even if your anxiety feels manageable, it does not need to be. Your life will often feel more fulfilling and energizing when your anxiety is under control.
Treatment and Support
Even when anxiety does not appear to interfere with work or responsibilities, it is still valid and treatable. High functioning anxiety responds well to several approaches:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to challenge perfectionistic or anxious thought patterns
Mindfulness-based practices to promote rest and present-moment awareness
Behavioral techniques to reduce compulsive planning or avoidance
Medication in some cases, for generalized symptoms that don’t respond to therapy alone
Stress reduction strategies to support sustainable routines without over-reliance on anxiety as a motivator
Support from a therapist can help individuals develop healthier ways to manage pressure without sacrificing well-being.
Get Therapy for Anxiety Today
Having high functioning anxiety means living with a constant undercurrent of fear or worry, even when everything appears to be in order. It often looks like success from the outside but feels like survival on the inside.
Awareness is the first step toward change. With the right support, individuals can learn to function not from fear, but from a place of clarity and balance – still achieving, but with far less cost to their emotional and physical health.
For more information, reach out to Flourish Psychology, today.
New York can be loud. It has cars. It has subways. It has a lot of people. Not only is it loud, but it echoes, which adds to the volume. Indeed, it’s loud not only in noise, but in other senses as well, as there are very pungent scents, lots to see visually, and more.
There’s mental health benefits to living in a city. You’re able to enjoy more time with people. You’re able to get very quick access to help. You have more resources and, theoretically at least, more opportunities.
But there are downsides as well, most notably: big cities are loud. They’re busy. They are, often, in a position to overwhelm your senses. There’s a climate and resource argument to be made that all of us should be living in big cities, but we still have to be aware of what living in such a big city – especially a *loud* big city – does to the mind and body.
For example:
Sensory Overload – Most of us are somewhat used to the city by now. But when you’re stressed or overwhelmed, you still need a way to essentially relax your brain so that you can focus on your tasks and needs. That is much harder in a big city like New York, because there is so much sensory overload. There isn’t really an opportunity for resetting your senses.
Anxiety Production – Loud noises and busyness can also create their own anxiety. Noises can trigger anxious feelings, as your mind has to determine whether or not the sound is a danger. If you’re already prone to stress and anxiety, not only will this only exacerbate your symptoms but the sounds themselves may trigger the “yes, it is a dangerous noise” response more often.
No Chance to Process – Similar to sensory overload, one of the ways that we are able to cope with stress as adults is by processing the day as it happens and at night. But when you have your senses overloaded with noise, it becomes harder to process the information of the day, and that can put stress on the brain.
Depending on where you live, busy cities may also make it harder to sleep or, in some cases, make you more tired because your brain is exhausted from processing the day.
The Benefits and Weaknesses of NYC
Mental health is complicated. Overall, there is considerable evidence that living in a place like New York is actually beneficial for one’s mental health, especially given access to resources, people, and more. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, and for those that are already struggling, New York’s sensory overload can make things worse.
If you need help with your mental health for any reason, please reach out to us today.
Location: 300 Cadman Plaza West Floor 12 - Brooklyn, NY 11201
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