Don’t trust “night brain”

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Hi Friends-

It’s almost Valentine’s Day, the one day of the year when the bizarro culture that I am a part of chooses celebrate the most powerful emotion we can feel — love.

As I was writing this, I looked up Rihanna’s “We Found Love (in a hopeless place)” and was laughing at the YouTube comment that said: “Who’s here in January 2026?”

Indeed, we are living through a moment that can feel extremely grim and we desperately need love — and joy! — as a counterbalance. (Could this be why Heated Rivalry has become such a global phenomenon??)

This week, my friend Sebene and I are back with a new episode of our podcast, Cosmic Clowns, that explores the erotic — specifically through the lens of Audre Lorde’s conception of the erotic as “a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane.”

How can our connection to the sensual, to joy, to beauty, to love help us anchor even more deeply into the present moment and feel more resourced in the process?

Tune into our latest episode on “erotic presence” to find out.

You know what’s not erotic? Anxiety! A seriously not-hot emotion that I spend way too much time wrestling with.

Read on for a piece about my battles with “night brain” and the catastrophizing thoughts that come creeping in the night…

Thank you for being here. Love is cool.
xo
Jocelyn

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Isn’t it funny that the most powerful insights are also often the most obvious? They feel less like a lightning bolt of new information, and more like something you knew all along settling in a little deeper.

My most recent such realization is that I cannot trust what I call my “night brain.” This is not a complex concept — I am talking about anything that happens in my brain when I am laying down in bed at night. Which is a lot of things and, frequently, they are not good.

Night brain has two primary manifestations for me. The first is the “4ams”. This when I wake up in the middle of the night — usually around 4am — to go to the bathroom, and then my brain whirrs into action, like the evil inverse of an air purifier.

Left unchecked, it rapidly begins spewing out toxic debris in the form of self-flagellating conversation reviews, worst-case scenario planning, and catastrophizing about the future.

So far, I have found that the best way to stop these middle-of-the-night machinations is to never let them start. Lately, I have been laying my hand on my heart when these toxic thoughts arise, and simply saying: “Trust, my love.”

As in: Trust that you are loved and that the universe — unlike your night brain — is not out to get you.

In general, I am finding that — day or night — simply laying a hand on my heart and addressing myself as “my love” is a surprisingly soothing antidote to the sometimes abrasive tone of my inner dialogue.

Fun sidebar: I also recently had a guardian angel appear during one of my middle-of-the-night anxiety attacks. A metaphorical big sister showed up to act as a “bouncer” for my negative thoughts. She stood — quietly implacable, arms crossed over her chest — blocking the doorway to my brain, repelling the rowdy, unkind thoughts that were trying to get in.

That said, if the evil thoughts of the night brain do manage to get a foothold, I always have a fun read close at hand as a kind of Calgon-take-me-away option if I need to be lulled back to sleep. (I highly recommend the novel Greta & Valdin in this category — funny, real, and relatable.)

The second hurdle in the realm of the night brain comes as I awaken to my old friend “morning dread.” Old habits die hard, and one of mine is to lie in bed taking inventory of every little thing I could and “should” (??) worry about, carefully stacking each item on my chest until a great weight prevents me from getting out of bed. Sigh.

But what I have to remember is: None of these thoughts are real. That until I climb out of bed and do my morning routines, I literally cannot trust a single thing that my brain is thinking.

I was listening to a podcast recently where a man was talking about his teenage son, whose therapist called this phenomenon “bummer brain.” And, for the son, just realizing that he could give those nighttime thoughts a name, and that he didn’t have to trust them, was a great comfort.

Sure, I would prefer that my brain were different — that it wouldn’t feel the need to transform into my worst enemy when I lay down at night. But wishing things were different is not a very effective strategy for change.

Trusting my practices and putting my night brain in its place is.

A few key practices I’m using lately:

• Light morning breathwork. Right after I wake up, I sit on the couch next to my dog and clear the channel with some breathing. I take ten deep breaths in and out, followed by forty kapalbhati breaths. Then I repeat for three rounds.
  

• Five-minute dance party. I dance to one song in my kitchen to awaken my body to joy. Without fail, this always makes me feel better. Recent picks: Purple Hat by Sofi Tukker, Facilita by Fred Again…, and Help Me Lose My Mind by Disclosure.
  

• Woods walk. When I can, I take a good, long morning walk through the forest with my dog. Lately, the weather has been frigid but it still helps. As the writer Austin Kleon says: “Demons hate fresh air.”

✨

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What would love have me do today? Thank you adrienne maree brown for this timely question.

Why not getting closure makes you kinder. A moving essay from Erotics of Liberation: “Research shows that people with a lower need for closure — those who tolerate uncertainty — process complexity more effectively.”

A beautiful piece from Remind Me to Love, quoting Franz Kafka: “Every day I watch the terror grow and every day I have to work, run errands, do chores — how to describe that contradiction, and how to survive it.”

The only question we need to ask ourselves about our work.

Love this: Affirmations vs Iffirmations.

Thanks for reading. 💓

Link ideas from: Ann Friedman.