How to Overcome Restlessness at Night (14 Powerful Strategies)

Restlessness. It’s so common that it often avoids our detection.

Restlessness at night leads to irritability and anxiety. And we’ll do anything to get rid of this feeling.

For this reason, restlessness, and especially nighttime restlessness is at the core of many of our irrational behaviors and addictive tendencies.

Depth psychology and humanistic psychology offer insights into the true cause of this irritability and how to overcome restlessness.

By the end of this guide, you’ll be armed with practical and effective strategies to combat restlessness without medication, sedation, or escape.

Let’s dive in …

What is Restlessness?

Restlessness is a form of neurosis. Neurosis is excessive and irrational anxiety or obsession. It’s a sign of mental imbalance.

That is, with restlessness the root problem is in the mind itself.

Neurosis produces unnecessary stress that can lead to depression and feelings of helplessness.

Restlessness at night implies an inability to be still—to come to rest, to be able to stay present or to be okay with inactivity.

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung called restlessness “the primary neurosis of our time”—and he made that observation over 60 years ago.

I believe his remark is even more accurate today than it was then. Global research on anxiety disorders published in Psychological Medicine confirms this: Anxiety is on the rise around the world.¹Baxter, A., Scott, K., Vos, T., & Whiteford, H. (2013). Global prevalence of anxiety disorders: A systematic review and meta-regression. Psychological Medicine, 43(5), 897-910. doi:10.1017/S003329171200147X

Common Symptoms of Restlessness …

Signs of restlessness abound in our modern world:

• Tossing and turning at night, having a restless sleep
• A continuous need to be doing something (working, eating, drinking, watching, checking your phone or social media, etc.)
• An obsession with the new and novel
• Edginess and agitation that lead to emotional outbursts
• Physical pain and numbness in various regions of your body

We can observe cultural trends that reinforce our restlessness. To call out a few:

• A continuous obsession with staring at screens (computers, phones, and televisions)
• A materialistic, consumer- and brand-driven culture
• An obsession with image and bodily appearance
• The eternal pursuit to accumulate more money, titles, and things
• Parents chauffeuring their kids to an endless procession of activities (including “play dates”)
• A collective addiction to social media

It’s profoundly difficult to avoid feelings of restlessness in modern life.

Restlessness at night is common as we tend to have less stimulation masking this irritable feeling.

How to Overcome Restlessness At Night

Okay, let’s run through how to overcome restlessness at night. General “sleep hygiene” is always a good place to start.

First, we’ll run through 7 physical strategies specifically for nighttime restlessness.

1. Decalcify your pineal gland
2. Reduce blue light exposure at night
3. Minimize EMF exposure at night
4. Relax your body before sleep
5. Steady your mind at night
6. Stabilize your internal energy
7. Use trauma release exercises

Then, we’ll explore how to overcome restlessness from a psychological perspective.

1 – Restore Your Pineal Gland

The pineal gland acts as the body’s light meter. It receives light information from the eyes and then sends out hormonal messages to the body.

This tiny gland transmits information to the body about the length of daylight, commonly called the circadian rhythm or the “body clock.”

The pineal gland tells every other part of your body whether it’s light or dark out, what season you’re in, and whether days are getting longer or shorter.

As part of the endocrine system, the pineal synthesizes and secretes a hormone called melatonin directly into the bloodstream.

Melatonin is a serotonin-derived hormone that modulates sleep patterns. The pineal gland produces less melatonin in daylight hours and increases secretion during the night.

Our modern life over-taxes this tiny gland in measurable ways. For starters, many people have a calcified pineal gland from drinking fluorinated water, eating foods sprayed with conventional pesticides, and using nonstick cookware.

If you’re experiencing restlessness at night, consider restoring and decalcifying your pineal gland.

2 – Reduce Blue Light Exposure at Night

Another huge factor that reinforces restlessness at night comes from the unnatural blue light emitted from our devices.

In one Harvard study, they compared the effects of 6 1/2 hours of blue light and green light exposure.²Blue light has a dark side, 2020. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/blue-light-has-a-dark-side

They found that blue light suppresses melatonin twice as long as green light, shifting circadian rhythm by twice as much (3 hours versus 1 1/2 hours).

Many studies confirm these findings. Unnatural blue light is influencing our pineal glands and throwing off our circadian rhythm. Simply put, our devices are increasing restlessness at night and making it difficult to have a sound sleep.

If you’re experiencing nighttime restlessness, stop looking at any screens at least two hours before going to sleep. Also, consider wearing a pair of amber glasses in the evening. (I review the pairs of blue-light-blocking glasses I’ve tested here.)

3 – Reduce EMF Exposure

Another common modern factor of restlessness at night is electromagnetic radiation. From our electronic devices, WIFI, Bluetooth, etc. we are being bombarded with electromagnetic frequencies (EMF) that our biology is not designed to handle.

Reducing this EMF exposure can have a measurable difference on your level of restlessness and the quality of your sleep.

Here are a few things you can do to reduce EMF at night:

• Keep your mobile device out of the bed (and switch it to “Airplane Mode”)
• Unplug your home modem in the evening
• Ground your bed by sleeping on earthing sheets.

All of these tactics will reduce EMF in your bedroom and therefore help improve your sleep. Thousands of people with sleeping problems have discovered how grounding sheets help them.

4 – Relax Your Body Before Sleep

Mental and emotional stress leads to tension in the body, and vice versa.

If you’re feeling restless at night, there’s a good chance you’re experiencing bodily tension and stiffness in various regions.

Relaxing this tension can help reduce restlessness and improve the quality of your sleep. Pay particular attention to your jaw muscles.

Stretch for five to ten minutes before going to bed. Why? Although we often don’t make the connection, our physical tensions are directly related to our mental tensions (stress).

Stretching and relaxing your muscles and the fascia beneath them can help promote a more restful sleep.

This video illustrates a stretching routine you can try before going to sleep:

5 – Steady Your Mind Before Sleeping

Capture all of your ideas, concerns, and to-dos for the following day. These things will rotate in your mind (inducing restlessness) until you capture them on paper. Oftentimes, doing this is sufficient to relax your mind.

Keep a journal or notepad and a pen by your bedside and add things as they come to mind.

Training yourself to breathe properly can help quiet your mind as well.

Or, experiment with the 4-7-8 breathing technique: Inhale slowly and evenly for a count of four. Hold your breath for an even count of seven. And then slowly and evenly exhale from your mouth for a count of eight. Be sure not to push or force the air in or out as you exhale.

Dr. Andrew Weil calls it a “natural tranquilizer.” Use this breathing cycle three times before bed and you’ll likely notice the results. It’s a powerful sleep hack.

6 – Stabilize Your Internal Energy

Energetically, restlessness at night signifies that your energy is “scattered.” There are many qigong practices designed to help stabilize this scattered energy. Stabilizing this energy reduces restlessness, calms the body and the mind, and makes it easier to fall asleep.

So instead of trying to do something about your restlessness, stand still. Stand, let go, open your body, and witness what’s happening inside of you.

In my experience, this form of standing is a powerful practice that can help reduce restlessness at night. The method itself is thousands of years old, and it’s the foundation of qigong and all of the internal martial arts like Tai Chi. If you’re interested in exploring this topic more deeply, see this guide on a standing practice called Zhan Zhuang.

7 – Use Trauma Release Exercises

The Jungians aren’t the only ones who acknowledge the stored-up energy (restlessness) within us.

Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk’s bestseller The Body Keeps the Score highlights how trauma is stored within our bodies from childhood. Psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich made the same observation in the 1930s, calling it “body armoring.”

How do you overcome your restlessness at night? Address this stored trauma directly.

Thankfully, there is a wide range of effective methods including:

• Dr. David Berceli’s Trauma Release Exercises (TRE)
• Dr. Alexander Lowen’s Bioenergetic Analysis
• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

I would suggest starting with TRE because it’s easy to do on your own and there are lots of tutorials on Youtube. Here’s a brief overview from Dr. Berceli:

Breaking up stored trauma in your body may be the fastest way to overcome restlessness at night.

Discovering the Cause of Restlessness

Most medical websites suggest that the cause of restlessness is a biochemical imbalance or a medical-related issue.

While that’s possible, in my experience, biochemistry is more often an effect—not a cause. This is known insight for anyone who explores depth psychology and gets to know their psyche.

Disorganization in the psyche is usually the root cause of these mental disturbances.

Jung believed that restlessness is a symptom of people who are not actualizing their potential and those living in discord with their true Self.

In The Way of the Dream (1994), Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz explains,

Restlessness is caused by a surplus of bottled-up energy, which makes us fuss around all the time because we are not connected with the dream world or the unconscious. That energy can take the form of an all-pervading anxiety, a fear that somewhere, something dark is lurking and might happen at any minute.

We become anxious about nothing at all. Underlying anxiety becomes a standard part of our daily existence, often accompanied by feelings of irritability, aggressiveness, or meaninglessness.

According to Jungian psychology, this anxiety brought on by an internal disconnection is the root cause of restlessness.

Disconnection from Dreams: The Cause of Restlessness at Night?

Can Jung and von Franz be right?

Can being disconnected from the dream world be the source of our restlessness at night?

To better understand how this might be so, let’s examine how the Buddhist and Hindu traditions view dreams.

From these Eastern philosophies, there are four basic levels of reality:

1. The Gross: The Physical Realm
2. The Subtle: The Dream World
3. The Causal: Deep Sleep
4. Nonduality

We are most familiar with the gross world. It’s the 3-dimensional plane from which our egos operate in the waking state.

The subtle realm is the dimension of our dreams and imagination.

So here’s where things get interesting: while we might believe dreams “aren’t real,” from the perspective of these traditions, the dream state is more real than our physical reality.

If this is true, and we’re primarily disconnected from this dream world, wouldn’t that be an obvious source of our restlessness at night?

Maslow’s Insights on Restlessness

Interestingly, psychologist Abraham Maslow’s findings are consistent with Jung’s.

While Maslow’s field focused on treating mental illness, he chose to study positive mental health. But he ran into a problem. He had a difficult time locating enough subjects that exhibited signs of positive mental health.

As he formulated his theory of human behavior, he slowly discovered subjects that he termed “self-actualizing individuals.”

From the perspective of Maslow’s well-known Hierarchy of Needs, anyone still actively pursuing their basic human needs in adulthood—biological, safety, belonging, and esteem—is, by definition, neurotic.

These unmet needs create internal tensions that trigger anxiety, depression, and restlessness.

Maslow’s findings, along with others in his field, suggest that positive mental health is rare. So now we can see a clearer picture: Most individuals around the world are feeling restless right now.

How the Jonah Complex Causes Restlessness

Maslow had a term for individuals who weren’t living their potential.

He called it the Jonah Complex. He often warned his students:³Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, 1993.

If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life.

Denying your natural potential—refusing your call to adventure—leads to perpetual restlessness.

Restlessness Triggers These Behaviors …

When we fail to understand the true source of restlessness at night, we invariably seek remedies in the usual places:

• Consumption (food, drugs, alcohol, sugar, products)
• Distraction and diversion (television, social media, porn, etc)

In truth, we’ll do almost anything to avoid feeling restless.

These behaviors, again, are symptoms. Unfortunately, these destructive behaviors are habit-forming.

Restlessness, then, can lead us on a downward spiral.

How to Overcome Restlessness In General

I offered the above strategies on how to overcome restlessness at night because they are easier to implement.

Now that we have a clearer understanding of restlessness in general, let’s highlight additional strategies for overcoming restlessness once and for all:

1. Explore your dreams
2. Follow your bliss
3. Clarify your values
4. Cast your vision
5. Own your rage
6. Confront your shadow

Let’s examine each strategy.

1 – Explore Your Dreams to Connect with the Unconscious

Freud saw dreams as merely a rehashing of events from prior days and memories from childhood.

Jung discovered an extraordinary third source of dream content: the “age-old unforgotten wisdom stored up in us.”

Jung saw our restlessness and other neurotic behaviors as symptoms of being disconnected from one’s dream life—from the wisdom of our inner world.

This wisdom, according to Jung, exists as a living potential within each of us. We access this wisdom through our dreams, which provide a bridge between the ego and our inner world every night when we enter REM sleep.

Neurotic tendencies like restlessness are often a result of what Jung called one-sidedness—holding fixed, rigid, and sometimes extreme perspectives about yourself, the world, and life.

Jung found that our dreams (and imagination) can help us dissolve our one-sidedness. They can help us see and embrace new perspectives and open up new doorways for internal and external exploration.

Modern research supports Jung’s findings. For example, Rosalind Cartwright, a sleep researcher at Chicago’s Rush Medical Center and author of The Twenty-Four Hour Mind, has shown that individuals who recall their dreams heal more quickly from depressive moods associated with divorce.⁴D. Cartwright, Rosalind. (1996). Dreams and adaptation to divorce. Trauma and dreams.

By keeping a journal by your bedside and recording your dreams upon awakening, you take the first step in reviving your dream life to end your restlessness at night.

2 – Follow Your Bliss

Grab hold of a powerful insight from the late mythologist Joseph Campbell who often instructed his students to “follow their bliss.”

Here’s the original quote from Campbell’s famous interview with Bill Moyer captured in The Power of Myth:

I even have a superstition that has grown on me as the result of invisible hands coming all of the time—namely, that if you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open doors for you.

I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be … Wherever you are, if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.

Maslow often had a similar remark for his students:⁵Maslow, Abraham H. (1943) “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Psychological Review, 50, 370-396.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately happy. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization.

The essential message is to find what you enjoy and immerse yourself in it.

3 – Cast Your Vision to Clarify Your Future Self

Your personal vision for your Future Self links to your bliss and dreams.

As a coach and guide to others, I’ve found the most significant challenge with vision is casting one that’s truly your own.

What do I mean?

We’re conditioned through early childhood to follow orders. Our parents and teachers are always telling us what to do, sometimes overtly, but always subconsciously through their behavior and attitudes.

This subconscious conditioning has a way of stripping us of our innate spontaneity.

So when we’re tasked to clarify our vision, we invariably turn our attention to what our parents and society expect of us—and we don’t even know it!

The result? Resistance, which just feeds into our restlessness.

When you elect to do things that go against your interests, your unconscious lets you know it.

Do you want to establish a vision that inspires you? See this guide.

4 –  Clarify Your Values to Align Yourself

Values are another powerful tool we often discuss on this website that can help you overcome restlessness.

When you’re living in discord with your values, you’re going to feel restlessness. For example, if you’re selling yourself out in some way, you’re going to be fidgety.

When you don’t know your values, you won’t be able to identify the source of your restlessness.

So what do you stand for? You can go through this personal values assessment here.

5 – Do the Wheel of Life Assessment

Sometimes our restlessness is a consequence of ignoring an important part of life.

For example, some people focus on their careers at the expense of their relationships. Or, they are focused on having fun at the expense of their physical health.

Enter the Wheel of Life Assessment. It helps you identify the key categories of your life, establish goals in each of these categories, and then rate your progress over time.

It’s a simple yet powerful process. Completing this assessment can bring greater clarity and help reduce restlessness.

6 – Own Your Rage and Envy to Keep it From Building Pressure

What does rage have to do with restlessness?

Well, we live in a System that generates certain projected ideals of image, wealth, beauty, and status.

Those who have more, consciously or unconsciously tease and look down upon, those who have less. And there’s always someone who has more—and others who have less.

Conversely, those who have less, invariably envy those who have more.

So by the end of childhood, we’ve all been subjected to a fair amount of teasing, bullying, and cruel behaviors. Some of it is conscious, but the vast majority of these traumatic experiences are stored up within the body (the unconscious).

This teasing creates a reservoir of repressed rage within each of us. Emotional outbursts and tempers occur when the pressure cooker goes past containable levels.

What can we do with this rage? Often, we can just acknowledge it and experience it to a degree, but without becoming overwhelmed by it.

Doing so often reduces our rage thereby helping us overcome restlessness.

7 – Confront Your Shadow So You Can Stand Your Ground

We also feel restless when we’re running away from our shadow. What does that mean?

The personal shadow is everything about ourselves we don’t fully know, see, or acknowledge.

If you find that you frequently …

• Judge others,
• Envy others,
• Become emotionally reactive,
• Can’t look at yourself in the mirror, or
• Observe recurrent patterns in relationships

Then, your restlessness could be a sign of avoiding the hidden aspects of yourself.

The answer? Turn and face your shadow.

See this complete guide to shadow work for more details.

How to Overcome Restlessness at Night: Play with These Strategies

Restlessness is merely a sign or symptom of something out of alignment within you.

We can perceive the source of neurosis as being physical, biochemical, emotional, mental, or spiritual. And we can approach this issue from multiple avenues simultaneously.

When you’re feeling restless at night, you can:

1. Decalcify your pineal gland
2. Reduce blue light exposure at night
3. Minimize EMF exposure at night
4. Relax your body before sleep
5. Steady your mind at night
6. Stabilize your internal energy
7. Use trauma release exercises

If you’re feeling restless in general, you can:

1. Explore your dreams
2. Follow your bliss
3. Clarify your values
4. Cast your vision
5. Do the Wheel of Life Assessment
6. Own your rage
7. Confront your shadow

Play around with the above strategies and see what opens up within yourself.

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