Lesson 5 of 6 · What feeds it
Three. The night, and the reading
Look at when it is loudest. Late, tired, in bed, alone, phone in hand.
Tired people tolerate uncertainty badly. The same open question is a shrug at nine in the morning and a crisis at one, and nothing about the question changed in between.
The reading is the other half of it. Debates, forums, threads, videos, at midnight, in the dark. That is not study. Study happens in the day, with a purpose and an end. What happens at midnight is the search, and the search is what runs the loop.
What the research says
A short night raises how strongly you react to unpleasant things and weakens the control that normally settles it. The same open question really is a different size at one in the morning; that is not your imagination.
Reviews what a short night does to the handling of emotion. Losing sleep raises the reaction to unpleasant things and weakens the control that would normally settle it. The same open question really is a different size at one in the morning.
Goldstein AN, Walker MP (2014). The role of sleep in emotional brain function. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 10, 679 to 708 doi