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Areas › Your body › Your nervous system
It is easy to hear that as a lifestyle choice, and easier still to blame yourself for it. It is more accurately a shifted rhythm. Naming it that way helps, because then the thing to work on becomes the timing rather than your willpower, and timing is something that can be moved.
'the night as a cover' (Quran 78:10). Night is meant to cover you, and it is worth working towards it doing that again.
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review and meta-analysis found reduced heart rate variability across psychiatric conditions, while also showing that psychotropic medication accounts for part of the difference. The general point holds: bodies differ physiologically alongside the diagnosis, and those differences are not attitude. That work concerns heart measures rather than daily rhythms, so it supports the principle rather than this specific curve.
Alvares GA, Quintana DS, Hickie IB, Guastella AJ. (2016). Autonomic nervous system dysfunction in psychiatric disorders and the impact of psychotropic medications: a systematic review and meta-analysis.. Journal of psychiatry & neuroscience : JPN doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
The daily curve itself has changed, so the flat mornings and the late energy are not choices.
Cold water on your face, particularly at the hairline and around the lips, sets off a reflex that slows the heart. It is one of the few things fast enough to interrupt real panic.
The tools that slow things down mostly use your head: naming what is happening, standing back a little, putting the distress at arm's length for now.
You do not need other people to reach a settled state. Breath, a slow walk somewhere green, a cat asleep on your lap: all of them get you there.