How to have better sleep without overhauling your life
Tired but wired? Why are you exhausted, but you can’t sleep?
Do you crawl into bed feeling completely shattered? Your body aches with tiredness, but the moment your head hits the pillow, your mind switches on. Do you start to replay the day, or are you thinking about tomorrow? You start worrying about how awful you’ll feel if you don’t sleep.
If this sounds familiar, you are not alone.
Many women I talk to feel exhausted all day, yet struggle to fall asleep or stay asleep at night. It’s frustrating, confusing, and they are left with the question, “Why can’t I just sleep as I used to?” Sleep problems often aren’t caused by one big thing, but by lots of small, well-intentioned habits that add up.
Why being exhausted doesn’t guarantee good sleep
It feels logical to assume that if you’re tired enough, sleep should come easily. But sleep doesn’t work like that.
Sleep is not just about physical tiredness; it is also a nervous system response. When your body feels safe, calm and settled, sleep comes easier, but when your system is on high alert, sleep can become difficult, no matter how exhausted you are.
Many women spend their days in a constant state of “on”:
juggling work, family and responsibilities
thinking ahead, planning, organising
pushing through tiredness and stress
By the time evening arrives, the body is worn out, but the nervous system hasn’t had a chance to switch off. That’s what creates the tired-but-wired feeling.
Here are some common sleep disruptors that I see:
1. Carrying the mental load into the evening
Even when you stop “doing”, your brain may still be problem-solving, planning or worrying. There’s no clear signal that it’s safe to rest.
2. Late eating or constant evening snacking
Heavy or frequent late-night eating keeps your body busy digesting rather than winding down.
3. Screens as a way to relax
Scrolling feels soothing, but it keeps your brain stimulated and alert, the opposite of what sleep needs.
4. Going straight from busy to bed
If you move from full speed to lying down with no pause in between, your body doesn’t get the message that the day is over.
None of these is a “bad habit”. But they can make it harder to sleep.
Why trying harder often backfires
When sleep becomes a problem, most women try to fix it by:
going to bed earlier
tracking sleep
worrying about “getting enough”
forcing themselves to relax
Unfortunately, the more you tell yourself, “I must sleep”, the more your nervous system hears “, Stay awake, this is important.” That creates tension, frustration and even more wakefulness. Sleep improves when we remove pressure, not add to it.
Three foundations of better sleep
Instead of focusing only on bedtime, it helps to view sleep as the result of how supported your body feels throughout the day and the evening.
1. Daytime steadiness
What you eat, how often you move, your exposure to daylight and how you manage energy during the day all influence sleep at night.
Stable energy during the day = a calmer system at night.
2. Gentle evening signals
Your body needs cues that the day is coming to an end. This doesn’t require a perfect routine, just a few consistent signals that say, “we’re safe to rest now.”
3. Feeling safe enough to rest
Sleep comes more easily when your body feels supported and not pushed. Kindness and consistency work far better than criticism and control.
Where to start (without overhauling your life)
You don’t need to fix everything to sleep better.
Start small:
Choose one gentle change
Try it for a week
Keep a note of how you feel and how you sleep
Better sleep isn’t built overnight. It’s built through small signals of safety, repeated over time. If sleep used to be easy and now it isn’t, that doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It usually means life has been full, demanding and relentless, and you need to be kind to yourself and make small, gentle changes.
Calmer sleep is possible.