I have always been a night owl.
Waking up at 8am with a spring in my step is a thing I have never ever experienced, and I will not see 6am unless I have stayed up all evening to get there.
Contrastingly, I can quite easily stay up until the early hours in the tranquility of the night (here I am writing this post at 1am).
Nighttime is quiet, peaceful, lacks distractions and is all-in-all much more relaxing, calming and comforting. So you early birds might think I'm wasting my day sleeping in, but I know you're missing out on the world at rest.
Not only is the evening tranquil, but I find myself much more emotional and reflective.
Have you ever noticed that you ponder about things that might have been or unresolved issues at nighttime?
Or that you have the most meaningful, deep and emotional conversations with others under darkness? Conversations that you wouldn't think about starting in the middle of the day..
I've wondered this on numerous occasions.
Mainly when I've sent a risky message at 4am, when I wake up totally regretting my decision and absolutely dreading the reply because I don't even have the excuse of being a little tipsy.
It seems that I'm not the only person to experience this and there's a whole load of theories of why we are more emotional at night, but here are just a couple:
- During the day, we are distracted by work, chores, people and suppress or hide our thoughts and emotions. Whereas, at night we are alone in the quiet and can focus solely on ourselves; nothing and nobody is around to disturb our thoughts or judge us and ask questions, so there is no need to hide anything.
- Being tired and more relaxed can actually enhance our creativity and emotionality. When you're tired, your brain (specifically the frontal cortex) is less efficient at controlling and filtering out distractions. So, when we are tired we are more likely to let our thoughts run wild and be less rational. We can create various scenarios in our minds at these times which could aid creative work or just keep us awake at night overthinking everything. Thus, heightened emotions are actually associated with fatigue/tiredness rather than the nighttime - it's just that we are more likely to be tired at this time.
We now seem to create lives in where we focus on being physically and socially healthy, yet we forget to keep our mental and emotional health in check. Make time to talk to yourself, as crazy as that sounds. Chill out or let your mind run wild - whatever it needs to do.
xxx
