Exhausted Yet Cannot Sleep

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Have you ever finished a shift and felt so exhausted that all you can think about is getting home, climbing into bed, and just going to sleep. You spent the last eight, ten, or twelve hours on your feet, busy, making decisions, dealing with people, solving problems, or simply trying to stay awake. By the time you finish, you are spent. But then something strange happens. You get home, you finally have the opportunity to sleep, and then your mind decides it's got other plans. It's time to have a committee meeting. You're replaying conversations, thinking about things that happened during the shift, worrying about tomorrow, or simply lying there wondering why you can't fall asleep when you are so goddamn bloody tired. And the more you think about needing sleep, yep, the harder it seems to become. If that sounds familiar, today's episode is absolutely for you because there's a lot more going on here than simply being tired. And it doesn't have to be this way. For far too long, we've accepted fatigue, poor sleep, burnout, and declining health as simply part of working in a 24-7 environment. I don't believe they are. Whether you're a shift worker, trying to feel better, or a leader responsible for the people who keep your organisation running around the clock, you're in the right place. Welcome to a healthy shift. I'm Roger Sutherland, and after more than four decades of working 24-7 shifts with Victoria Plus, followed by years of studying nutrition, circadian biology, human performance, and working with literally thousands of shift workers, I've made it my mission to change the conversation around shift work. Because healthier people create stronger teams, and stronger teams build better organizations. And it all starts by understanding how to work with your biology and not against it. Let's get into today's episode. And we're

Why Your System Stays On

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back again, another episode of a Healthy Shift podcast. My name Roger Sutherland, and again, you're here, and I'm absolutely thrilled that you have joined into this one as well. Today I want to talk about something that I know that many, many shift workers experience, and something that I understand and can so relate to from my own years of working in policing. And that feeling of finishing a demanding shift, being physically exhausted, climbing into bed, and somehow not being able to switch off when you finally get home. It's something I hear regularly from shift workers I work with, particularly nurses, police officers, and paramedics. And also from people working in emergency communications. Those are the main demographic of clients that I've worked with. And those are the ones that all have this problem. And when you think about the environments that these people work in, it is not particularly surprising. Now you might spend an entire shift dealing with emergencies, making decisions, managing competing demands, or responding to situations where you need to be focused and alert. You need to be on, game on. And then your shift finishes. You walk out the door, you jump in the car, you got the doof-doof music going, you're driving home at speed, you got the windows down because you're so tired. You get into bed. And just because you finish work doesn't necessarily mean that your body and mind have immediately settled. I don't know whether you know this, but your mind can't read the roster. It's got no idea. Your brain is where you have left it. Your autonomic nervous system is where you have left it. It's how you've programmed it. And I think understanding that is an important starting point. Your shift hasn't finished, but you haven't necessarily switched off. And I want you to think about what happens during a really demanding shift. Think about it. Think back to a busy, busy shift. Your brain is constantly processing information. It's responding to people, it's making decisions and constantly assessing what's happening around you. Sometimes you're dealing with a genuinely highly stressful situation. Other times it's simply the accumulation of hundreds of small demands throughout the day or night. Now, if you spend hours working in that environment, it's going to take some time to settle down afterwards. Just because the roster's says shift finished doesn't mean it's over. We have an autonomic nervous system that helps regulate functions such as our heart rate, our breathing, and our digestion. And part of that system supports our response to demands of potential threats, while other processes support rest and recovery. These systems are constantly working together rather than operating like a simple on and off switch. And that's an important distinction because I'm often hearing clients talking as though we simply turn off our stress response the moment we finish work. But I've finished. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. You might have finished a demanding shift, but you're still thinking about a difficult conversation, a decision that you've made, or something that you need to follow up for the next shift. Your body, it might still feel tense. Your breathing might be a little faster than usual, and your mind may be continuing to process something that's happened. Now that doesn't mean anything is necessarily wrong. And I want to be clear on that. It's quite normal to need to spend some time to settle after a demanding experience. But the difficulty comes when the unsettling feeling follows you into the bedroom, particularly when you've got a limited opportunity to sleep before your next shift.

Circadian Timing And Morning Light

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And there's also the body clock to consider. This is where things become particularly interesting for shift workers because stress is not the only thing at play here. It might not be the only reason why you're struggling to fall asleep. We also need to consider circadian biology. Over the duration of the shift, the sleep pressure has built because we've been under artificial lighting or we've been doing whatever, and the body is in night mode. Your body has an internal timing system that influences when we feel sleepy and when we feel alert. That system doesn't automatically change just because the roster said. So imagine you finish the night shift at 7 o'clock in the morning. You've been awake all night in the dark, predominantly, or under artificial light, with insufficient blue. You've built up considerable sleep pressure, and you are desperate to get home. But as the morning progresses, you're driving home in the light, it gets a confusing signal. Light, what are we doing? Oh, we're awake. Okay, so we've got to suppress melatonin and we've got to get ourselves up and about. Releases cortisol. Time to get going. Morning daylight's a very, very powerful timing signal to the brain. Trust me, it is the most important timing signal to the brain. So you can find yourself in a situation where you're genuinely exhausted from being awake all night, but your biological clock is making it more difficult to initiate and maintain sleep because you've given it the daylight signal. Just because you've been awake all night and tired, getting that daylight on the way home has conflicted the signal. And this is why I think we need to be more careful about assuming every sleep problem after night shift is caused by stress. And sometimes we need to be very careful that every sleep problem after night shift is caused by lack of sleep. Sometimes it's stress, sometimes it's Acadian timing, sometimes it's caffeine, light exposure, the sleeping environment, or it's a little bit of each column there altogether. And understanding what's contributing to the main problem matters because the strategies we use should address the actual cause. I know numerous times that you I'd have a massive shift. Especially when I was in comms and you'd be trying to deal with everything and everyone, and voices going and radio going and you're typing and reading and people are calling out and making phone calls and talking to people. And just because you get in the car and you drive home doesn't mean that the shift's over. Yeah, that's right. You've logged off. But it doesn't mean your brain's logged off because it doesn't know the difference. Yeah, it's quiet, but you've got to listen to the radio on the way home. And all you're doing is continually stimulating it. And on the way home, subconsciously, your brain is going, Did I do that? Have I done this? Have I done that? Did I get everything right? Am I going to be criticized for this? Am I going to be criticized for that? And that perpetuates continually. And it plays on your autonomic nervous system.

Clock Watching Makes It Worse

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And then there's another part of this experience that I think many shift workers will really recognise. You get home and you know that you've only got a limited number of hours before you need to be up again. So you start doing the calculations. If I go to sleep now, I'll get six hours. 20 minutes later, I'm now down to five hours and 40 minutes. Then you're checking the clock again, getting frustrated, and wondering how you're going to get through your next shift. And before long, going to sleep has become something that you're actively trying to achieve. I'll hit you in the feels here. You've had days off and you're going into your first day shift. How well do you sleep the night before? I'll just leave it at that. Everyone, it is a time-honored problem with shift workers going into that first day shift after days off. Before long, going to sleep has become something that you are actively trying to achieve. And the more frustrated you become, the more difficult it gets. And I think this is an important point because sleep isn't something that you can force yourself to do. We can create the conditions that make sleep more likely, but we can't force ourselves to fall asleep on command. And when we're already dealing with circadian disrupted disruption, limited sleep opportunities, stress, adding pressure and frustration, we've got a recipe for disaster here.

Build A Transition To Bed

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And this is why I often encourage people to think about preparing for sleep rather than trying to make sleep happen. So what happens between work and bed really, really matters. Because one of the things I think we overlook as shift workers is that transition. And I'm talking about night shift workers coming home or even on an afternoon shift coming home. And that's the transition between finishing work and attempting to sleep. There's two different types of people. Because most people finish up, still got uniform on, chuck a jacket on, jump into car, doof, doof music, blah, speed home, jump out, jump into bed, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll. Oh, I'll go to sleep now. Type, wake up an hour and a half later. What am I doing awake now? Why? Is it any wonder? Who prepared for sleep? Then you've got the other person that does it the complete opposite. For many shift workers, there's no transition at all. A lot of us, we finish our shift, we drive home, we walk through the door, and we have to deal with whatever's happening in the house. And then, once we've dealt with that, we then expect ourselves to go to sleep almost immediately. Now I understand why that happens, particularly after night shift, because we don't want to waste precious sleep opportunity by spending hours winding down. And we also, it might be an opportunity to see the kids before the kids go to school. And I'm certainly not suggesting that everyone needs an elaborate bedtime routine, but there may be just value in creating a short and consistent period where we begin moving away from the demands of work and preparing for rest. Ask yourself at this point have you got a routine that you follow every time? Now this can inv this might involve reducing any unnecessary stimulation, hello phone, keeping the environment quiet, disappear phone, lowering light exposure, goodbye phone, when appropriate, and giving yourself a few minutes without another demand being placed on you. For some people, it might be having a shower and changing into comfortable bedding clothes. For others, it might be sitting quietly for a few minutes before heading to bed. And for some shift workers, breathing exercises may be a very, very useful part of that transition. And if you haven't learnt, I can teach you. And in fact, in the coming weeks, depending on when you listen to this, will be a new shift workers toolkit with micro breathwork coming. And this is going to help the shift worker enormously. The important thing is to find something practical that fits your circumstances. I know that shift workers don't have 30 minutes to do a window breathwork routine, which is why I have created micro breathwork sessions for you that rapidly get you into a particular state that you need to be in.

Micro Breathwork To Settle Down

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And this is where breathwork can help. Now, this is an area that I've become particularly interested in. And it's an area that literally changed my own life, both through my own experience and as my training as a breathwork facilitator. Our breathing is closely connected with that autonomic nervous system. And changing the way we breathe literally reinfluences the aspects of our physiological state. For example, slow, comfortable breathing can help reduce the breathing rate and may support relaxation. And some research also suggests that it benefits for measures associated with autonomic regulation. But I want to be very clear about something. Breath work isn't a magic solution to shift work fatigue, and it doesn't override our circadian biology. So if you're trying to sleep during your biological daytime, breathing exercises aren't suddenly going to turn that into an equivalent of sleeping at night. But it does add another good equation into helping and supporting sleep. And if you're regularly getting insufficient sleep because of your roster or your family circumstances, breathing technique isn't going to replace the sleep that you're missing as well. You can't just take a supplement or take a pill that fixes the problem. What they may do is help with one particular part of the problem. And the transition from feeling mentally and physically wound up to feeling more settled is a really important transition. And sometimes that transition is exactly where people are really struggling. So let's start with a very simple place. And one technique that I often use involves breathing gently through the nose with an inhale of approximately four seconds and an exhale of approximately six seconds. Nothing forced, no enormous breaths, and no need to hold your breath. Just a comfortable, slight, slower breathing pattern. Now you might try that for a minute or two while sitting somewhere quiet or once you're comfortably in bed. And if the timing feels uncomfortable, shorten the breaths. Simple. The aim is to feel comfortable and settle, not to chase a particular number or become lightheaded. Now I don't want you listening to this and thinking that four seconds in and six seconds out is somehow the perfect breathing pattern for every person, because it isn't. And the research doesn't establish that this particular ratio will reliably make a shift worker fall asleep faster. But there's one thing for sure, it will relax you. And that's what we need to transition into sleep. It is simply one practical technique that some people may find useful when they're trying to settle after a demanding shift. And I think that is an important distinction. We should be using these strategies to support our recovery, not making claims about them that the evidence just doesn't justify. Now I know myself, with everything that happened to me in my transition out of VigPole, psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy, everything that I did, it was the breath work that changed everything. Because I was able to self-regulate very quickly. If I was feeling really down and really flat, I was able to lift myself up. If I was up and I couldn't wind down, I was able to self-regulate regulate myself down. And the breathing makes such a difference. And I now do it without even thinking automatically. But stay tuned because there's more coming on that. Now let's understand the whole picture.

Find The Real Cause Of Poor Sleep

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Something that I always come back to when working with shift workers is that we need to understand the whole picture before we decide what strategy might help. And this is why people who message me or send me an email saying, what would you do in this situation? I don't have context. I don't. And it's hard for me to answer that. If somebody's struggling to sleep after nights, I want to know about their roster, their sleep opportunity, the caffeine intake, the light exposure. How do you get home? What do you do when you get home? What do you go about? It's not about I just can't sleep. It's all about what happens from the moment you knock off until the time you get into bed and try and sleep. I also want to understand whether they're finding it difficult to fall asleep or whether they're waking repeatedly, or simply not allowing themselves enough time in bed. And these are all individual different problems. And they may require a completely different approach. So if sleep difficulties are persistent or are affecting safety and daily life, it is important to seek an assessment from an appropriate qualified health professional. Conditions such as insomnia, sleep apnea, and shift work disorder may require a more specific treatment. And one thing that I want to be quite clear with you so that you fully understand this is shift workers suffer from more sleep disorder issues than we are diagnosed because they write a lot of the issues off to shift work. And we need to look at it if I can't sleep, if I can't, I'm waking up tired, or I don't stay asleep, or I feel exhausted when I wake up. We need to look at why that is actually occurring, not just, oh, that's shift work. And if a doctor says, oh, that's just shift work, they might be missing something that's really important. And this is why generic advice always and will always fall short. Telling someone to relax before bed isn't particularly helpful if we haven't considered what has prevented them from relaxing in the first place. The aim is to understand what's happening and then work out what can realistically be changed. So let's wind this up. If you're

Share The Episode And Protect Recovery

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one of those shift workers who regularly gets home absolutely exhausted but struggles to switch off, I really do hope that today's episode has given you some context and help you to understand why that can happen. It may not be just one simple thing: stress, acadian timing, light, caffeine, and the transition from work to home can all play a part. And while we can't always control everything about our roster or working environment, there may very well be small things that we can do to support that transition. And this is exactly the reason why I have been developing a new resource for you, which will be free. And it's called one in and two out. And there'll be more on that very shortly. I wanted to create something practical for people who work shifts, breathing exercises that they can use in real situations instantly, while you're preparing for work, while you're managing a demanding moment or trying to settle after it. And I'll be sharing more about that very soon. In the meantime, if you know somebody or you hear a conversation and they regularly tell you that they're absolutely exhausted and they just can't sleep when they get home, do me a favor, can you? Say, hey, listen, I I don't remember exactly how it went, but listen to this episode of Rogers Podcast. It's really good. And it will help you to understand it because understanding means that you can support it, you can help it, you can do something about it. It might help them to understand what is going on and encourage them to look at their recovery a little bit differently. And remember, the aim isn't simply to get through another shift, it's to have enough time and energy to enjoy your bloody life outside of it. If today's episode resonated with you, don't let the conversation stop here. Share it with a colleague, a manager, a friend, a leader, or someone who has the opportunity to improve the lives of people working in a 24-7 environment. Because real change starts with awareness. And awareness changes conversations, and conversations change organisations. And organisations change lives. So thank you for spending this time with me. And until next time, I want you to remember this it doesn't have to be this way. Take care of yourself and take care of each other.