The 20-Minute Writing Exercise That Stopped My 3 AM Overthinking

A neuroscience-inspired method for calming an anxious mind and retraining your brain to rest

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

It was 3:17 AM.

I wanted to unsubscribe from overthinking. I couldn’t.

The thoughts were the same ones that had been cycling through my mind for weeks: Did I respond to that email? When’s that deadline? What am I forgetting? Why can’t I just turn my brain off?

I grabbed my phone, worse. Lists. Calendars. The crushing story of being behind, summarized in glowing blue light.

Then I remembered something I’d been researching about neuroplasticity. About how the brain doesn’t distinguish between vividly imagined experiences and actual memories. About how Dr. Joe Dispenza’s students were using mental rehearsal to change their biology.

I grabbed my notebook instead.

3:19 AM. I started writing.

Not about my problems. Not to-do lists for fixing them. I wrote as if I was already the person who didn’t have this problem.

I wrote as my future self.

The pen moved slowly at first. My hand felt heavy, my mind skeptical. This is ridiculous. Just go to sleep. But I kept writing.

I wake up naturally around 7:30am, feeling completely rested. My body knows exactly how much sleep it needs. When I put my head on the pillow at night, my mind goes quiet within minutes like switching off a light. There’s no mental list running. No urgency about tomorrow. Just my breath, the weight of the blanket, and this deep trust that everything important has been handled.

I kept writing. The skeptical voice got quieter.

During the day, I move through my work with this calm focus I’ve never experienced before. When a thought about something I need to do later pops up, I simply note it and return to what I’m doing. I don’t grab my phone to add it to seventeen different lists. I trust myself to remember. And I do.

My handwriting started flowing faster. Something was shifting.

At dinner, I’m actually present. I taste my food. I hear what my partner is saying instead of rehearsing my response while he’s still talking. When we’re done, I help clean up without my mind already being three hours ahead, planning tomorrow.

I noticed I was feeling different. Not just thinking about feeling different, actually feeling it in my body. A little more relaxed. A little less wired.

When evening comes, I don’t dread bedtime. I look forward to it. My nighttime routine is simple: I close my laptop at 9pm, I spend twenty minutes reading something that has nothing to do with work, I brush my teeth without scrolling my phone, and I slide into bed knowing my brain will let me rest.

The skeptical voice returned: You’re writing fiction at 3am.

But I kept going.

And here’s what I love most, I don’t need my sleep to be perfect. Some nights I sleep seven hours, some nights eight. It doesn’t matter. I wake up refreshed regardless because my nervous system is finally regulated. My body isn’t in constant survival mode anymore. Sleep is restoration, not escape.

I wrote one final paragraph:

I am someone who sleeps well. Not someone who’s trying to fix their sleep. Not someone who struggles with insomnia. I am simply a person whose brain and body know how to rest. This is who I am now.

3:39 AM. I closed the notebook.

Twenty minutes of writing.

My mind was quiet, actually quiet, not just trying to be quiet. My body felt different. Softer. Like I’d just exhaled tension I didn’t know I was holding.

I turned off the light.

8:15 AM. I woke up.

No alarm, no panic and no mental list running on a loop.

I reached for my phone to check the time and stopped. Because I didn’t feel that familiar urgency. That behind-ness. That crushing sense that I should already be doing something.

I just… felt rested.

That was six weeks ago.

I haven’t seen 3 AM since.

Not because I found the perfect sleep routine. Not because I got my life “under control.”

Because I spent twenty minutes writing as the person who doesn’t have this problem—and my brain believed it.

The method that worked wasn’t willpower or discipline. It was neuroscience-inspired and it’s repeatable.

I didn’t know it then, but I was doing what Olympic athletes do when they mentally rehearse before competition, training my nervous system through vivid imagination. I was generating the feeling before the circumstance, the same emotional reconditioning that changes biology at the cellular level. I wasn’t trying to sleep better. I was becoming someone who sleeps well. Identity-level change.

I was programming my Reticular Activating System (RAS), my brain’s attention filter, to notice evidence that I sleep well instead of evidence that I don’t. I was firing and wiring new neural networks by feeling the future while writing it. I was creating “a new identity.”

And it worked.

Not because I’m special. Because the brain doesn’t distinguish between a vividly written, emotionally felt Future Script and an actual memory.

I had written my future. My brain installed it as truth.

And my body followed.

That’s why I wanted to share this.

Not just the idea of “journaling your goals” or “writing affirmations.”

The specific methodology that created new neural pathways in my brain:

1. See It - Mental rehearsal activates the same neural pathways as actual experience

2. Write It - Handwriting creates broader brain connectivity than typing, strengthening memory encoding

3. Act As If - Embodied behavior locks in the new identity

This is Future Scripting.

And if it worked for my 3 AM brain spiral, it can work for anything you want to change.

Your turn starts now.

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If your 3 AM thoughts could talk, what would they say they’re afraid you’ll forget or mess up? Share it below. You’re not the only one hearing that voice.

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References:

Dispenza, J. (2012). Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One. Hay House.