For example, we brush our teeth every night, then go to bed with the intention to sleep. How does our brain not connect brush teeth -> go to bed -> close eyes with the intention of sleeping?
I’ve been struggling to fall asleep for almost a week now, and it takes me a good hour or so to actually fall asleep.
Is it impossible for our brain to pavlov itself, or is this just another question that I came up with while struggling to fall asleep?
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This is called conditioning and we actually do it all the time.
It’s why medical professionals maintain that good sleep hygiene is based upon routine. “Use your bed only for sex and sleep,” “no phones in the bedroom,” etc.
And it is surprisingly effective. The potency of conditioning is readily seen in anyone suffering from PTSD.
You can definitely Pavlov yourself.
Most likely Pavlov even Pavloved himself. His research, simply put, stated his dogs would anticipate being given food after hearing a bell. This after providing food multiple times after ringing that bell.
One might argue that if Pavlov was out and about and hearing a bell ring his immediate thought would be about feeding his dogs.
When it comes to falling asleep, there are so many factors that make falling asleep easy or hard, it’s simply more than “but I brushed my teeth like I always do.”
Because we aren’t dogs driven by simple instincts and basic motivations. We are human beings with complicated lives and relationships, all of which can keep you up at night.
The most important things that help when it comes to sleeping well is:
– a dark, quiet and cool room to sleep in
– a comfortable bed
– going to bed at a consistent time every night
– not eating 2 – 3 hours before bed
– not looking at electronic devices before bed (the light messes with your brain’s sleep center)
– getting enough exercise
Because if you are honest, maybe you don’t actually do that sequence of events 90-95% of the time.
More than likely, in some days, you forget to brush your teeth or do something else between those 3 events. so it is never “brush teeth -> go to bed -> close eyes.” it is more like:
brush teeth ->(use PC offline/watch tv/go to the internet/etc.) -> go to bed -> (masturbate/use your phone/think about your life/remember something last minute like not closing the bathroom light/etc) -> close eyes -> (remember some other shit so open your eyes again…)
You can absolutely pavlov yourself. Have you ever kinda needed to pee and so went to the bathroom and suddenly the need to pee intensified to the point where you were rushing to get your your pants down?
If so, congrats! You’ve pavlov’d yourself!
People do this all the time. To give a personal example, many years ago I made a decision to try to be a bit less negative since I tend to sometimes be depressed. One thing that occurred to me is that when someone asks “How are you?” they don’t really want you to tell them “Well, my lumbago’s acting up and the dog bit me this morning, and…” they just mean it as a greeting.
So I deliberately started answering that question with “I’m just peachy!”, a phrase that no one uses anymore. I had read that if you tell yourself you’re doing alright, it can sometimes help boost your mood a bit, plus since this is such an unusual phrase it tends to cause the other person to chuckle a bit.
As odd as it sounds, this actually worked. It does help, a tiny bit, to cheer me up. And I have said it so often over the years that I’ve pretty much conditioned myself to automatically respond that way. Of course I couldn’t leave well enough alone, so a little later on I started changing it up to sometimes say “I’m just ducky!” if it is raining outside. The problem is I have to remember what the weather is like to remind myself to say Ducky instead of Peachy since I automatically tend to say Peachy if I don’t really think about how I am responding.
You’d think no one would really care and just dismiss me as being a little eccentric (that was certainly what I expected) but the people in the office where I work have gotten so used to how I respond that I can’t really stop doing it now! If I slip up and say “I’m ok” they’ll often get concerned and ask me what’s wrong. If I accidently say “Peachy” when it is raining, they’ll point out to me that I made a mistake.
On one occasion one of the senior VPs actually called me from a staff meeting, put me on speaker, and said they “needed a ruling, was the day Peachy or Ducky?” because the weather outside was very overcast but it wasn’t actually raining. I told them I usually go with Ducky still, on the hope that the clouds will clear up.
So yeah, you can basically program yourself and even others to an extent. The downside is that if you do so you may find it leads to some unexpected results.
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