The Whole-Night Toolkit

Welcome to the extras in your Whole-Night Toolkit. You already have the Tonight Cards and the six-lesson course. These pages add three tools that work alongside them: a one-page decision map for the middle of the night, bedside worry-dump pages with worked examples, and (in Part 2) a diary and evening-timing planner.

This is general wellbeing information, not medical advice. If nights are affected most nights for three months or more, if you have loud snoring or breathing pauses, if your mood has changed, or if you feel drowsy while driving, please talk to a clinician.

Tool 1: Stay or get up? A one-page decision map

Print this page and keep it by the bed or the chair. Read it in daylight first, so the choices feel familiar.

You wake. Start here.

1. Are you calm, comfortable and relaxed?
   • Yes: stay where you are. Keep the lights low and the clock turned away. Breathe: in for four, out for six. You are done.
   • No, I feel restless or alert: go to question 2.
2. Is a thought or a worry circling?
   • Yes: write it in a few words on the pad, or say your night phrase ("Noted. Morning job."). Then breathe. Go to question 3 if you still feel alert.
   • No: go to question 3.
3. Have you felt wide awake and restless for what feels like around 20 minutes (judge by feel, not by clock)?
   • No: stay, breathe, try again from question 1.
   • Yes: move to your chair with a blanket and a dim light. Go to question 4.
4. In the chair, choose something quiet from your list. Paper book, puzzle, stretching, soft music.
5. Do you feel drowsy? (heavy eyes, yawning, slower thoughts)
   • Yes: walk back to bed in dim light. Breathe: in for four, out for six.
   • No: stay in the chair. Check again in a while. There is no deadline.
6. Back in bed and wide awake again? That is fine. Return to question 3. Repeat as needed, without keeping score.