Tired, Wired, and Slightly Amused: A Different Way to Handle Insomnia

At 2:13am, everything feels bigger. Thoughts get louder, worries sound more convincing, and somehow your brain decides now is the perfect time to analyze your entire life. You’re lying there exhausted, trying to force sleep, and the more you try, the further it seems to drift away.

Most people respond to that moment by tightening up. Trying harder. Controlling more. But there’s another option that almost no one considers, and it sounds counterintuitive at first. You can laugh. Not forced positivity or fake laughter, but a genuine ability to see the absurdity of what’s happening. That shift, small as it seems, can completely change the direction of your night.

Humor Is Perspective — And It’s Part of Who We Are

Humor isn’t just about jokes. It’s the ability to hold two perspectives at once, to see what’s happening and at the same time recognize how strange, ironic, or exaggerated it is. You’re exhausted and desperate to sleep, and your brain decides to host a full strategy meeting at 2am. When you step back and see that clearly, there’s something almost comical about it.

This way of relating to difficulty runs deep, especially in Jewish culture. Humor has never just been entertainment; it’s been a way of carrying ourselves through challenge. Across generations, in situations far heavier than a rough night of sleep, people learned to find a certain lightness even in dark moments. Not because things were easy, but because staying completely serious all the time would have been crushing. Humor allowed people to keep perspective, to stay human, and to not be swallowed by what they were going through. That same instinct can apply to something as personal and frustrating as insomnia.

What Humor Does to Your Brain at Night

When you can’t sleep, your nervous system is often stuck in a subtle state of alertness. Even if nothing is actually wrong, your mind behaves as if something is. Thoughts loop, the body tightens, and the pressure to sleep builds. Humor interrupts that pattern in a very natural way.

Instead of fighting your thoughts or trying to silence them, humor softens them. It creates a bit of distance between you and the experience. You’re no longer fully inside the struggle; you’re observing it. That shift changes your emotional state. The urgency eases, the intensity drops, and your brain moves out of that rigid, hyper-focused mode into something more flexible and calm.

You might still be awake, but you’re no longer locked in a battle with the night. And that alone often creates the conditions where sleep can return.

Laughing at the Absurdity of Sleep Struggles

There’s a real irony in insomnia. The more you want sleep, the harder it becomes to reach. You try to relax and end up tense. You try not to think and your thoughts get louder. You try to sleep and your brain suddenly wakes up. Seen from the inside, it feels frustrating. Seen from a slight distance, it’s almost absurd.

Allowing yourself to notice that doesn’t minimize your struggle; it changes your relationship to it. The pressure begins to loosen. You stop treating sleep like something you have to conquer and start allowing it to happen on its own terms.

This can show up in surprisingly simple ways. You look at your bottle of sleeping pills and instead of seeing something you depend on, you see the story you’ve built around it. There’s a moment where you might think, it’s kind of wild that this tiny pill feels like it’s in charge of my entire night. That shift doesn’t force change, but it opens the door to it. You’re no longer completely inside the narrative.

The same is true with anxious thoughts. Instead of arguing with them or trying to push them away, you can notice how dramatic they sound. A thought like “if I don’t sleep right now, tomorrow is ruined” starts to feel less like a fact and more like a character making bold predictions. When thoughts lose their seriousness, they lose a lot of their power.

Using Humor as a Practical Tool on Sleepless Nights

This approach isn’t about ignoring your sleep or distracting yourself endlessly. It’s about shifting the tone of the night. If your mind is tense and serious, adding something light can rebalance it. Watching a short clip from a comedian, listening to a familiar funny podcast, or even replaying something that made you laugh earlier in the day can gently reset your nervous system.

You can also bring humor into your own thinking. Notice patterns and exaggerate them slightly in your mind. Give your recurring thoughts a personality. Recognize when your brain is doing its usual nighttime routine and meet it with a bit of amusement instead of resistance. Even a small internal smile can change the direction of the experience.

Sleep struggles often come with a heavy emotional weight. Frustration, fear, and pressure build over time, especially if this has been going on for a while. Humor doesn’t erase those feelings, but it gives you another way to hold them. It reminds you that you’re not broken, that your brain is doing something human, and that even in a difficult moment, there’s still space to breathe.

The next time you’re lying awake, instead of tightening up and trying to force sleep, see if you can step back just a little. Notice what’s happening, recognize the patterns, and allow yourself to see even a hint of the absurdity in it. That shift from pressure to perspective is often where things begin to change.

• Insomnia & sleep issues