There's a kind of tired that most people never feel. It comes from being awake through the night while the rest of the world sleeps, and then trying to sleep through the day while the rest of the world is awake and loud and busy. If that's your life, then you already know what I mean, and a lot of you do. Over the months, I've had many requests for an episode made for shift workers, and I wanted to do this one properly, because your sleep problem isn't an ordinary one. It's a real, specific, and genuinely difficult thing. So tonight is built for you, for the nurses, and the drivers, and the people working the floors, and the phones, and the machines, through the small hours, for anyone who comes home when everyone else is leaving. Daytime sleep is harder, that's just true. Your body is working against the light, and the noise, and its own clock, but it is absolutely something you can get good at. There are real and simple things that help, like wearing sunglasses on the drive home. So the morning light never gets the chance to tell your brain that the day has started. Make your room as dark as you possibly can, blackout dark, cave dark, because darkness is the single strongest signal your body has for sleep. And keep it cool, and have a warm shower before you get into bed. And this episode itself is designed to help you get to sleep, to quiet a wired, just off shift mind, and walk your body down to rest. By the end of it, you're going to be somewhere warm, and dark, and completely sealed off from the waking world. But first, as always, this episode uses hypnotherapy and relaxation techniques, so please make sure that you are somewhere safe to fall asleep, preferably in your comfortable bed, and not anywhere. You need to stay alert. And if you're new here, if you've just found the show, consider following. It's free. It means you never miss a new episode, and there's a new one twice a week. And if my voice is a regular part of how you get to sleep, think about joining the Snoozeville Sleep Club. It's how listeners support the show and keep it going, and it's how it stays what it is. Just me, and you, and the quiet. No sponsor interrupting to sell you a mattress or a meal kit at the worst possible moment. There's more information and a link in the show notes. But now, it's time to get you settled. If your eyes aren't already closed, close them now. And then when you're ready, take a long, slow breath in. Just relax and breathe in, and bring all that air all the way down into your lungs. Just like that. And then let it out, slowly. Nice. And one more time. Breathe in, and out. And as it leaves, let your whole body settle a little heavier into the bed. That's so good. Now let your breathing go back to its own quiet rhythm. You may find it's naturally a little deeper now than it was before, and that's good. In a moment, I'm going to count down from six to one. And with each number, you're going to sink a little deeper. And just let yourself go down, down into the soft dark, growing heavier the deeper you go. All you have to do is listen, and let each number take you lower. There's nothing else to do. Nothing else to think about. Just my voice, and the numbers, and the dark. Six, you're beginning to sink. And as you do, feel something settle over you, soft and warm, like a weighted blanket being laid across the whole length of your body, over your chest, and your arms, your legs. It's weight pressing you down just slightly into the bed. And you go with it, down into the soft dark, the first layer of it closing quietly over you, already heavier than you were. Five, down again. And the heaviness moves up into your face now, your forehead smoothing, your cheeks going slack, your jaw loosening and coming unclenched, and your eyelids. Feel how heavy they become, far too heavy to open now. Even if you tried, they wouldn't lift. So don't try. Just let them stay closed, sealed soft and shut, while you keep sinking down. Four, deeper still. And now that heaviness pours down into your arms and your hands, and they're growing so heavy, as though your hands were made of wet sand. Heavier than that. As though they'd been filled with cement, so that your arms lie exactly where they are, and could not possibly lift. And you don't mind at all. It feels wonderful to be this heavy. Three, down and down. And the same heaviness fills your legs now. It's as though gravity itself has grown stronger down here, pulling on every part of you, pressing you down into the mattress, holding you there. Your legs are too heavy to move, and your feet too heavy to lift. Gravity, pulling you deeper. Two, your whole body heavy now. Weighted and pressed down by that gentle growing gravity. So heavy you couldn't rise if you wanted to, and you don't want to. And notice as you go down, how the dark is deepening too. It was dim when we started, but now it's much darker. The soft dark closing in around you, layer over layer. The further down you sink. One, all the way down now, the very bottom. And here, it's the darkest of all, but this dark is warm. Soft and safe. Wrapped all the way around you. Your body feels heavy and easy. Your mind, slow and quiet. And from here on, all you have to do is listen. Just my voice and nothing else. Let it be the one thing you follow. You don't have to wonder where we're going. Or whether this is working. Or what comes next. You can leave all of that to me. I know the way from here. And where we're going in the end is sleep. So let my voice lead. And let yourself follow. All the way to rest. It's a winter morning, and you're driving home. You've just come off your shift, and the sky is that hard pale grey it gets in the cold months. Barely light yet. The sun not properly up. You've just come out of your night. And the world outside the car is doing the opposite. It's waking up. You're heading home to bed. Everyone else is heading out. You can see it through the windshield. The headlights coming toward you one after another. A whole river of them. Everyone driving the other way. Into the day. Into the thing you just came out of. There's a car stopped at the light beside you. And the person in it has a travel mug in the cup holder. And their hair is still a little wet. And they've got that scrubbed, fresh, just started look. And you catch yourself in the mirror, and you do not look like that. You look like the end of something. Not the beginning. There's a school bus up ahead with its lights flashing. Someone out in a driveway scraping frost off a windshield. Their breath clouding in the cold. A person walking a dog hunched down into their coat. All of them starting. And you, threading home through the middle of it. Running on empty. Your eyes dry. Your body tired. It's a strange thing, coming home while the whole world is arriving. Being tired in a way that doesn't match the light outside. You've been awake and working while other people slept. And now you're going to sleep while they get up and go. It's a lot to ask of a person. And it's allowed to feel like a lot. But right now, you are so close to the good part. Because all those people in all those cars, they've got the whole long cold day ahead of them. And you've got the one thing every one of them is secretly longing for. You get to go to bed. You come inside and your home has that hush that a home has at an hour you're not usually there to notice. And you lock the door behind you. And the first thing before anything else, you're going to have a shower. And this is the smartest thing you'll do all day. You'll turn it on hot and you'll wait for the steam and the water hits the back of your neck first. That spot right where you carry everything. Where the whole shift has been sitting all night like a hard little knot. And the heat goes straight into it. Feel the water running down your back. Over the muscles that have been braced and working for hours. And everything the water touches, gives up a little. The tiredness in your legs. The ache across your lower back. All running off you now. Down your arms. Off your fingertips.Down your back and into the drain. And away. The whole night. The people. The problems. The noise of it. Whatever it was that you had to carry. Sluicing off your skin and swirling down and gone. The soap smells clean and simple. And for a minute, there's nothing in the world but hot water and quiet and steam. And here's the clever part. The part your body knows even if you don't. That hot water is warming you all the way through. And when you step out and climb into bed, your body will start to cool back down from it. And that cooling is one of the oldest signals there is for sleep. You're not just getting clean. You're telling your body in a language older than words that it's time for sleep. And you step out into the steam. And there's your robe or the soft old thing you sleep in. And you pull it on. And it's thick and soft against your clean skin. And now the little things. The ones you always do. You turn the clock on the nightstand to face the wall. And your phone goes face down across the room on silent. It's snowing. Coming down in big slow flakes. A set of footprints crossing the yard is already going soft at the edges and filling back in. And somewhere a few doors down, someone's shovel is scraping the walk, and a car is grinding slowly through the unplowed street, and the muffled beep-beep of something backing up, all the small sounds of everybody out there in the cold, starting their day. And none of it is yours to do, so let's shut it out. There are curtains here, and today they're the heaviest curtains ever made. Fully lined, reach up and pull them across, and watch the snow disappear behind them. And listen, the scrape of the shovel, the grind of the car, the far-off voices. All of it going soft and indistinct the moment the fabric falls. There's one thin seam of daylight left at the very edge. Tuck it away. And now, no light gets in at all. The door is next. Push it shut, and feel the last small sounds of your home disappear behind it. And listen to what's left, because it's almost nothing. Outside, the snow keeps falling, and snow makes its own kind of quiet. It lays itself over everything and swallows sound. And under that hush, just one sound. The heat coming up. A low, steady hum in the vents. That's all there is now, and it's dark. Dark enough that when you hold your hand up, you can't quite find it. And there's nothing in that dark but rest. The mattress is the best one you've ever felt. That perfect balance. Soft enough to sink into, and firm enough to hold you. The sheets are clean. Fresh on the bed, clean. Cool and smooth against your warm skin. And the blankets. Heavy ones. A thick duvet and a blanket over that. Real weight. The kind that settles down over you and presses you gently into that wonderful mattress. Pull them up. All the way up past your shoulders to your chin. And burrow down until there's just your face out in the cool air of the room. And all the rest of you. Wrapped and warm and weighted and held. Out there, the snow keeps coming down on the cold, grey world. And the cars keep grinding past. And everyone's out in it. Scraping and hurrying and starting their long day. But in here, it's dark and warm and silent. And your body doesn't know that it's morning. It doesn't need to. In here, in the dark, under all that warmth, with the snow falling far away and the heat humming low, it's simply time to sleep. There is nowhere warmer or darker or safer or better than exactly where you are right now. And you can feel how heavy you've become. That good heaviness. The kind that means your body finally believes it's safe to stop. And your breathing has slowed. Each breath a little slower than the one before. Out there, the snow is still falling. It'll fall all morning. Soft and steady. Laying itself over the cold, grey street. Over the parked cars. Over the whole busy, waking world. Think of it for a moment. All that going on out there. The whole cold machinery of a winter morning. Cars lined up at the lights with their exhaust smoking into the freezing air. Wipers pushing at the snow. Salt trucks out on the main roads. Orange lights turning. A bus wheezing to a stop and a line of people shuffling on. Stamping the snow off their boots. Shops turning their lights on and flipping their signs to open. Someone shoveling the same stretch of walk they'll have to shovel again by noon. Salt crunching underfoot. Engines that don't want to start. The whole world pushing out into the cold to do the long day's work. And it's fine. It's good even in its way. That's the world doing what the world does. But it is a great deal of effort, a winter day. A great deal of cold. And a hurry and scraping and waiting for things to warm up. And you are not in it. You are in here where the light is soft and low and the air is warm and still. The snow that's making everyone out there miserable. Out here it's just a slow white curtain past a window you can't even see anymore. The cold that's biting everyone's fingers. In here there's only warmth rising quietly through the walls and the deep soft hush of a home wrapped in snow. Out there the day. In here the dark and the warmth and the bed. Two different worlds. A pane of glass and a heavy curtain apart. And you are on the right side of it. The warm side. The side where the only thing on the schedule is sleep. Your body doesn't know what time it is and it doesn't care. It only knows that it's tired and heavy and finally allowed to rest. That's all sleep has ever needed. Not the right hour. Just a dark room and a warm bed and a body that's ready. So let go of the last of it now. Whatever's still drifting through your mind from the shift, set it down. It doesn't need you now. Nothing needs you now. What you do is hard. But it matters. The world only works because some people are awake while the rest of us sleep. They keep things running. Keep people safe. Keep the lights on through the night. That's you. And the tiredness isn't a sign that you're not built for it. It's just your body learning a rhythm that most people never have to learn. But bodies can learn this. Your internal clock, the thing that tells you when to sleep and when to wake, it's not fixed. It shifts. It adapts. People move across the world to opposite time zones. And their bodies come around. People work nights for years and sleep beautifully in the daytime because they found the things that work for them and did them again and again until their bodies understood. You can be one of those people. Every time you do this, seal out the light, warm yourself, lie down in the dark and let go. You're teaching your body a little more. You're training it. Night shift after night shift to find its way into sleep, no matter what the sun is doing. It gets easier. So let go of the last of it now. There is just your breathing and the warmth and the weight of your covers and the dark, snow falling far away on a world that's carrying on without you and you, warm and safe, with nothing to do and nowhere to be and all the time in the world asleep. Rest now. Let the snow fall and sleep.