Difference Between Tired and Sleepy: Insight from a Sleep Therapist in Austin
Are you tired, or are you sleepy?
We use those terms interchangeably, but they actually mean really different things. And the difference matters because it determines what you should do.
As a sleep therapist in Austin, I start making this distinction right out the gate. Let me break it down.
Sleepy
If you are sleepy, there is a high likelihood that you will fall asleep.
You know you’re sleepy when:
your eyelids are heavy
your head is nodding forward,
you are having lapses in concentration
If you're sleepy and you lie down, it's very likely that you will fall asleep.
Tired
Tired is different from sleepy.
If you are tired, you might say you are:
fatigued
dragging ass
low energy
cranky
You can be tired without being sleepy.
Have you ever lied down in the afternoon to take a nap, feeling so, so tired and yet you don’t fall asleep?
It’s because you're not sleepy. You’re tired.
Lying in bed at night and can't fall asleep despite the fact that you feel so tired?
It's because you're not sleepy. Again, tired.
What should you do if you are sleepy?
Take a short nap, if possible! About 20 minutes, set an alarm so you don’t go longer. A nap can burn off the sleepiness and perk you up. Your body has a sleep drive that determines the amount and quality of your sleep. Naps, for better or worse, spend sleep drive. Do you have it in the budget? Some people have too much sleep drive at the wrong time (shift workers, people with hypersomnia.) Other people, like those with insomnia, don’t have enough sleep drive.
So, if you are sleepy, it's okay to take a short nap to burn some of that sleepiness off.
Use sleepiness to gauge when to go to bed. The time to go to bed is when you're sleepy. Not when you're just tired and not based on the time but when you're sleepy.
Why? Because that is when you're actually likely to fall asleep. Going to bed when tired but not sleepy = you lie there awake for a long time.
If you’re not falling asleep, you aren’t sleepy.
So, I always tell people to go to bed when you're sleepy, not tired.
Also, if you are not sleepy, a nap is not likely to make you feel any better.
You're gonna lie there, you probably aren't even gonna fall asleep. Or maybe you do fall asleep, but you wake up and you feel worse, you feel groggier, you feel more out of it. Because you're not sleepy, you're tired.
What should you do if you are tired?
Get up and move around! Expend some energy. Fatigue is homeostatic. This means fatigue can set in when you're doing too much or when you're doing too little. And so, if you're feeling tired, fatigue, dragging, that kind of thing, get more active. Get up and move around.
More insights from a sleep therapist
Have you heard that advice about getting out of bed if you can't sleep? It's good advice but there’s some helpful context that gets left out. It’s not going to help you sleep better tonight. It might not help tomorrow night. But it will help eventually. We lose the battle to win the war.
Don’t get back into bed until you're sleepy. So not just tired, but sleepy. You probably are tired. You're gonna be tired the whole time. But don't go back to bed until you're sleepy. Eyelids heavy, head is nodding forward, lapses in concentration, all of that kind of stuff.
So, are you tired or are you sleepy?
The difference between those two is going to determine what you should do, whether you should take a nap, or whether you should try to expend some energy and see if you can burn off some of that fatigue.
Is sleep a source of stress in your life? Go here to learn more about how I work with insomnia or here to schedule a free consultation.