When the World Gets Loud
On building a softer evening rhythm (especially when your nervous system is tired)
Evenings can sneak up on you. One minute you’re half-focused on something, the next it’s 9:47 p.m., the lights are still blazing, your brain feels like it’s doing gymnastics, and you’re wondering why your body refuses to power down. It’s funny how often we forget that the transition from “day” to “night” isn’t automatic for the nervous system. It’s not a light switch. It’s more like a dimmer, the kind you have to ease gently or the bulb flickers and hums.
And for people living with Long COVID, POTS, ME/CFS, sensory sensitivity (really any condition where the body is already working overtime to keep things in equilibrium) this transition isn’t a luxury. It’s scaffolding. It’s the thing that holds the rest of the structure together.
Isn’t it supposed to be simple? But most human things aren’t. Rest certainly isn’t. Rest is weirdly political, strangely emotional, surprisingly physical. And personal. Always personal.
Anyway, this isn’t a manifesto. More like a wandering reflection that eventually lands somewhere useful.
Evenings Don’t Have to Match the Day
I don’t know who taught us that life has to move at one steady clip, as though the rhythm of a morning commute should match the rhythm of sliding under a blanket at night. The nervous system doesn’t operate like that. It pays attention to everything: The lights, the sounds across the hall, the temperature dropping two degrees, the tabs open on your laptop, the unfinished conversation.
People often assume “sensory input” just means brightness or noise, but your body is reading so much more. Micro-stimulation. Posture shifts. Emotional residue. The glow of a notification. All of it feeds into the system that decides, quietly but decisively, whether you’re safe enough to settle.
This, to me, is the heart of an evening routine: not discipline, not aesthetics, not productivity hacks, but creating conditions where the nervous system can stop bracing.
I’ll come back to that. But first let’s talk about why dimming stimulation works in the first place.
Slowing the Stream, Not Forcing Stillness
If you’ve ever sat in a noisy restaurant and suddenly stepped outside into the cool night, you know the visceral relief of sensory downshifting. It’s like falling into your own skin again.
Evenings can offer that same relief if you let them happen gradually. Abrupt transitions (like going straight from bright screen to dark room or jumping from conversation to silence) tend to keep the nervous system on alert. This isn’t intentional it’s just doing its job. It’s watching for change.
So the trick (and “trick” feels a bit gimmicky, but you know what I mean) is to soften the edges slowly. Make it simple:
~ let lights fall a little lower, even 45 minutes before bed
~ swap out anything sharp or fast-moving with something visually soft
~ use warm light instead of cold-glow LEDs
~ turn the volume down two notches past what feels necessary
Not because it’s a ritual you should do, but because the body responds to these gentle cues like, Oh. Okay. We’re winding down now.
Screens aren’t the villain, by the way. They just need translation: Night mode, blue-light filters, or even holding them farther away from the eyes can ease the load.
Some nights you’ll still be overstimulated. Some nights the light will feel wrong no matter what you change. But patterns matter more than perfection.
Why Pattern Matters (Even When You Resent Routine)
This part surprises people, mostly because the word “routine” has been overused until it means almost nothing. But from a neurophysiology standpoint, routine is simply repeated predictability, and predictability whispers “safe” to the body more effectively than almost anything else.
The nervous system loves familiarity. It relaxes into it the way you relax into an old sweater, not because it’s stylish, but because it’s known.
So if you repeat the same two or three steps, in roughly the same order, on most nights (not all nights, just most) your system begins to anticipate rest before you consciously notice you’re tired.
It’s less about discipline and more about rhythm. Rhythm, when you think about it, is just a pattern of safety.
The Sensory Language of Soothing
Everyone has their own set of sensory signals that say, “it’s okay to settle now.” Some might be very specific, like the weight of a blanket on your feet or the soft scratch of a well-worn paperback, maybe temperature, or smell, or pressure, or movement.
A few ideas (just possibilities, not prescriptions):
~ something weighted (blanket, lap pad, even a heavy sweater)
~ an aroma that feels grounding (lavender, cedar, chamomile, whatever you actually like)
~ a gentle sway in a chair
~ warm tea you sip slowly
~ light compression around the eyes
~ a warm compress across your neck or upper chest
If your sensory system has been tired (really tired) you might need more than one. Feel free to mix, match, and experiment.
The In-Between Moment We Forget to Give Ourselves
One thing I’ve learned from clinical work (and frankly, from being a human who tends to overthink everything) is that the body rarely responds well to abrupt shifts. It needs buffers. Little pause-spaces.
Think of it like stepping stones: you don’t leap from one to the next, you walk through them.
A “buffer activity” is basically that, it’s a quiet bridge between the stimulation of the day and the softness of night.
Some people stretch. Some journal. Some do progressive muscle relaxation, which is exactly what it sounds like. A few minutes of quiet music works for many. Even covering your eyes gently with your hands (a practice called eye-palming) can send a surprisingly strong “we’re slowing down now” signal to the brain.
You might sometimes just sit on the floor for a minute to remind your body it doesn’t have to hold everything up.
This middle step matters more than we realize. It’s where the shift really happens.
Rest Isn’t Earned (Though Many of Us Try)
This part always tugs at people: you don’t have to earn stillness. I know you know that logically, but many of us carry around the old belief that rest must be justified, or that you have to show receipts.
But the body doesn’t operate on moral logic. It operates on need. And if your energy gives out at 8:12 p.m. on a Tuesday, then that’s the moment that needs to be honored, not the culturally acceptable one two hours later.
If sleep doesn’t come? Rest still counts. It’s still nourishment, and it’s still worth doing.
Make Nighttime Easier on Your Future Self
“Decision fatigue” spikes in the evening because we make so many decisions all throughout the day. So you can reduce the load by keeping what you need within reach.
A few useful items:
~ earplugs
~ a soft eye mask
~ a water bottle
~ meds or supplements
~ a familiar sleep soundscape (white noise, rain, ocean, whatever feels like home)
The fewer choices you face after your brain has already clocked out, the smoother everything goes.
Let the Routine Be a Gift, Not Another Item on a List
Somewhere along the way, routines might have lost their softness. They became tasks, checkboxes, “betterment.” But an evening rhythm isn’t self-optimization. It’s care.
It doesn’t have to resemble anyone else’s ritual. You just need whatever helps your individual nervous system stop gripping the steering wheel.
That might be silence. It might be warmth. It might be structure. It might be dimness, or slowness, or familiarity. It might be a cup of tea you drink half-absently while staring at a wall.
The point is not performance. The point is relief.
A Quiet Offer
Our bodies carry so much, whether from illness, overextension, sensory overload, or the thousand invisible things you won’t name out loud.
Let your evenings be the place where you don’t have to carry quite as tightly.
If you build a nighttime rhythm that meets your biology where it is (not where you think it should be) you may find that rest becomes not something you chase, but something that finds you.
And honestly? That’s the beginning of a nervous-system-friendly life: one moment, one cue, one quiet evening at a time.
If you’d like more guidance on pacing, sensory regulation, or designing routines that actually work with your physiology (instead of wrestling against it), I write about all of it here. Feel free to subscribe or share this with someone who might need a softer night tonight.
You deserve rest that feels like it belongs to you.
Take (or gift) my Unlock Your Energy Baseline course, where you can explore ways to:
~ Learn which triggers reliably destabilize your system
~ Identify the supports that help you stabilize
~ Practice the kind of pacing that actually protects your nervous system, not just “rest more”
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