If you’ve ever heard the old saying “never go to bed angry, or bad feelings will harden into resentment”, you might be surprised at the legitimate truth behind it.
You’ve just had a really, really intense argument with your friend/partner/mum/dog and you’re furious. Blinded by red, you jump into bed and keep replaying the argument through your mind. You can’t sleep because you’re so restless, and are still screwing up your face in contempt at the person you’ve had a fight with.
Sound familiar? Arguing before bed is more common than you’d think, and a new study has shown that going to bed with negative memories can make it harder to suppress them. During sleep, the brain reorganises the way negative memories are stored, which makes it much more difficult to get rid of them if they were the last thing you were focused on.
Here are just a few consequences of going to bed angry:
You won’t be able to sleep.
The very last thing you feel like doing after a massive fight is sleeping. All the thoughts are going through your mind, and you’re probably trying to justify your side of the fight. You’ll mill over possible outcomes and find it really difficult to sleep. AND we all know the downfalls of not sleeping – weight gain, crappy moods and a lack of positivity are just a few things you can suffer from when it comes to sleep loss.
The fight will last longer.
There’s really nothing worse than a long fight… except a grudge! Ask yourself, do you really want to be the type of person that holds a grudge? Sleeping on a fight means it instantly lasts longer, and will be less likely to be solved the longer it lasts.
It’ll ruin ANOTHER day.
When you think of a terrible morning, what does it involve? If your thoughts included, “bad mood”, “crap sleep” or “still angry”, congratulations, you win! Letting a fight last through the night means you’ll wake up in a bad mood, and there is nothing you can do. You’ll feel sick about it as you eat your breakfast, and still try to resolve it in your head while you shower.
So please, take it from us – just don’t go to sleep on an argument. You never know what is right around the corner, and it’s better to be the bigger person sometimes and apologise. Anything is better than going to bed after an argument and leaving it unresolved!
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