3 ChatGPT prompts for overthinking, sleep and therapy

Ever tried to talk something through with ChatGPT & gotten a wall of advice before you’d even finished explaining?

This article includes 3 study-backed prompts to help you get your thoughts in order. One for a night you can’t sleep, one for a thought you can’t stop replaying & one for the day before a therapy session.

Each prompt asks one question at a time & waits for your answer before asking the next. Each one is built on a published study, linked in its section.

This article mentions ChatGPT throughout, but any AI chat, such as Claude or Gemini, will work fine too. It depends more on the model than on which company. Meaning, as of this writing, the top model in each app (Astra in ChatGPT, Opus in Claude, Pro in Gemini) will work better than the middle one (Sol, Sonnet or Flash).

Temporary chat or regular chat

Before you paste a prompt, decide whether to use a regular chat or a temporary one. It changes what the AI already knows about you & what it keeps after you close it.

A regular chat remembers you.

ChatGPT and other AI chatbots can pull from things you asked them to save & from your past chats, so their questions start further along. They already know your job, your partner’s name & what you were stressed about last month. The cost is that what you say tonight can come back in an unrelated chat next week.

It also tends to agree with you more. Researchers at MIT & Penn State gave AI chatbots 2 weeks of real chat history from 38 people, then measured how often the chatbots just agreed with the user. Memory profiles caused the biggest jump of anything they tested (MIT & Penn State study).

When you’re working through a problem, you want honest answers. A chatbot that remembers you is more likely to tell you what it thinks you want to hear, based on what it already knows about you.

A temporary chat doesn’t know anything about you.

It starts with a clean slate. You have to give it more context every time, but its answers aren’t skewed by what it already thinks of you.

ChatGPT & Gemini call it Temporary Chat. Claude calls it an incognito chat. As of this writing, all 3 say they keep it out of your history & memory & don’t use it for training.

My pick for health and therapy prompts is the temporary chat. Paste the prompt, answer what it asks & close the chat whenever you want.

ChatGPT prompt for when you can’t sleep

A 2018 sleep-lab study found that writing a specific to-do list before bed helped people fall asleep faster. Researchers at Baylor had 57 adults aged 18 to 30 write by hand for 5 minutes, then measured their sleep overnight. The group that wrote a to-do list fell asleep, on average, in about 16 minutes. The group that wrote about what they’d already finished took 25 minutes. The more specific the list, the faster they fell asleep (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General).

Everyone in the study wrote for 5 minutes. The researchers didn’t test longer, but they found that people who got fewer than 10 items down saw less benefit. So treat 5 minutes as a starting point & keep going until your head is empty. For me, that usually takes closer to half an hour.

Everyone in the study wrote their list by hand, with pen & paper. In my experience, writing it down works best. So use the prompt to get everything out of your head & sorted into lists. Then copy your Tomorrow list onto paper.

It's late and I can't sleep because my head won't stop. I want to get everything out of it so I can sleep.

Ask me one short question at a time and wait for my answer before you ask the next one. Keep every reply under 3 sentences. It's late and I don't want to read.

Start by asking what's on my mind right now. After each answer, say back what you heard in a few words, then ask "What else?" Keep going until I say that's everything.

Don't give advice while I'm emptying my head. Don't try to fix anything yet. Don't tell me it will be OK.

When I say that's everything, sort what I told you into 3 lists:
1. Tomorrow: things I can actually do something about. Make each one specific, with the first step and roughly when, like "Email Dana about the invoice before 10 am," not "deal with work."
2. Can't control: things I'm worried about that I can't change tonight.
3. Not mine: things that are someone else's job, choice or problem.

Then ask me if anything is missing from the Tomorrow list.

Finish with the Tomorrow list on its own, short enough to copy onto paper by hand. Tell me to write it down, put the phone away and turn the screen off.

If I say anything about hurting myself or not wanting to be here, stop the list. Tell me to call or text 988 (in the US) or my local emergency number, and that a real person will answer.

The 2 prompt lines doing the most work

1st, “Make each one specific, with the first step and roughly when.” The study found that the more specific the list, the faster people fell asleep. So this line won’t let you write down something vague like “deal with work.”

2nd, “Keep every reply under 3 sentences.” You don’t want to read 4 paragraphs of AI telling you everything will be fine late at night.

ChatGPT prompt for overthinking

Have you ever noticed it’s easier to give a friend good advice than to take it yourself? There’s a study on exactly that.

In 2014, researchers ran 3 experiments with 693 people. People thought more clearly about a friend’s problem than about their own. They were more likely to admit what they didn’t know & to see the other person’s side.

Then the researchers had people look at their own problem as if it were happening to someone else. Once they did, they thought about it just as clearly as they did about a friend’s. It worked the same for people in their 20s & 30s as for people in their 60s & 70s (Psychological Science).

Step 5 of this prompt does that. It asks what you’d tell a friend if they came to you with the same story.

I'm stuck on one thought and I keep replaying it. Help me work through it.

Ask me one question at a time and wait for my answer. Keep your replies short. Don't give advice until the last step.

Go in this order:
1. Ask what the thought is, in the exact words my head keeps saying it.
2. Ask what actually happened, only the facts a camera would have caught.
3. Ask what I'm telling myself it means about me or about what happens next.
4. Ask what makes that feel true. Then ask what doesn't fit it, even something small.
5. Ask me to picture a friend telling me this exact story about their own life. Ask what I'd say to them.
6. Ask what the most likely outcome is. Not the worst one and not the best one.

If you notice me assuming the worst, guessing what someone else is thinking or treating one moment as proof of something permanent, say so in plain words. One pattern at a time. No labels unless I ask.

If I push back, don't back down to make me feel better. Ask me another question instead.

When we're done, give me:
- The thought, rewritten so it's both true and fair to me.
- What I can act on, with one next step.
- What I can't control, with a set time tomorrow to come back to it, so I can stop for tonight.
- One line I can say to myself when the thought comes back.

If I say anything about hurting myself or not wanting to be here, stop. Tell me to call or text 988 (in the US) or my local emergency number.

The 2 prompt lines doing the most work

1st, “Ask me to picture a friend telling me this exact story about their own life.” That’s the study, turned into one question. You step outside your own head for a minute & look at the problem the way you’d look at a friend’s.

2nd, “If I push back, don’t back down to make me feel better.” AI chatbots tend to give in as soon as you disagree. When a thought keeps looping, you need one that holds its ground & asks you another question instead.

If the thought is really a decision you have to make, the decision making prompt is a better fit.

ChatGPT prompt to use before your next therapy session

The work you do between therapy sessions makes a real difference in how much therapy helps. A 2010 review looked at 46 studies comparing therapy with & without work between sessions. In studies that ran the same therapy both ways, an estimated 62% of people improved when they did the work between sessions. Without it, 38% did (Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice).

In those studies, the therapist assigned the work, like writing down your thoughts or practicing a skill. Prepping for your next session wasn’t part of it. But it’s the same idea. You do the thinking between sessions, so you walk in already knowing what you want to talk about.

I have a therapy session coming up and I want to show up knowing what to talk about. Interview me so I can figure it out.

Ask me one question at a time and wait for my answer. Keep your replies short. After each answer, say back what you heard in one sentence, then ask the next question. Follow up on anything that sounds important before you move on.

Cover these, in whatever order fits what I tell you:
- What has taken up the most space in my head since my last session
- What felt harder than it should have this week
- What I've been avoiding thinking about or saying out loud
- Anything with a person in my life that's been bothering me, and what I keep holding back from saying
- How I've been sleeping and how much energy I've had
- Anything my therapist asked me to try, and how it went

Don't diagnose me and don't give me advice. Your job is to help me find what to say. My therapist does the rest.

When I say I'm done, give me:
1. The 3 things most worth bringing to my session, in my own words, most important first.
2. One question I want to ask my therapist.
3. Anything I seemed to skip past quickly that might be worth a second look.

Keep it short enough to read off my phone in the waiting room.

If I say anything about hurting myself or not wanting to be here, stop. Tell me to call or text 988 (in the US) or my local emergency number, and to tell my therapist too.

The 2 prompt lines doing the most work

1st, “In my own words.” When the prompt gives you your list, it keeps your wording. Your therapist wants to hear it the way you’d say it.

2nd, “Anything I seemed to skip past quickly that might be worth a second look.” What you rush past is often what’s most worth talking about.

If what you’re holding back is something you need to say to a person, the calm reply prompt helps you word it.

When to talk to a person

These prompts help you get your thoughts in order. They can’t notice what you leave out.

Talk to a therapist, a doctor, or someone you trust when:

• The same heavy feeling has been there for weeks & isn’t lifting.
• It’s getting in the way of work, sleep, or your relationships.
• You’re thinking about hurting yourself. Call or text 988 in the US, or your local emergency number, right now.

I’m not a health professional. This article is for general information only & isn’t medical advice.