What The T-Rex Sleeping Position Predicts About Your Mental Health

Everyone has their most comfortable way of falling and staying asleep throughout the night. Some lie on their back; some love to cozy up in what's called the fetal position. Others sleep like a tyrannosaurus — yes, the dinosaur with such absurdly short arms that it almost feels like evolution was playing a trick on the poor creature.

The "T-rex position" entails bending the wrists toward the body and pulling them in close to you as a means to feel comfortable when falling asleep. "It feels good initially because you're relaxing some of those muscles," Emily L. Casanova, Ph.D., assistant professor of neuroscience at Loyola University, told Verywell Health. "Your muscles are actually more taut when you hold your hand and wrist out straight."

As Casanova explained, this position is particularly common among those who are neurodivergent. The reason they find such comfort in sleeping this way is because it helps regulate and manage any sensory overload they have experienced throughout the day. But as much as it can be comforting, physically and mentally, to sleep all night with T-rex arms, it is not without its issues.

If you're someone who falls asleep with T-rex arms, but over the course of the night, move your arms into other positions that don't keep your wrist bent for hours, then you'll probably be fine. However, if you keep your wrists bent all night long, there's a very good chance you're going to wake up with aches and pain in your wrists, as well as some possible numbness.

The wrist has nerves, arteries, and tendons running through it, and when it is held in any position for too long, it puts unnecessary pressure on these spots, leading to pain and/or a tingling sensation. For some people, that pain may not only be felt in the wrist but in the elbow too. Eventually, sleeping in the T-rex position could also result in carpal tunnel or tendonitis because of the compression on the wrists night after night (per Discover Magazine).

Of course, you can always try to train yourself to sleep without T-rex arms, but considering your hours of sleep should be ones of deep relaxation, trying to take that comfort level away just doesn't seem right. Also, there's a good chance you'll probably end up in that position anyway after you doze off. Because of this, there are other self-soothing options to limit T-rex arms.

For example, using a body pillow can help you meet the emotional and mental comfort you need to fall asleep, while weighted blankets, too, which are created specifically to help reduce anxiety while sleeping, can also be an asset in reducing your mind's need to sleep with T-rex arms. In combination with these sleep aids, learning how to manage your stress through meditation and breathing techniques can also help limit how often you sleep with T-rex arms. You also want to get into the habit of stretching your wrists and arms every morning in the opposite direction than what you were sleeping in to help alleviate pain and numbness, per Sleepcura. 

Ultimately, whether someone is neurodivergent or not, if they find comfort in sleeping with T-rex arms, the best thing they can do is take steps to manage it. While carpal tunnel, which can be the result of long-term T-rex arms, can be treated with nonsurgical therapy like wrist splinting and taking NSAIDs or corticosteroids, according to the Mayo Clinic, surgery could become necessary eventually. But there's no reason it should have to get to that point if you're proactive in managing your T-rex arms.