I can't sleep. Recently I decided there was no reason right now to fight my natural tendencies so I told myself it was okay to go to sleep around 3 or 4 in the morning and wake up around noon like I like to do. Life has been so much less stressful since then when I am not constantly obsessed with when I have to wake up and how much sleep I got. But right now it is 8 in the morning and I can't sleep and I don't know why. I double checked my Diet Coke. Nope it is the caffeine free kind. My melatonin only works so-so and I don't have any Ambien right now. Usually when this happens I just stay awake all day, but I have an exam tonight and I know I'll be dead for it if I don't sleep. What do you do when you can't sleep?
Lay down with a book until I drift off. If that doesn't work, it's going to be a long, difficult day, and I just have to suck it up.
I've found that if you have a DVD on that you've watched a lot before that you tend to drift off quite easily.
Well that song makes me wish I was asleep instead of listening to it. Never heard of them. They seem popular with the crowd though.
Inability to sleep is always stress based. It isn't necessarily a bad kind of stress; for me it is often the result of being all riled up thinking about things that are interesting to me or something like that. I am so stuck thinking about what I am going to do tomorrow that, if I can get away with it, I'm likely to stay up all night and realize that "tomorrow" started being "today" a long time ago. At this present moment, I'm not employed at a job that requires me to be anywhere at any particular time, so my schedule is even more messed up as a result. I have gotten out of the habit of forcing myself to go to bed at a certain time. As a matter of fact, I didn't go to bed at all last night. I tried to go to sleep around 3 AM, but just layed there with my heart beating like a terrified rabbit, until I got up again. Now it is 9 AM and, to be honest, I still don't feel properly tired. ...Overall, the key is to eliminate whatever is stimulating your brain and replace it with something relaxing, and if possible, boring as well. I keep a big notebook full of ruled paper by my bed, and a small pile of books. After 30 minutes or less of writing and reading, I usually drift off without a problem. Sometimes nothing seems to work though, and that can be a pain. #1 pointer for right now, however; if you really have to get the rest, shut down the computer, close the blinds, and lay there in bed for as long as it takes. If you force yourself to breathe slowly, that will slow your heartbeat; counting also helps clear your mind. (I find that a sequence counting up with only single digits works best - i.e. eight nine ten one... eight nine twenty one... ninety one... eight nine one-hundred one... etc. works better than the ten, eleven, twelve... twenty one, twenty two... one-hundred-one, one-hundred-two style for trying to go to sleep.)
You'll live... I haven't slept more than 3-5 hours a night since March-April, except for a few nights. Maybe 4-5, other than that I usually get around 4 hours of sleep.
The best natural way I've found is to have a snack that's high in calcium or eat a few crackers and take a calcium supplement. Calcium is a natural soporific and that's usually enough to calm your mind enough to fall asleep. Jan
I've heard recently that your eating cycle is the single biggest determinant. If you eat nothing after 6pm, and just as importantly, eat soon after rising, you're body clock will reset to that quickly.