First of all, I am writing this at almost 2 in the night cause tonight is a night I probably won’t get much sleep.
For me sleep is something I have a love hate relationship with. Some nights I just can’t fall asleep or wake up at least 10 times during the night, while other nights I sleep 10 hours without waking up even 1 time.
I guess I do deal with insomnia tho since at least 60% of my nights are more of a struggle than that it’s relaxing and a good night. Sometimes a pain I have is the cause (like I have been sleeping bad for a while cause of an injury of my shoulder) but also slept bad because of nightmares, wrong temperatures, a too busy mind or a freaking mosquito before. But most of the time it’s just this feeling that I can’t fall asleep and just lay down for hours awake…
When I talk to people about this they just say, go to bed earlier and leave your phone off before trying to sleep, that just frustrates me cause I tried everything but not much helps…
I am curious if there are people with similar experiences or completely different stories…
Oh, want to add one more thing. For me it’s the reason why I am tired pretty often. If I say something about that to my parents I get a reply like ‘well then sleep more and earlier’. I just get so mad when that happens cause they don’t understand how awful nights can be for me and that I want to sleep better but I can’t
Have you ever tried meditation music?
My main sleeping issue is nightmares that feel real af. But sometimes I then find it hard to get back to sleep or relax. I usually listen to meditation music with sounds of like waves, thunderstorms, rain, birds etc. Nature style which tend to play a nice melody. Try to focus on my breathing and it helps ease me into sleep a bit better.
Maybe it might be something you’d like to try. I can show you a phone app I use too for one of them if you like.
When I was younger I had really really bad insomnia, it got to the point where I wouldn’t sleep for days but I still functioned normally. (ok fine, semi normally.) I would have really bad night terrors and most of my dreams had to do with something killing my family and then torturing me, or they were about me hiding from someone (i know this someone irl). The only reason I’m able to sleep is cause of Melatonin (a pill that increases the production of sleeping hormone) and when I close my eyes to sleep I create my own world and pretty much do weird shit until I fall asleep. And I also listen to mediation music for a while until it did the opposite effect (I ended up intently listening to it to find rhythm changes) so I had to stop listening to it lol.
I’ve dealt with insomnia before. Not fun. I started taking sleeping medicine and now I can get to bed quicker than I used to, but not I stay up really late… I don’t know why, I just like doing that. It creates some bad sleep habits… But I usually wake up around 10-12 on weekends and I end up getting the right amount of sleep, which doesn’t help when I tell myself to go to sleep earlier lol. The first day of a school week can be bad in terms of getting to sleep on time, but I usually go to sleep on time and wake up as late as possible because I can get ready quickly and it doesn’t affect me that much.
I’ve had insomnia for over a decade now. As to why I’m a night owl. For the longest time it was because I use to take ADD meds for my ADD. I think it messed with my ability to go to sleep. I would just lay there because I couldn’t shut my brain down. Then it got to the point where I would be awake for hours before I fell asleep. I would use melatonin or Benadryl to sleep with Nyquil. I finally went to the doctor about it because it was getting out of hand. I was missing school and work because I didn’t have enough energy to go. I took trazodone for the longest time but it kept giving me headaches and nosebleeds. So I switched to amitriptyline which is what I am on now. I still have to take melatonin or Benadryl with the medicine to go to bed. I sleep for short amount of time then I’m in and out of sleep for good while before I get up. I get about 5 hours to possibly six hours for the short amount of time and then I’m in and out for 2-3 hours. It’s different eith each night. I recently in the past 2 years found out it also had to do with my heart rate because it was unusually fast. It gets faster when I go to sleep or wake up. I have to take medicine for my heart to keep it down to a normal level.
Your right, turning your phone off doesn’t help at all. What I have found helpful though is music I’m comfortable with so I can relax. I also found out that the dark the room the easier it is to fall asleep even with the phone on so I use blackout curtains. I keep the room cold and use one comforter with a fleece blanet sometimes to sleep. It’s one of the few things that has helped me sleep.
I listen to familiar tv shows to go to sleep. It helps turn my brain off for some reason. Thank goodness for Netflix putting some shows I just know backwards and forwards on there.
Same, but on my laptop. I listen to music in my room though with headphones so I don’t wake anyone up. Sadly, it’s not but it works for the mean time. I’m still trying to find new ways to get more sleep.
I love being in bed and trying to sleep to an extent. Sometimes it’s a really big struggle because I over think things and my brain is all like “think of all the work you need to do”, “your friends are all arguing” and my personal favourite “hey, what if [insert world ending scenario/disease/death of a relative/death of me/ghost attacking me] happened?” Like shush brain it’s sleepy time now. I can’t fall asleep until I finish thinking it all through so I’ll tell my brain when I’ll do the work and let it know I’ll beat the deadline. I have to go over my entire schedule for the next day basically so that my brain will go “oh you’re prepared you may sleep for tonight but tomorrow I will return with more bs AHAHAHA”.
When people tell me to go to bed earlier I’m like great more time for thinking I usually try to daydream to distract myself which sometimes works until the daydream starts playing out in the way that I’m a terrible person and everybody within the fantasy hates me. But that only happens if I’ve been stressed throughout the day or read something that somebody has said or thought of something that somebody has done.
I found that going to bed later helps but I can only do that at weekends or on a day where I don’t need to be awake early the next day. Otherwise I’m just tired.
It’s not fun that’s for sure, some days it’s worse than others. I am working on it though. I’m pretty much used to the whole thing by now anyway but boy it’s tiring.
There is nothing that can make it better… 
