I tend to stress myself out about not being able to sleep, since I really enjoy my sleep, and that leads to a vicious cycle. I normally wake up at 6AM and go to bed around 9P, but in the past year or two since developing insomnia who knows when I sleep and I usually wake up around 9A if I do sleep. I once went a week without sleeping at all. I’ve lately been having some good luck with rest and tend to get 5hrs or so, vs the 1-2 I was getting for almost a year.
I try not to eat later than 3pm, I’ve noticed some connection between food and ability to sleep, the later I have my last meal of the day the harder it is for me to sleep at night. I’m also afraid of caffeine now and I don’t have any past noon if I do at all.
Biggest mental thing that’s helped me is realizing most bodies will eventually fall asleep when they’re ready, and even if I got 0 or just 1 hr of sleep it’ll be ok, my body just didn’t want sleep that night. I won’t be as mentally sharp but I can still try to do challenging things in my day on my lil hr of sleep.
If I don’t fall asleep after 20-30min of lying around I’ll get up and go do something, like read something simple on my phone (in black and white mode) in a chair or play a very mindless game like cards.
This is the most important thing. You’d think being a natural bodily function it would come… y’know… naturally? But no, you have to practice it the same way you practice tennis or clarinet.
Having a fixed schedule sure helps, but if there is none, one should only sleep when truly tired. Forcing yourself to sleep if your body hasn’t given the “sleep signal” is a bad idea (in the long run, aim at sleeping by night only though, not including naps that is).
If the reason of insomnia are unsettled issues, however, of course solving those has priority… which becomes more difficult if you’re sleep-deprived, so the best advice is probably training your mind to rest your thoughts before going to sleep, as in “tomorrow’s another day where I’ll get another chance at resolving stuff”, it’s no use beating yourself up when you really need to rest above anything else. Otherwise you end up in a vicious cycle of bad days and not being able to sleep due to a bad day.
BTW, I replied to other post in this thread suggesting Binaural Beats, but even if I use that sometimes (when it is harder), I sleep mostly with a fan. No joke.
I cannot sleep without a fan since some years ago or a device which emits white noise.
My partner has always needed to sleep with a fan on and I have usually preferred total silence. Eventually we discovered that he has tinnitus, and I’ve just learned to get used to the white noise.
There’s also a huge psychological component at play here. My partner (poor guy has so many sleeping problems) suffers from horrible night terrors, and early in our relationship he would actively get up out of bed and sleep walk, talk, scream, or mumble nearly every single night. Once he started going to therapy and we moved out of our old city there’s been a huge improvement in how often he has night terrors.
Another big factor has been teeth clenching. There’s so much stuff that your body and brain might be doing while you try to sleep that could be preventing you from getting rest. A good step might be to meditate or practice some kind of self awareness and figure out if there’s something specific to you that you need to be paying attention to
Professional sleeper here (not actually my title,).
I have a plethora of advice I can give. If you do ANY of these, you will sleep better. The more of these you do, the BETTER you will feel throughout your day (and night!)
Clean your sheets!
Clean bedsheets are more comfortable, smell better, and will fast track you to passing out in under 5 minutes
Shower
If you have any sweat residue, you’ll feel too uncomfortable to sleep
Wash hair, brush teeth
Clean hair feels good and comfortable
Sleep schedule
If you go to sleep at the same time every day, your body will be ready for it.
Air filter
Gone are the days of stuffy nose at night or swollen eyes in the morning. Air filters are cheap. Get a good one!
Refuse to use phone in bed
If you use your phone in bed, there is a 0% chance you’re falling asleep quickly
White noise
Roommates, cars outside, wind knocking something around outside - Whitenoise blocks all of this out. Check out the FOSS Noice app!
AC before bed
It is statistically backed up that a cooler room will help you fall asleep faster
No blue lights before bed
For one hour before bed, do not look at a phone, laptop, computer screen, TV, or anything that emits blue light
This gives you lots of time to prepare your next day for success too ;)
Force wake up at alarm
This is mental strength - the millisecond you hear your alarm, you need to sit up and get ready for your day
This works wonders that cannot be put into words
You sleep more than you think
Insomniacs tend to sleep significantly more hours than they self-report when studied
Imagine
Let your mind drift. Create your own world before bed, and each night, expand in it
Write down dreams
When you wake up in the morning, grab a pen and paper and write down as much as you can remember from your dreams
This builds up and will change your perspective of sleep 180 degrees
Avoid doing non-sleep activity in bed
If your body associates bed = sleep, when you go to bed, you’ll end up asleep
Clean room
Having a clean room means less dust, less smell, better sleep
Sleep cycles
Your body sleeps in 1 hour 30 minute cycles. Time your alarm clock to line up with a cycle like this!
Good luck & feel free to ask any specific questions
I cannot tell that all of them work, but at least 2 or 3 I used seemed to work because several times I just selected the wrong one while testing and instead of sleep I got other state.
I think a good way to test is just put them with headphones to a friend without telling them which one you selected.
if I’m not too sleepy it takes me a lot of time to fall asleep, all the while annoying thoughts race through my mind for hours
one solution that I’ve found that works for me is to get into a somewhat extreme schedule of going to sleep at around 8pm and waking up at around 4 am, this way, usually, by 7-8pm I’m already very sleepy and I fall asleep almost immediately
it’s kind of challenging to get into such sleep schedule though, but one method that I use is to do an all-nighter and then try to go to sleep the following day at around 5-6pm, wake up at 2am and then fall asleep the following evening at around 8pm and wake up at around 4am
this may take two or three days to get there, as most of the time I’m unable to resist the urge to go to sleep early, and it ends up being two or three sleep cycles before I’m able to gradually nudge my sleep cycle into the 8-4 direction
I’m not sure if this would work for other people, but for me it was wonderful to be honest: falling asleep takes like 5 minutes, and after waking up you feel awesome
Journaling helped me immensely with sorting my thoughts. I’ve been doing it for about six years now. It started as a journal for work where I jotted down interactions with coworkers and general notes about work, then I did the same for my private life and the more I journal, the less I have racing thoughts in bed or think about work in my free time.
When I started I’d never have thought it would work so well. Several of my friends I recommended this to have also told me it helped them.
all-nighter is an unpleasant thing definitely, but for me it’s very well worth the excellent days and nights I have for the following few weeks until my sleep schedule inevitably slips back into it’s normal
if you do all or most of this and still have problems, shoot me a quick message with what you already did and which problems exactly you still have and I’ll elaborate with more concrete tips. I have a German wiki page on this I can translate (and extend) then.
to add to this, avoid too much blue light before bed where possible. you can really help this by installing blue-colour filter apps on your phone/desktop etc like f.lux. most phones should have basic settings for that by now.
secondly it might help if you can explain what your issues are, trouble falling asleep or waking up or being woken up?
installing blue-colour filter apps on your phone/desktop etc like f.lux
Windows, macOS and Gnome, KDE and other desktop environments on Linux already have night mode baked in. I recommend redshift for all other Linux environments and Red Moon off F-Droid on Android.
Well, like a mentioned in the post something had happened to me, I had pushed myself further to help myself at that time and I was suppressing all of my emotions at that time to stay calm.
Recently when I try to sleep sometimes I just hear a voice inside my head, or see things like bugs and insects. I just imagine other things or maybe listen to music or podcast. and in the day I’ve been wary about my surroundings, I’m scared of a certain person might show up.
It’s hard to tell, but It’s just basically stress that’s making me sleepless.
This is my favorite. Not only does it create rituals that you do before going to sleep, but if you are trying to start on a good sleeping schedule, light exercise, breathing exercises, and reading are great.
The only other thing I’d add, is a consistent alarm clock. Once you do that for a full week or so, your sleeping schedule becomes a routine.
Adding to this, try to be more careful with coffee/energy-drink intake even during daytime. Even if you normally “can” drink that stuff, it might worsen your current sleep issues.
And in my own experience, sleeping goes better if you are not gaming/on social media till bed time. I have no scientific explanation for the latter though, so I am reluctant to try and tell why (I may give entirely wrong reasons).
I tend to stress myself out about not being able to sleep, since I really enjoy my sleep, and that leads to a vicious cycle. I normally wake up at 6AM and go to bed around 9P, but in the past year or two since developing insomnia who knows when I sleep and I usually wake up around 9A if I do sleep. I once went a week without sleeping at all. I’ve lately been having some good luck with rest and tend to get 5hrs or so, vs the 1-2 I was getting for almost a year.
I try not to eat later than 3pm, I’ve noticed some connection between food and ability to sleep, the later I have my last meal of the day the harder it is for me to sleep at night. I’m also afraid of caffeine now and I don’t have any past noon if I do at all.
Biggest mental thing that’s helped me is realizing most bodies will eventually fall asleep when they’re ready, and even if I got 0 or just 1 hr of sleep it’ll be ok, my body just didn’t want sleep that night. I won’t be as mentally sharp but I can still try to do challenging things in my day on my lil hr of sleep.
If I don’t fall asleep after 20-30min of lying around I’ll get up and go do something, like read something simple on my phone (in black and white mode) in a chair or play a very mindless game like cards.
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This is the most important thing. You’d think being a natural bodily function it would come… y’know… naturally? But no, you have to practice it the same way you practice tennis or clarinet.
Having a fixed schedule sure helps, but if there is none, one should only sleep when truly tired. Forcing yourself to sleep if your body hasn’t given the “sleep signal” is a bad idea (in the long run, aim at sleeping by night only though, not including naps that is).
If the reason of insomnia are unsettled issues, however, of course solving those has priority… which becomes more difficult if you’re sleep-deprived, so the best advice is probably training your mind to rest your thoughts before going to sleep, as in “tomorrow’s another day where I’ll get another chance at resolving stuff”, it’s no use beating yourself up when you really need to rest above anything else. Otherwise you end up in a vicious cycle of bad days and not being able to sleep due to a bad day.
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For the author mostly
BTW, I replied to other post in this thread suggesting Binaural Beats, but even if I use that sometimes (when it is harder), I sleep mostly with a fan. No joke.
I cannot sleep without a fan since some years ago or a device which emits white noise.
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It could not work in every case. When a friend came to home to sleep in some cases, told me to turn it off or put it lower because was annoying.
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My partner has always needed to sleep with a fan on and I have usually preferred total silence. Eventually we discovered that he has tinnitus, and I’ve just learned to get used to the white noise.
There’s also a huge psychological component at play here. My partner (poor guy has so many sleeping problems) suffers from horrible night terrors, and early in our relationship he would actively get up out of bed and sleep walk, talk, scream, or mumble nearly every single night. Once he started going to therapy and we moved out of our old city there’s been a huge improvement in how often he has night terrors.
Another big factor has been teeth clenching. There’s so much stuff that your body and brain might be doing while you try to sleep that could be preventing you from getting rest. A good step might be to meditate or practice some kind of self awareness and figure out if there’s something specific to you that you need to be paying attention to
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As someone who struggles with sleeping a bit I don’t have any advice but you have my sympathy.
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Professional sleeper here (not actually my title,).
I have a plethora of advice I can give. If you do ANY of these, you will sleep better. The more of these you do, the BETTER you will feel throughout your day (and night!)
Good luck & feel free to ask any specific questions
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I use https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.axet.binauralbeats instead of the app you suggested.
They seem to be for slightly different purposes. Is this one for calming rhythm or white noise?
Binaural Beats is a project around http://gnaural.sourceforge.net/ based in the https://www.actapress.com/Abstract.aspx?paperId=16352 study.
The rhythm are for different purposes, including concentration, sleep, etc.
All of them have white noise in background and the rhythm are set on top of it.
This site: 1.asked to download certificates 2.has horrible mobile support 3.does not work 4.looks old as fuck and depreciated
Yup, those are red flags for me.
The first or the second?
The first I don’t think is going to be upgraded. The software has development maintained but for that is better just to use other apps based on it.
The second, I tell you that is normal. Some websites referencing studies and mostly old ones have a very lack of maintenance.
The best a person could do is just get the DOI links and try to download the papers using a sci-hub instance.
BTW, I didn’t see any request to download any certificate or accept them. Check your ca-certificates package to know if it is upgraded.
If you are using Android, I think it is upgraded with the own system.
In addition, both websites work correctly.
I’m in shock. Is this placebo? It works so well!?
I cannot tell that all of them work, but at least 2 or 3 I used seemed to work because several times I just selected the wrong one while testing and instead of sleep I got other state.
I think a good way to test is just put them with headphones to a friend without telling them which one you selected.
In wikipedia, I found a reference to https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320019 article.
I don’t know the trackers it has but I would use an adblock as minimum. It references several DOI documents of studies which are accessible.
I could not get the document of the study I referenced before through DOI, so this is why I list this here.
This is some great advice, @gwynne0190@lemmy.ml!
I’d add using a journal besides your bed when you think about things in circles, just write them down and get them out of your head.
Yes if anything I need to remember comes to my mind when I want to sleep I’ll write it down so I can let go of it for the night.
if I’m not too sleepy it takes me a lot of time to fall asleep, all the while annoying thoughts race through my mind for hours
one solution that I’ve found that works for me is to get into a somewhat extreme schedule of going to sleep at around 8pm and waking up at around 4 am, this way, usually, by 7-8pm I’m already very sleepy and I fall asleep almost immediately
it’s kind of challenging to get into such sleep schedule though, but one method that I use is to do an all-nighter and then try to go to sleep the following day at around 5-6pm, wake up at 2am and then fall asleep the following evening at around 8pm and wake up at around 4am
this may take two or three days to get there, as most of the time I’m unable to resist the urge to go to sleep early, and it ends up being two or three sleep cycles before I’m able to gradually nudge my sleep cycle into the 8-4 direction
I’m not sure if this would work for other people, but for me it was wonderful to be honest: falling asleep takes like 5 minutes, and after waking up you feel awesome
Have you tried writing them down in a journal?
not really, why?
It may help to get thoughts out of your mind.
Journaling helped me immensely with sorting my thoughts. I’ve been doing it for about six years now. It started as a journal for work where I jotted down interactions with coworkers and general notes about work, then I did the same for my private life and the more I journal, the less I have racing thoughts in bed or think about work in my free time.
When I started I’d never have thought it would work so well. Several of my friends I recommended this to have also told me it helped them.
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set an alarm clock to the time you want to wake up at. Leave the bed then. You’ll feel like shit for a week and then you’ll be sleepy in the evenings.
all-nighter is an unpleasant thing definitely, but for me it’s very well worth the excellent days and nights I have for the following few weeks until my sleep schedule inevitably slips back into it’s normal
You can try sleep hygiene.
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if you do all or most of this and still have problems, shoot me a quick message with what you already did and which problems exactly you still have and I’ll elaborate with more concrete tips. I have a German wiki page on this I can translate (and extend) then.
to add to this, avoid too much blue light before bed where possible. you can really help this by installing blue-colour filter apps on your phone/desktop etc like f.lux. most phones should have basic settings for that by now.
secondly it might help if you can explain what your issues are, trouble falling asleep or waking up or being woken up?
Windows, macOS and Gnome, KDE and other desktop environments on Linux already have night mode baked in. I recommend redshift for all other Linux environments and Red Moon off F-Droid on Android.
i like to recommend f.lux since to my knowledge they were leading the way with this looong before anyone else started paying attention.
Yes, but just because you did it first doesn’t mean you did it best :)
F.lux is proprietary and I wanted to suggest alternatives, not say f.lux was bad software.
ahh gotcha, that is fair
Well, like a mentioned in the post something had happened to me, I had pushed myself further to help myself at that time and I was suppressing all of my emotions at that time to stay calm.
Recently when I try to sleep sometimes I just hear a voice inside my head, or see things like bugs and insects. I just imagine other things or maybe listen to music or podcast. and in the day I’ve been wary about my surroundings, I’m scared of a certain person might show up.
It’s hard to tell, but It’s just basically stress that’s making me sleepless.
this might sound insensitive to your situation
masturbating before sleeping helps
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I’m sorry if my comment was out of place :(
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I don’t like that reasoning, but OK
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This is my favorite. Not only does it create rituals that you do before going to sleep, but if you are trying to start on a good sleeping schedule, light exercise, breathing exercises, and reading are great.
The only other thing I’d add, is a consistent alarm clock. Once you do that for a full week or so, your sleeping schedule becomes a routine.
Adding to this, try to be more careful with coffee/energy-drink intake even during daytime. Even if you normally “can” drink that stuff, it might worsen your current sleep issues. And in my own experience, sleeping goes better if you are not gaming/on social media till bed time. I have no scientific explanation for the latter though, so I am reluctant to try and tell why (I may give entirely wrong reasons).
deleted by creator