Frustrations with Sleeping Habits

[Rosie]

Yup I've had experiences becoming almost completely nocturnal when I was unemployed for 6 months and just firing off CVs every so often. I've now adjusted my sleeping habits to ensure I am in bed by 10:30 and usually nod off soon after. I cant awlays control when I'll fall asleep but if I still just go to bed and then usually fall asleep soon after/ some tips I used to sort out my sleep patterns are as follows:

Avoid caffeine after work (I dont drink anything with caffeine after 6pm and if I fancy a tea I'll have a berry tea without caffeine)

Dont watch TV or use a computer in bed. Reading is best just to relax your mind and make you sleepy but if you're lying in bed for ages and really cant fall asleep, get out of bed, sit on the sofa and read for half an hour. Then go back to bed. One frustrating thing is if you're lying in bed and just cant fall asleep. You need to seperate the feeling of frustration from your bedroom and make it a place to go to only to sleep.

I used to drink horlicks before bed which would make me all comfy and sleepy and helped a lot.

If you have a smart phone, download a Sleep Alarm (or similar). What they do is sense when you are in your lightest phase of sleep (you put the phone next to your pillow and it senses any movement - more movement = lighter phase of sleep) and then wake you up when they think you are in the lightest phase. When you wake up your are less groggy than a conventional alarm and you're more likely to get to bed when the alarm goes. As a result you will go to bed earlier the following night as you will have had the right amount of sleep the previous night.

[Chrissy]

That sleep alarm sounds fantastic. I don't have a smart phone right now, but that app has just become a good reason to strive for one.

I've already been much better about my bed being only for sleep, though I'm still on the computer until I go to bed. Oh well, take it slow, right? Thanks everyone so much for all of the advice! I'm happier and more active when I get proper sleep, I'm just not sure why I find it so hard to do sometimes.

[Rivanariko]

I used to have serious sleep issues all while growing up. It didn't bother me when I was in high school and I functioned just fine on 45 minutes of sleep every night (somehow). It hit me like a rampaging bull when I got to college though, and all of a sudden I was completely incapable of functioning if I hadn't had enough sleep. The things that helped me:

NO caffeine from ANY source after 6pm. This meant I was cut off from the candy bowl sitting on my desk. Which made me sad, but encouraged me to get my Honors homework done early because I had to reward myself with M&Ms to get it finished...

Bed is only for sleeping. I actually lofted my bed up the ceiling (an option in my dorm room) so that I couldn't do anything but sleep there, because there was no room to sit up. I found other places to sit and study and read or do whatever other activity I wanted. I trained my mind that bed = sleep and after a while, it got the picture.

It's easier to set a time to wake up than to set a time to go to sleep. If I am not sleepy, I will not sleep. I'll lie there and stare at the ceiling and think about many things, which doesn't help with the "only sleeping in bed" thing. So I won't go to bed until I'm sleepy. HOWEVER, regardless of when I go to sleep at night, I have to get up at a certain time. If you are a perpetual snoozer, don't set your alarm clock next to your bed. For some people, putting it on the other side of the room so you actually have to get up and walk across the room is enough. Some people hide it so you have to go through and move stuff to get to it. I think they also make puzzle alarm clocks that you have to solve in order to turn it off, and I know I've seen something on Think Geek that was some sort of rolling alarm clock that you would have to chase around the room and catch in order to turn it off. The point is, make it difficult to hit the snooze button. And once you're up, stay up! Don't nap! If you only got a half hour of sleep the night before, then you'll be dead tired by bedtime and you'll sleep better. This is my usual method of beating jet lag. I'm a zombie for a day, but I adjust to my new time zone so much faster.

Give yourself something to do in the morning. Whether it's that you have an appointment in the morning, or you always go work out as soon as you wake up. The best I slept was when I was getting up at 5am every morning to run. I prefer to work out in the mornings because I can't talk myself out of it if I've just woken up. It also sets my energy for the rest of the day. If you're just getting up early for the sake of getting up early and then just sitting around staring at a wall, you'll resent it. If you do it for a reason, you're more likely to succeed.

Create a bedtime routine. This goes along with the bed being only for sleep thing. Have a short routine you go through every night before you get in bed that will cue your brain 'okay, it's sleepy time now!' This can involve brushing teeth, changing into pajamas, doing relaxation exercises, etc. Whatever you do before bed, make it a routine, do it the same way every night, and then crawl in bed and go to sleep. Think of it as "winding down" after your day.

That's what worked for me. My husband needs the pitch black sleeping environment, so we're working on finding ways to block out all light from the windows since he works the night shift. If it gets really bad, he sleeps in the closet which has no windows. His sleep mask works really well, but it falls off during the night and he wakes up.