Fml the sun’s about to come up and I still can’t fall asleep. Dear Brain, please shut up.
(side thought: was that basically my brain telling itself to shut up? Useless things like this keep me up at night lol…)
Edit: well hello Mr. Sun. Seems like a lot of people leave their phones outside but I feel like it’d add to my insomnia, having me wonder if family might try to contact me with an emergency. Saw some good suggestions so I will definitely give those a try, thank you!
I’ve built a pavlovian response to my phone while I’m in bed that instantly puts me to sleep. I started laying down on my side with one headphone on and put a calm show, like an animal documentary or find science channels on YouTube. Turn autoplay off. Lights off. Set up do not disturb, and set so your preferred contacts can reach you if they call twice. This will mute all notifications while giving piece of mind in case is emergency. I also set DND to turn off at 8am.
Eventually I would dose off in say 30 min of watching. After years of routine I dose off in like 10 minutes. In fact if I lay down and try to browse on my phone I get sleepy regardless.
Hardest part is looking for the headphone the morning when I wake up lol.
My phone is the first and last thing I look at each day. I use the Eye comfort shield setting (which limits blue light) set to turn on at 9pm and turn off at 6:30am. At 10pm my phone is set to turn brightness down to almost 0%, reminding me to put it down and get some shut eye. These settings have helped me get a decent amount of sleep.
I’ve always been a light sleeper and had trouble falling asleep. About 5 years ago (I’m 50 now) I finally gave up trying to self managed through lifestyle and turned to CBD/CBG/CBN sleep aides as well as a light muscle relaxer (Tizanadine, 2mg) and my sleep is awesome now. I actually sleep through the night and am not drowsy during the day.
I take my stuff and use my phone until I get sleepy and I’m out within 10 minutes after I put the phone down.
My reasoning at this point is that lack of sleep is more harmful than using the muscle relaxer daily and the CBD/CBG/CBN and it has been working great.
One way to help your brain know it’s time for sleep is to make “awake time” and “sleep time” VERY different from each other.
If you are laying in your bed with the lights out from 5-11, and then at 11:00 you decide you want to go to sleep, you’re still just laying in bed with the lights out.
If you don’t have other spaces to be awake in, at least make sure your “awake space” is different from your “sleep space”. When you want to be awake, keep the lights on, and maybe have a little background music. I’d recommend staying out of your bed entirely until it’s time to sleep, but if you must, try to lay differently. Lay across side ways, or keep your head at the foot of the bed.
When it’s time to sleep, those stimuli change/disappear and your brain thinks “Things have changed, it’s time to adapt to this new scenario”
And after a while, it will know: Lights out, head on pillow = sleep.
I used to have a lot of trouble falling asleep, AND staying awake, but creating very different scenarios for each had helped a LOT!
Good luck to you!
