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Exercise. If you aren’t physically tired you’ll have a hard time falling asleep. Most people with physical jobs have no problem sleeping.
Nothing. I’m cursed. I will lie awake until 2am at times. I’ll wake up at 3 am and not fall back asleep until 6.
One thing I heard from somewhere is to pick a random word. Then for each letter in it, think of a random animal. Then pick another random word and repeat.
Supposedly this mimics the brain activity during sleep and dreaming, which tricks your brain into actually sleeping. No idea if it’s effective or not though.
I do something a bit like this. I’ll pick a theme (animals, food, places, etc) and then go through the alphabet one letter at a time and something from the theme that starts with that letter. Alternatively, I’ll pick a letter and just think of as many different words as I can that start with that letter. Those work for me most of the time!
Laying down and watching an old black and white movie puts me out quick. I’ve been watching the old Universal monster movies this month and it has been a struggle lol. Also started taking melatonin and that helps me sleep too. If I can’t sleep due to stress/anxiety I imagine I’m dying and that seems to work.
“If you think about Big Sleep, then Tiny Sleep doesn’t seem that scary 💕”
I take several breaths thinking about my pillow, bed, covers, and position; get comfortable and relaxed; and try to clear my mind. Then i start at my feet relaxing each body part for three breaths, feeling it sink into the bed and focusing hard so other thoughts can’t creep in. If i get distracted and wander, i start over. I’m usually asleep within a couple of minutes. It took me awhile to learn to do this and to keep my brain blocked. What I’ve learned is that sometimes it’s not ‘can’t fall asleep’ it’s ‘won’t fall asleep,’ i have this great method that works almost every time, but sometimes I’m resistant and still staring at the clock. Then i think, “knock it off! You’re self sabotaging!” and force myself to follow through.
I close my eyes, take slow deep breaths, and with each breath slowly count up and down from 0 with the high number increasing by one on each cycle. Eg. 0 1 0 1 2 1 0 1 2 3 2 1 0 1 2 3 4 3 2 1 0… It requires just enough concentration to keep my brain from drifting off to other thoughts (usually), but is boring enough that I rarely get to 9 without falling asleep. If find my mind does wander, I just try again.
400mg theanine and/or 2g Magtein. Melatonin didn’t work for me and I dislike the effect of cannabis and its derivatives on my body.
CBD-Melatonin gummies. They knock me out in 15m.
Sleep got a lot better for me when I followed medical advice and avoided my bed for anything but sleep (and the other thing, lol). Your brain needs to not associate your bed with work, school, video games, etc., so it can work as a trigger. Ever since I did that, I sleep within minutes of laying down.
I couldn’t sleep for decades until I started listening to audiobooks. It’s a bedtime story. Shut your mind off, let go of stress and just listen. It can still take a little while but now I fall asleep in minutes instead of 3 hours. It also helps me go back to sleep if I wake up from nightmares.
Same. Podcasts are also great, and some are even made specially for this purpose, like Nothing Much Happens.
I had absolutely debilitating insomnia for my entire life. In the last couple of years I discovered something interesting. I’ve got a condition called aphantasia which means that I cannot see any images in my mind. For my whole life I heard the phrase counting sheep and thought it was a metaphor. Just like. Thinking about sheep since visualizing wasn’t something that I thought people could do.
Anyway, in researching about the condition I found an article online for an exercise where you can work on trying to visualize something. Basically you close your eyes and use the flashing remnants of vision to try to force a shape to exist. Sometimes you need to push on your closed eyes and a little pressure will cause some patterns to appear. You’re supposed to do this exercise while talking to someone outloud. Even if it’s just making a recording. The article I read said you must say it out loud or you will fall asleep. Me having never fallen asleep in my life without hours of concerted effort completely ignored this warning and much to my surprise it absolutely made me fall asleep within minutes.
Ever since then I’ve been able to use this technique to fall asleep every night. It’s like my mind finally learned how to do it. Most of the time I don’t even need to do these exercises any more.
That being said I was so pleased with this side effect I never even tried the say it out loud to try to improve mental images and I still can’t see anything in my minds eye. But being able to sleep every night without fail is a freaking miracle. So I highly recommend giving it a shot.
Here is the original instructions I found on it. https://photographyinsider.info/image-streaming-for-photographers/
For my whole life I heard the phrase counting sheep and thought it was a metaphor.
It … isn’t?
Waauw
Welcome to a whole new world where you can’t do some fundamental form of thinking most people can.
Theres also people apparently that don’t have an inner monologue and can’t hear words in their mind either. I truly can’t understand how that works. It’s way more foreign of a concept than not being able to visualize. But maybe that’s just because I’ve never been able to do it so I don’t know what I’m missing.
The people that can’t do either are truly frightening. What’s going on up there?
I’ve been practicing the rubbing thing today. The only things I think I’ve seen so far are faces, glimpses of and silouettes of.
It works better if I keep my palms slightly pressed over both eyes. As soon as there’s a lightsource I just see that, light through my eyelids.
This is amazing and slightly scary.
How long since you’ve discovered this?
It’s been about a year or so. You shouldn’t have to constantly apply pressure. When I first started I just kind of took whatever was there and tried to pretend it was a specific thing then hold that thought then as it morphed and changed just quickly identified a new thing and held that thing as long as possible. I think the article calls it image streaming. Then when all the sparks fade from pressure maybe do it again.
Dude. I had to revisit your comment. This is amazing.
Thank you 1000 times!!!
Awesome I’m glad it’s doing something for you, getting better at visualizing at all?
That is a long article that eventually links you to watch a video to learn how to do it. Here’s the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F2qjtwcMhA&t=161s&pp=2AGhAZACAQ%3D%3D
3rd Eye Blind crew represent
Hit your face with a frying pan 😆
Warhammer 40K lore.
Don’t drink coffee or tea past 4:00PM
I haven’t seen exercise mentioned nearly enough in this thread. Doing an hour of yoga before bed makes sleep soo much easier.
Do relaxing activities before bed.
