If so, maybe you can help me out. For about a week and a half now, I’ve been having serious trouble getting to sleep. It’s now gotten to the point that the only, and I stress the only thing keeping me awake is the fact that I’m worrying about whether or not I’ll fall asleep. So there I am, lying in bed, dog tired and thinking “Why haven’t I fallen asleep yet? When am I going to fall asleep? Will I ever fall asleep again? What does falling asleep actually feel like?” and so on, and so on and it is this anxious anticipation that’s keeping me from actually falling asleep. The worst thing is that every time I feel myself drifting off, I instinctively think “GREAT!! I’m finally falling asleep” but the tiny pang of excitement this thought elicits just wakes me up again and I’m back to square one.
Needless to say, all this is self perpetuating and the longer it goes on the more difficult it is to actually fall asleep. I’ve not yet gone an entire night without sleep and I’ve always managed to get at least 4-5 hours a night since this started but still, it’s a serious pain in the ass. I’m also blessed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (for which I’m taking meds) which makes it doubly difficult to break negative thought patterns.
I’ve decided to stay up all night tonight, the idea being that by tomorrow night I’ll be so tired that I’ll be unable to stay awake no matter how hard I try.
Has anyone else ever been in a situation like this? If so, what did you do?
Your first paragraph describes my experiences exactly. I’ve taken to staying up until at least 2 am every night, making me tired enough to fall asleep within an hour or two. If I go to bed before midnight, I’m waking up every hour, without fail. I have a toddler, so I’m up by 9 am at the latest every morning, which puts me at about 7 hours of sleep every night. I know I need more than that, because I’m dozing off periodically throughout the day.
I’ve tried taking Tylenol PM before going to bed, but without enough sleep to get it all out of my system, I’m groggy all the next day.
I don’t have any advice for you, really, because I’m stuck in a rut in the same situation. Maybe that’s why I’m on 19 message boards. Gotta have something to do.
I’m gonna go in the frontroom for about an hour and watch a show I taped, but if you’re still on, we can chat or something. I’ll leave this window open.
What happened was that I fell asleep in the “next” afternoon, and by nightfall, I was still awake.
It will only work if you manage to keep yourself awake the whole way.
I’ve found this book enormously helpful.
I generally am able to fall asleep for about two hours, then wake up in the middle of the night, then fall asleep around 4 am. One thing I’ve found that lessens the time I’m awake: Get out of bed. Laying there tossing and turning and stressing over how much sleep you’ll get if you fall asleep right now only makes it worse. Get up, go to another room, read, do whatever.
That happens to me when I’m very stressed about exams. Never a problem with waking up 25 times at night, but just impossible to fall asleep because my brain just. won’t. shut. up. I found it can help to wake up very early. When you start the day at 5am, you’re much more tired at night, and sleep comes easier. All the tricks about making bed more comfortable, hot milk and honey, lavender drops on the pillow? They’ve never helped me, because my insomnia is more like someone left the TV on and I can hear it all night and can’t help but follow the story…
What helps me the most when I get into a pattern of insomnia from stress is over-the-counter sleeping pills, but please check with your doctor before trying anything like that. I took a pill an hour before the time I wanted to be asleep, four nights in a row, and I didn’t need one the fifth night. My sleeping pattern had been reset by then and I was able to drop off without any trouble.
But maybe your OCD is involved with your problem as well? Maybe your doc can help?
The book I find most helpful for those sleepless nights is Tolkien’s The Silmarillion Just a few pages and I’m sound asleep. The light is still on, and my glasses are on my face, but I’m asleep!
I don’t fight it anymore. I expect to wake up at 3:30 and so I go read until I can go back to sleep again. But then, I’m an old bat and I understand that’s pretty much what old bats do.
