I mentally picture myself going through the steps of something mundane. For example, chopping an onion. The trick is not to skip directly to “chopping onion” imagery, and to focus on each portion of each step:
open fridge
pull open veggie bin
rummage to look for half-used onion
close bin
close fridge door
walk to root cabinet
pick up an onion
walk to the cutting boards
pick up a cutting board
turn around to the knife block
pick up a knife
… etc.
Boring, but juuuust barely gives my brain something on which to focus so it doesn’t go into that Hamster Wheel mode.
I turn on the light, sit up, and continue with the novel I was reading earlier in the evening. I read until the words start swimming on the page. Really swimming, as in I can’t even force my eyes to focus anymore. This takes about twenty minutes or so. Then the light goes back out and I usually do, too.
I usually try to focus on something I’ve memorized. Sometimes I’ll do the interpretations of a tarot deck (I rarely get past the major arcana), but usually I will pick a musical and go through the score song by song. I don’t make it far, most of the time.
Zombie-reanimating this one, as Spartan 2.0 is due to arrive in a couple of months and as such the whole idea of getting back to sleep will become a new bigtime priority!
Any other suggestions on how you successfully zonk out after waking up in the middle of the night?
Another trick that works when I have to go to the bathroom: I don’t turn on any lights. While this has some risk of killing myself on the way there, I seem to go right back to sleep instantly. Turning on the lights makes it very likely that I’ll need 15+ minutes to get back to sleep.
Especially when I was a kid, I’d use difficult math problems. For example, calculating how long it takes to get to Pluto at light speed. Or how many seconds since the Declaration of Independence was signed. Really, anything with time conversion built in is a good challenge. It really makes you aware of how badly we need metric time.
Go to bathroom and pee; 2. Look at clock to see if I really need to go back to sleep or if it’s within a half-hour of the 6:30 alarm time, if not, 3. push button 4 on the bedside cd player to play track 1, Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, set the cutoff timer for 15 minutes, and empty my head of thoughts.
Repeat an hour and a half later and bitch about my ineffective finasteride.
Every night when I go to bed, I build my log cabin.
You see, I have this vision of a perfect log cabin in my head. I build onto it every night, a little at a time. Very slowly, very detailed, sometime, going back and tweaking things I’ve already done. If I wake in the middle of the night, I just keep building.
If I look at the clock, I start doing the math to figure how much sleep I can get if I fall to sleep *riiiiiiiiiiight *NOW!
Mostly, I try not to think of anything in particular. If I was pulled out of a dream, I try to pick up where I left off. But if I start thinking, I’m usually screwed. Then I have to decide if I can lie still and not disturb my husband or if I should get up and go watch TV, thereby waking up the dog. Usually I try to lie there and drift off.
Well, I’m now on medication to keep me from waking every few minutes and it really works (trazodone), but when I need to relax before falling asleep my go-to method is this:
First, imagine “sleep” to be like snowflakes in a snowglobe. Every time you move, the snowflakes get agitated, and what you want them to do is settle down. When they are completely settled, then you can fall asleep. Get into your favorite sleep position, take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Imagine the sleep particles slowly drifting down inside every part of your body. If you notice any tension in your body, turn your attention gently to that spot, relax the muscles there, and imagine the sleep particles quietly settling down inside it.
At the same time, practice “sleep breathing” – relatively slow inhale, relatively quick exhale, pause, relatively slow inhale, relatively quick exhale, pause (repeat ad infinitum).
Let any other thoughts drift away from you. Just visualize the sleep particles drifting and focus on your breath.
When I’m very anxious or agitated and sleep is just not coming, I will turn on a dim reading light, get a book of poetry, and start memorizing a new poem. That takes up so much attention that I don’t have much left over to think about whatever is bothering me. Really bad nights, I use prose. When I start feeling sleepy, I turn off the light, settle into bed, and do the above visualization exercises while slowly mentally reciting what I just memorized over and over.
I also pretend to be someone else. Someone else with a different life who is not worried about what’s worrying me.
If I don’t think I’ll have much trouble falling back asleep, I pick a topic (superheroes, for example) and a letter of the alphabet to start on, and try to think of something that fits for each letter. Usually I don’t get through too many before I’m gone.
If it’s harder to get back to sleep I put Doctor Who on Netflix or On Demand. I’ve seen all the Ten and Twelve episodes multiple times, so they’re interesting enough to keep me engaged but not so much that I need to worry about what’s going to happen.
Guided relaxation techniques, starting at your toes and working up, imagining each muscle group briefly tensing and then just relaxing into nothingness.
Three audio aids, depending on what my brain is feeling that night: Bob Ross, nature sounds, or binaural beats (which is just a fancy way of saying white noise paired with a dog whistle or something).
Not so much lately but when my insomnia was bad, sometimes the best thing to do was just give up on sleep for the night; lying there past a certain point just made me even more tense, so I’d get up and go for a walk or something.
I used to try counting backwards, but I found that as I was drifting off to sleep: “73, 72,… 71,… 43,… 117, HEY! WAIT A MINUTE! Now I gotta start over!” Nowadays, I just think, “99, 98, 99, 98,… 99,…98…”
When that works, great. Otherwise, I will sometimes refine “lectures” that I sometimes give to an absent audience. Usually, the Fibonacci series and its relation to the Golden Mean, but other times, I explain the Gospel, starting in Genesis and working my way forward. Never get further than Exodus on that one.
Sometimes, if nothing else works, I repeat gibberish in my mind, in an attempt to chase all other thoughts out of my head. Rarely works, though.
It always seems to me, that I fall back asleep just seconds before the alarm goes off.
A trick I learned in ROTC from our detachment sgt ----- close your eyes and start a boring “imaginary dream” like walking through your old neighborhood or doing some basic shopping. Once you get the hang of it you can drop off at a moments notice almost anywhere.
(I did it today to get an hours nap between shifts at work. Even in a cold car with bright sun, I got right under)
I use this trick. I mentally picture myself moving through the rooms of the last house I owned, recalling as many details (furniture, paintings, knick knacks, etc.) as I can. I don’t think I’ve ever made it past the kitchen and living room before falling back asleep.
Another tip is to relax your tongue. You’d be surprised how often you have it pressed tightly against the roof of your mouth.