Quote:
Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina
I found Melatonin stripes to be much better but I can't find them in stores any more or online (if you do find a source for them please PM me).
You may want to ask your doctor about Zopildem. Everyone is different but it's been highly effective for me.
Other potential things to try:
- Don't lie in bed for hours trying to sleep. Basically if you aren't asleep within 30 minutes, you need to reset. Get up. Don't watch TV or get your brain going. Try some breathing, drink some milk. Change the room you are sleeping in. The key is to reset.
- DO NOT LOOK AT THE CLOCK. Ever. The clock is toxic because you'll start calculating the number of hours left you have to sleep and create panic. If you have a clock radio - get rid of it.
- You can consider putting yourself on a sleep program to drive your exhaustion up. I know this seems counter intuitive but it's what my sleep doctor recommended. So he pushed my bed time to 1:30 am and then slowly I worked myself back (in 5 minute increments) to midnight. Sleep happens when you have a balanced relationship between your exhaustion and your mental arousal. So in a world where you are now paniced about your sleep, you need to re-balance that by increasing the exhaustion. People make the mistake, when they are struggling to sleep, of going to bed earlier. What you should do is go to bed later.
Most of all get help. If you are in Calgary I can recommend a good sleep doctor that helped me.
PM me if you ever want to talk about it.
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If I can't sleep in 20-30 minutes, I get up and do chores. I agree with the no lights and screen time. It sounds silly and arduous, but honestly speaking, it works. I think I can't sleep sometimes worrying about the tasks for the next days that are accumulating. If I can't sleep and reset to "if I can get more than 2-3 hours, bonus!". I think my anxiety reduces while doing chores because the overwhelming task list that I worry about in my mind is getting smaller. Then during the day I'm happy there's less mess or tasks to do and I think it works in a dual manner that way.
Melatonin never worked well for me and I find I'm groggy the next day. One weird thing I used to do that would occasionally work, is to turn the light on and just lie in bed in a sleeping or meditation position. Somehow, I'd sleep and if I nap in such a situation, I'm less groggy than if the lights were off. I don't recall where I read it, but it was something I read and tried before and it has reasonable success.
Agreed on the no clock comment. I'd also suggest looking into an alarm like sleep cycle to install on your phone and/or a light alarm. Sleep cycle tracks sounds and/or movement and will set up a wake up time based on a 10-20 minute time period. It will aim to start the sounds when it perceives you're not in deep sleep. I do find I'm less groggy in the morning and I feel less annoyed/jilted out of bed. The same goes with the light alarm. You can actually install Phillips hue smart bulbs to synchronize with a gentle increase of light to wake you up. Again, I feel better rested when I used that type of alarm than the basic blaring at X time alarms.