How good is your sleep? (Poll dont skip pls)

[rayyy]

I've noticed a scary connection between sleep and mental health stability (and especially the vulnerability of recreational drug abuse).

I ran an experiment on myself and tried to make my sleep as good as possible by maintaining a strict sleep schedule no matter what (i choose 11pm to 7am), and creating a good environment for it by having a wind down phase of atleast 30 minutes before bed time and having a fan on to create white noise and air flow in the room and after waking up, first thing i do is drink water and take 1 minute to go outside to get some fresh air and sunlight to help my brain feel more woken up and it helps your circadian rhythm immensely.

After about a month of this experiment, i noticed my mental stability increased significantly and my anhedonia was significantly relieved and i could enjoy most of the things that i want again.

And i noticed how severely punishing bad sleep is, after just a few days of breaking my strict sleep schedule, my mental stability goes way down and i find myself seeking easy stimulation from doom scrolling and consuming more snacks etc... and recovering from it takes long.

I wanted to run this poll to see how many people here have a good sleep quality despite feeling depressed.

Good sleep = strict schedule with high quality sleep.

Okay sleep = strict schedule with low quality sleep. (No wind down, noisy uncomfortable environment, using the phone first thing in the morning etc)

Bad sleep = bad schedule with low quality sleep (as i believe bad schedule will always lead to bad quality sleep)

Thanks for reading and taking the time to participate!

 

[HappyPotato69]

I ran an experiment on myself and tried to make my sleep as good as possible by maintaining a strict sleep schedule no matter what (i choose 11pm to 7am), and creating a good environment for it by having a wind down phase of atleast 30 minutes before bed time and having a fan on to create white noise and air flow in the room and after waking up

im curious whatd the wind down phase consist of ? id like to try the same thing tbh this seems good af.

 

[auti]

When I was a kid I used to sleep very well but as I became an adult it got really bad. These days I alternate between over and under sleeping and I'm constantly exhausted. I've slept 11+ hours a night for nearly a week now and still feel horrible. On top of that I also have insomnia and it takes me several hours to fall asleep so at least half of my day if not more is just dedicated to sleep that does nothing to make me feel better. When I do sleep well I feel a lot better. I wish I knew how to get that back.

 

[LastNite]

I stay up till 10 AM, I can't sleep on command. I have to bore myself to death. I used to be able to sleep with music blasting full volume in my ear and the fan on the max setting, but now I can't do that. Also, I hate sleep, I feel like I'm missing out even though there's nothing to miss out on. Ive been getting about 5 hours of sleep this past month. The best sleep I ever had was when I was taking Mirtazapine. Slept in about 20 minutes after taking 1 pill.

Someone told me about a method to sleep better, I tried it and failed. In a couple months I'll probably go back and ask for sleep meds.

 

[jdogg60]

Strangely, the better I sleep, the worse my 'anxiety' is when I wake up.

 

[eggsausagerice]

my insomnia gets worse when my mental health/anxiety gets worse. i oversleep most days. when i'm less depressed, i would end up sleeping and waking up at the same times every day as a side effect, since i only stay up or sleep in if i have nothing to be excited about the next day. one of the reasons i miss school is because it was the only structure i had in my life.

 

[darksouls]

my sleep is bad, mental health is terrible

 

[Amara]

I work the graveyard shift, so I guess I set myself for isolation and really bad sleep

 

[hlchoo]

i need to take pills to sleep ok.

 

[Aren]

Strangely, the better I sleep, the worse my 'anxiety' is when I wake up.

Same

 

[vanillacakeyyy]

my sleep schedule changed to me waking up earlier in the morning for awhile but ironically it just made my mental state worse

 

[RosebyAnyName]

I oversleep a lot and it makes me feel worse. I do it because I have anhedonia and no motivation to get up, but oversleeping just makes me even more tired so it's a vicious cycle.

 

[Passenger4224]

I had very bad sleep due to reasons outside of depression. I'm on medication for it now so it's mostly fine.

 

[rayyy]

im curious whatd the wind down phase consist of ? id like to try the same thing tbh this seems good af.

Optimally, doing anything other than high stimulation activities, like reading a book with warm lights on, taking a quick warm bath, meditating, listening to calm music, basically anything that calms you down outside of screens preferably and especially social media.

When I was a kid I used to sleep very well but as I became an adult it got really bad. These days I alternate between over and under sleeping and I'm constantly exhausted. I've slept 11+ hours a night for nearly a week now and still feel horrible. On top of that I also have insomnia and it takes me several hours to fall asleep so at least half of my day if not more is just dedicated to sleep that does nothing to make me feel better. When I do sleep well I feel a lot better. I wish I knew how to get that back.

Getting this "ability" to sleep whenever you want is not very hard but it will be a little frustrating at first but you have to accept that part because if you dont, you will get annoyed and that will firther keep you awake.

So for getting to sleep on a certain time, before bedtime, you need to get a wind down phase where you chill and prepare yourself and body for sleep, 30 minutes is good, once bedtime comes, just put your head down and start imagining yourself in a very comfortable scene that makes you sleepy, for me personally i imagine myself in an island's beach at night sleeping on a with the ocean waves and winds blowing through trees sounds, but it could be anything for you, and dont think about falling asleep, just do what i said and trust wholeheartedly that you WILL fall asleep, although you probably wouldn't on your first night because your circadian rhythm is probably broken, but make sure you stick to one sleep and wake time, once the wake time is reached, first thing you should do is drink some water and go outside for a minute to get some sunlight to alert your body and tell it that its the morning, you can also stick your head outside your window if you domt want to go outside, rinse and repeat for a few days and by day 3-5 you will start to fall asleep very easily at your time of choice with consistency.

Alternatively although i didn't try it myself, you can take one melatonin pill for day 1 to "cheat" and make your first few days easier but you should only use it once or twice, after that with consistency, you should be able to have an easier time falling asleep.

I stay up till 10 AM, I can't sleep on command. I have to bore myself to death. I used to be able to sleep with music blasting full volume in my ear and the fan on the max setting, but now I can't do that. Also, I hate sleep, I feel like I'm missing out even though there's nothing to miss out on. Ive been getting about 5 hours of sleep this past month. The best sleep I ever had was when I was taking Mirtazapine. Slept in about 20 minutes after taking 1 pill.

Someone told me about a method to sleep better, I tried it and failed. In a couple months I'll probably go back and ask for sleep meds.

Sleeping on command is physically impossible, and if someone manages to sleep "on command" they either are very young or they are very very tired, check my previous reply for a trick i use it might help you!

Strangely, the better I sleep, the worse my 'anxiety' is when I wake up.

I dont think good sleep fixes anxiety, anxiety doesn't have much to do with sleep, I'd say good sleep helps the cases of people who experience mood instability and anhedonia, basically allowing you to cope with existence a little better.

my insomnia gets worse when my mental health/anxiety gets worse. i oversleep most days. when i'm less depressed, i would end up sleeping and waking up at the same times every day as a side effect, since i only stay up or sleep in if i have nothing to be excited about the next day. one of the reasons i miss school is because it was the only structure i had in my life.

I relate to this a lot, this advice is a little cliché but meditation and journaling your thoughts really helps grounding you emotionally, atleast enough to not affect your sleep patterns that drastically but yeah it really sucks.

i need to take pills to sleep ok.

You dont have to take sleep pills for the rest of your life! You can try and search for ways to help yourself sleep naturally but it will probably take consistent effort to get satisfying results, which would be extremely difficult to pull off when you feel depressed but you have the option to try atleast!

my sleep schedule changed to me waking up earlier in the morning for awhile but ironically it just made my mental state worse

A good sleep schedule ≠ good quality sleep!!
You need a healthy bed time environment and no underlying health problems to make your sleep quality good!

I oversleep a lot and it makes me feel worse. I do it because I have anhedonia and no motivation to get up, but oversleeping just makes me even more tired so it's a vicious cycle.

I relate to this so so much thats the reason why i tried this experiment on myself to see if it would change anything and ot surprisingly did! Sleep is very underrated and ignored by a lot of people, but maintaining healthy sleep habits is really hard and after i was done with my experiment i went back to my terrible sleep habits and now im back to zero </3

I shared my findings here to encourage people to try and better their sleep that could potentially make them feel even if a little better if they feel like they really want to give life another shot! I personally still wanted to ctb even at my peak of healthy sleep because that alone won't fix my existential dread, nihilism and the need for love that i dont have </3

 

[letsnotmakeittoo22]

I've been having migraines and insomnia kick in in the last few weeks. It's almost 6am and I haven't slept. And I feel like such a loser because I have shit to do tomorrow. I'm so sad.

 

[Pluto]