insomnia

[fragmentary]

how do you guys cope with insomnia? this happens every once in a while. i'm still getting adjusted to not having to wake up early anymore, even then ive never been a morning owl, my head still runs wild during the early hours of the morning. even when my eyelids feel heavy, which sucks. knowing that irregular sleeping patterns result in long-term health problems makes the anxiety even worse, like i try to force myself to fall asleep knowing this but that doesn't work lol

it's annoying, because there are things i want to do but by daytime i feel exhausted. so there's not much point in focusing or trying to retain anything because i'll be tired regardless. it's an irritating pattern. do you get out of bed or just keep lying there for hours? i drink little caffeine and don't take medication, i assume this is probably just anxiety/cortisol levels, and the effects of heavy screentime...

 

[penguinl0v3s]

The trick is to not force yourself to fall asleep early, because you can't control that. You can control when you wake up a hundred times better than when you fall asleep.

Completely stop pressuring yourself to fall asleep faster and rely on your tiredness to be the guide of when to sleep. Avoiding simulating tasks like infinite scrolling before bad. And you can take some melatonin. Perhaps try listening to calming sleep music, because seems like your anxiety is the problem.

When you wake up, I'd recommend getting out of bed right away. When sleep is interrupted and you fall back asleep this actually interrupts a sleep cycle and makes you lose quality sleep time, so falling back asleep isn't as good as sleeping in one cycle. The worst thing to do would be to go on your phone first thing when you wake up.

I personally like to drink caffeine. Caffeine is fine as long as early in the day.

I wouldn't attribute it to heavy screen time tbh, phone usage is always blamed for sicknesses, rather unfairly. Sounds like your health anxiety is keeping you up.

 

[GhostShell]

The less you think about it the better, which is enough for most people.

Sometimes the insomnia is directly caused by something - for example I wake up every 1-3 hours, and i sleep for a total of 9-10 hours every day. This has never happened to me before but hey covid dice rolled this as my organ damage. Nothing works for this, I am usually awake at most a few minutes between my cycles of sleep. I am kinda rested in the morning thankfully. So I just kinda accepted this weird dreamlike reality and hope it will get better with time.

 

[nozomu]

I highly recommend CBT-I for insomnia. My insomnia was so bad in 2022 I almost CTB from it. I don't love CBT but it really is the most effective treatment specifically for insomnia.

There's apps for it if you can't see a provider but it genuinely does help the issue.