[Guide] Sleep and Insomnia - Page 6

On April 03 2011 06:47 Siniyas wrote:
Ok Guys. Im a guy who sleeps in very long and has a hard time getting up. Also often have dificulty going to sleep.
I found a solution and also know the how i get into this bad sleeping schedule now, so i want to share what i found out.
So what happened in my normal sleep behavior was. i look at the time in the evening, saying to myself, man i should go to bed if i want to get to my lectures on time. But im not tired, like alot of you, so i surf the net/watch some shows bla bla. Then i go to bed, feeling a little sleepy but not that much. I try to sleep, but as for alot of you, my thoughts start racing(not always alot bu sometimes i stay up in bed like 40-60mins. Obviously that sucks. Then in the morning, i get up if i hear the alarm, which takes alot of willpower, oftentimes i roll over to the side go to sleep for another 30-40 mins and have some weird dreams.

When i have nothing to do for the day its even worse. I wake up, go to sleep, wake up ,go to sleep. The longer the holidays with nothing to do and no events that require getting up early, i go to bed later and later and wake up later too.

Now why is that? Why does this vicious cycle go on and on and on.
The one major reasons, that all others are suplemental to, is sleep quality. Sleep quality sucks, you sleep longer, take longer to get up, take longer to wind down and suddenly you have a 28 hour cycle or something. Now for me one of the major things with getting this undone, was sleeping at the right time. And for me and i believe for most humans, this time is between the sun going down and the sun rising.
That is because when the sunlight hits you, your body naturally wakes up and when it gets dark your body winds down. Looking at my morning routine i see, when i wake up at 11-12 i never feel awake. There is always drowsynes that pulls me back to sleep. The sun is trying to wake me up, my body is trying to get more sleep. So to fix this, i needed to go to bed way earlier.
I tried often to go to bed 1 hour earlier each day, but that didnt work out, as for proably alot of you.

Now second method. Pulling an all nighter, or sleeping very little one day and waking up super early.
This didnt work out for me in the past. But after having to get up early for an exam, it did.

What did i do? I simply stayed up. In earlier tries i either went to bed early like 18-20 or late 20-23.
What happened was, i either sleept for like 5-6 hours and was awake in the middle of the night, tried to get some more sleep and then slept through to 11-12 or just slept through to 11-12.

Obviously very devestating.
This time i went to bed early and woke up in the middle of the night like 3:00 but didnt go to bed again. I fought my way through to 21:00 went to bed and woke up at like 5:00. You can, see where this is going. I fit more and more into this natural cycle of going to bed at like 22:00-22:30 and waking up at like 7:00, when the rays of morning sunlight brace my face, feeling rested. It was actually easy to get up. At night time, i felt profoundly tired. As soon as the feeling would come over me i would go to bed pretty quickly. No reading or other activity to wind down like usually.

Now you may say, dude just block out the sun. Close down your windows. But i think it is not that simple. First the sun light helps you to wake up and stay awake. Even though i would say, get woken up prematurly by the sun is worse than having no sunlight. But still when i woke up in the range of 2-3 i would feel very tired after i while usually around 5-7 and it would carry on, even though getting lighter, to like 12:00 . The second thing is, beeing up at the normal hours gets you more activity, which makes more tired in the evening. There is a large diference if you fill 3-4 hours on the computer, with 3-4 hours, in the city, or in a park, or simply cleaning up your place.

The last 2 parts, that are important , are eating and habit. For eating, i think its important to not eat well in advance of sleeping anything that gives power. Dont have a big dinner, of meat and carbs and sweets, like i often did for myself late at night. You will feel tired after eating, but this is not a good time to sleep. And after an hour or two energy will start to rise strongly and keep beeing there. That mixed with not feeling sleepy, because you havent been awake long enough, is part of what keeps your thoughts racing in bed.

For habit, people often try to change the habit itself, which never really worked for me. Go to bed earlier! Stop thinking and go to sleep! Get up immedietly! Many of you have probably tried doing and saying this to yourself. But it is tremendously hard, because of the physiogical state of yourself. Some people might say, " dude just have discipline". But does figurativly smasching your head against a wall till it breaks really require more discipline? How about just going around that wall?
It was so easy for me to get into the habit of a healthy sleep cycle once conditions were met and those habits actually enforced by my body and having success.
Dont try to just magically change your habits, they will grow and provide a savety-net for you over time.
Your old habits are going to stay there also and it is easy to slip back into them, which happened to me 2 times already, but it is also possible to stay in this healthy cycle and not try to move a mountain everytime you wake up and try to get up.

Hope this helps some people, who have similar problems.