No pharmaceutical aids preferably
If you’re feeling restless, get up and do something for a bit. Preferably something analog (no screens) like light reading or make yourself a snack or do some sewing, whatever activities you have around. Don’t do this activity in bed, either! Go in the living room or wherever isn’t your bedroom.
And if you’ve already done that, the next thing that helps me is knowing that “lying in bed awake” is still resting your body and is almost as good as falling asleep. It relieves the anxiety around needing to fall asleep which then makes sleeping easier.
And as long as you get the rest you need, it’s actually not as big a deal if you don’t “fall asleep.” You might feel like you’re awake but often you’re actually just in a really light sleep. So don’t stress about it! Just lie down and rest and everything will be ok 😊
I just count my breaths 😎
There was a US military list of things to do to sleep . You know, for when your warcrimes keep you awake
Punch the clown. 60% of the time it works every time.
I attempt to calculate the amount of energy needed to levitate a gram of liquid mercury while reading manga.
I relax every muscle that I can and then allow my mind to just wander randomly. Usually puts me out.
Sometimes I design starships in my head.
I have a very long list of heuristics for this, as I’m a nerd with this topic, and also tend to be the de-facto expert in my wider family for sleep help. I need to clean up the raw notes before I could list them.
But I’m going to give you an inconvenient truth: Good rest begins 48-hours before.
Most of the major factors in sleep originate from your body’s 48-hour cycle, which includes digestive tract, your sleep and wake the day before, your exercise on both days, sun exposure, your 48-hour hydration consistency (yes hydration correction takes this long or more), what you ate yesterday, and what you ate within 4-6 hours before bedtime.
If you’re trying to fix sleep while already in bed with insomnia, then you already did something wrong and cannot really correct course in a healthy way. Whether it’s alcohol or benadryl —These sleep aids to force you through the night will have you pay a price later. Your REM will be worse. Your deep sleep will be worse. You will be more irritable the next day and peter out faster. You’ll compensate with more caffeine or something stronger, your cortisol levels will be higher and you’ll be more prone to snack cravings and quick dopamine hits, and those things will lead to a downward-spiral for your next night of sleep.
But hey, Life happens. People have crying babies, etc. Disruption to the best routines is bound to happen. Tricks near or especially at bedtime can only increase your sleep inertia so much. Most have been listed, but if you just need a nudge, then (1) Turn off the phone and read a book, or at least read articles and stay away from videos. Turn on night mode and dim completely. (2) Keep room as cold as possible. (3) Get a white-noise generator or fan. (4) Practice deep breathing techniques to preoccupy your mind and move your ANS from sympathetic to a parasympathetic state. (5) Don’t be afraid to let your mind wander. Make up a story in your head. Find your happy place in your thoughts so you set yourself up for a “win-win” while just lying there. (6) Magnesium Glycinate tends to be a safe sleep aid that actually improves REM, but take with meal otherwise it can have laxative properties to the sensitive. Just some stuff off the top of my head.
Easily falling asleep but waking up in the middle of the night with insomnia “tired but wired” is a different albeit related beast…
Box breathing
Instructions unclear; inhaled a fart
That’s Dutch oven breathing. Easy mistake to make.
There’s also hotbox breathing if you wanna get real high, and Matchbox Twenty breathing if you’re not crazy but just feeling a little impaired.
Damn, I’m proud of that one. Too bad nobody will see it buried down here haha
And if you don’t like this, try cyclical or resonant breathing techniques. They’re proven to be equally if not more effective. Cyclical is more for panic-attacks and high anxiety during the day though, as I understand.
Loading up a nice 2 hour video essay from a soft-spoken British YouTuber usually works for me lol.
When I can’t fall asleep it’s usually because my mind is racing and worrying about things so I just put on a podcast that’s only mildly interesting enough to distract me but not get me fully engaged.
I do low volume old radio shows, Vincent Price in The Saint puts me down in about 10 minutes, CBS mystery theater can do it in 4. Just interesting enough, usually no big volume shifts and I love the music.
Another trick for the same problem is to tell yourself “this is not the time for that, I’ll worry about it later”. If that doesn’t work then yeah, a boring distraction usually does the trick.
start day dreaming/meditation
if im restless i will go for a walk around the block.
glass of water/small snack
open the window
socks on/off
masturbate/get laid.
I also do most of these. Day dreaming is a hard no as its often why i can’t sleep. Wiill walk around inside of my house instead of the block. And never wear socks to bed. Could see random things like that helping for other people though.
I start by meditating, clearing all thought, and concentrating on how it feels to breathe. I definitely wouldn’t stay in bed if its been more than 15-20 mins. Clear sign to me something needs to change for some amount of time. The frustration would start to grow where it would become its own issue I’d have to overcome.
What I find really, really, helps is jumping on the bed until you hit your head on the ceiling and just pass the fuck out wherever you land.
Progressive muscle relaxation. I’m not sure if it’s the actions I take or that it’s enough to keep my mind on but kind of boring.
Learning to chill/meditate is quite helpful, but can take a long time.
I’ve found the ‘military sleep method’ to be very helpful as well. The version I found years ago, had you tense up each body area before relaxing it, but the links I found now mentioned none of that.
The best thing you can do is five hours before going to bed, making sure you get enough exercise and avoid caffeine.
Other than that, I have a routine of stretching and reading before bed, so usually just doing that puts me out.
Failing that, I used to have really bad insomnia, and one thing I would remind myself is that even just laying awake in bed is a kind of rest, and even if you don’t sleep you can kind of drift off into a reverie here and there.
Related, I find having something enjoyable to think about as I close my eyes is fun and distracting. For me that’s creative stuff like writing stories, designing games, or making game levels in my head.
games
have done so much gamedev as I float off into sleep… and some of it has even survived to get written down the next day lol. my partner made me stop getting up to write things out as it was wrecking both of our sleep cycles
I have a small notepad and pencil tucked under my mattress that I reach for whenever I have an idea I’m convinced is so good it won’t actually let me fall asleep until I save it.
yeah was doing something similar but turning on a light so I could write was getting old.
