Insomnia controls you, instead of you controlling your sleep. If you want advice on how to deal with insomnia, do NOT ask a person who hasn’t slept in two nights. Instead, ask someone who’s had insomnia several times, and has a checklist on how to respond when insomnia flares up. By the way, I’ve never actually taken this advice, but maybe writing it down will make it more likely that I’ll take it in the future.
A common pattern when I can’t sleep is I wake up after sleeping for 4-6 hours (which for me tends to be around 1-2 am) feeling overwhelmed and dreading doing something, or thinking I won’t be able to succeed. At that point, I’m half a sleep, half awake ruminating on whatever has me overwhelmed.
Since I’m not really sleeping, I’m just tossing and turning and as a result:
- I’m not getting sleep
- I’m getting myself more worked up
- I’m setting myself up to sleep in when my alarm goes off since I’m too tired.
A far better pattern to follow is:
Read a book for 20 minutes, if I’m awake at the end of 20 minutes, get up, grab a coffee and start working on the thing I’m dreading. Usually I can lean in, make a tonne of progress, and feel better about it. Often, I’ll even get into a bit of flow, and pound through several hours of the task feeling more confident and relieved. At that point, I can either continue with my day or go back to bed for a quick 20 minute nap.
If the problem isn’t a task I can work on, then I should clear my head, trying to replace the thing that’s bugging me with something more pleasant. To do this I can do the following:
- 2 minutes - deep breathing
- 10 minutes - meditation.
- Journalling - what actions I need to take
- Journalling - voices in my head
- Magic Practice
After a few days of inadequate sleep, I’ll often be trying to deal with sleep deprivation. When that happens it’s about catching up.
- The essential activity, is getting back on my natural sleep cycle. I do this best through sleep deprivation, not sleep catchup.
- I take prescription sleeping pills (aka Ambien/Lunesta/Sonata).
- I force myself out of bed at wake up time - even if I didn’t get enough sleep.
- I do not drink caffeine or nap. The best path to fall asleep on time (or even early) is sleep exhaustion
Sleep well.