I tend to stress myself out about not being able to sleep, since I really enjoy my sleep, and that leads to a vicious cycle. I normally wake up at 6AM and go to bed around 9P, but in the past year or two since developing insomnia who knows when I sleep and I usually wake up around 9A if I do sleep. I once went a week without sleeping at all. I’ve lately been having some good luck with rest and tend to get 5hrs or so, vs the 1-2 I was getting for almost a year.

I try not to eat later than 3pm, I’ve noticed some connection between food and ability to sleep, the later I have my last meal of the day the harder it is for me to sleep at night. I’m also afraid of caffeine now and I don’t have any past noon if I do at all.

Biggest mental thing that’s helped me is realizing most bodies will eventually fall asleep when they’re ready, and even if I got 0 or just 1 hr of sleep it’ll be ok, my body just didn’t want sleep that night. I won’t be as mentally sharp but I can still try to do challenging things in my day on my lil hr of sleep.

If I don’t fall asleep after 20-30min of lying around I’ll get up and go do something, like read something simple on my phone (in black and white mode) in a chair or play a very mindless game like cards.

Having a fixed schedule sure helps, but if there is none, one should only sleep when truly tired. Forcing yourself to sleep if your body hasn’t given the “sleep signal” is a bad idea (in the long run, aim at sleeping by night only though, not including naps that is).

If the reason of insomnia are unsettled issues, however, of course solving those has priority… which becomes more difficult if you’re sleep-deprived, so the best advice is probably training your mind to rest your thoughts before going to sleep, as in “tomorrow’s another day where I’ll get another chance at resolving stuff”, it’s no use beating yourself up when you really need to rest above anything else. Otherwise you end up in a vicious cycle of bad days and not being able to sleep due to a bad day.

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As someone who struggles with sleeping a bit I don’t have any advice but you have my sympathy.

Professional sleeper here (not actually my title)

I have a plethora of advice I can give. If you do ANY of these, you will sleep better. The more of these you do, the BETTER you will feel throughout your day (and night!)

• Clean your sheets!
  • Clean bedsheets are more comfortable, smell better, and will fast track you to passing out in under 5 minutes
• Shower
  • If you have any sweat residue, you’ll feel too uncomfortable to sleep
• Wash hair, brush teeth
  • Clean hair feels good and comfortable
• Sleep schedule
  • If you go to sleep at the same time every day, your body will be ready for it.
• Air filter
  • Gone are the days of stuffy nose at night or swollen eyes in the morning. Air filters are cheap. Get a good one!
• Refuse to use phone in bed
  • If you use your phone in bed, there is a 0% chance you’re falling asleep quickly
• White noise
  • Roommates, cars outside, wind knocking something around outside - Whitenoise blocks all of this out. Check out the FOSS Noice app!
• AC before bed
  • It is statistically backed up that a cooler room will help you fall asleep faster
• No blue lights before bed
  • For one hour before bed, do not look at a phone, laptop, computer screen, TV, or anything that emits blue light
  • This gives you lots of time to prepare your next day for success too ;)
• Force wake up at alarm
  • This is mental strength - the millisecond you hear your alarm, you need to sit up and get ready for your day
  • This works wonders that cannot be put into words
• You sleep more than you think
  • Insomniacs tend to sleep significantly more hours than they self-report when studied
• Imagine
  • Let your mind drift. Create your own world before bed, and each night, expand in it
• Write down dreams
  • When you wake up in the morning, grab a pen and paper and write down as much as you can remember from your dreams
  • This builds up and will change your perspective of sleep 180 degrees
• Avoid doing non-sleep activity in bed
  • If your body associates bed = sleep, when you go to bed, you’ll end up asleep
• Clean room
  • Having a clean room means less dust, less smell, better sleep
• Sleep cycles
  • Your body sleeps in 1 hour 30 minute cycles. Time your alarm clock to line up with a cycle like this!

Good luck & feel free to ask any specific questions

if I’m not too sleepy it takes me a lot of time to fall asleep, all the while annoying thoughts race through my mind for hours

one solution that I’ve found that works for me is to get into a somewhat extreme schedule of going to sleep at around 8pm and waking up at around 4 am, this way, usually, by 7-8pm I’m already very sleepy and I fall asleep almost immediately

it’s kind of challenging to get into such sleep schedule though, but one method that I use is to do an all-nighter and then try to go to sleep the following day at around 5-6pm, wake up at 2am and then fall asleep the following evening at around 8pm and wake up at around 4am

this may take two or three days to get there, as most of the time I’m unable to resist the urge to go to sleep early, and it ends up being two or three sleep cycles before I’m able to gradually nudge my sleep cycle into the 8-4 direction

I’m not sure if this would work for other people, but for me it was wonderful to be honest: falling asleep takes like 5 minutes, and after waking up you feel awesome

You can try sleep hygiene.

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