Ask Lemmy

When I close my eyes and see my demons, I engage them in a staring contest and fall contentedly asleep.

Stop thinking about falling asleep. With your inner voice tell yourself you're going to stay up all night. Close your eyes, relax, lie still, and tell yourself that you're going to stay up all night; you'll pass out after a while.

Also invest in a high quality white noise generator or weighted blanket.

Breathing exercises, actuating that vagal nerve

Don't use your phone at night. If you absolutely have to, enable adaptive warm light (if there's such a feature on your phone), which gradually turns the white balance to warm in the evening. This is because staring at the screen will send the signals to your brain to wake up, especially the blue-ish spectrum of light, plus whatever content you're engaging with (news, social media, texts from friends) will make your mind occupied.

But again, best is to not use your phone at all.

Read a book. Pick a topic you're interested in, buy a book and just read before you sleep. Yes, I see the contradiction - an interesting book will make your mind occupied too. Yet I find that a book relaxes me in my own world, while on your phone you'll meet many different topics, lots of quick stimuli, maybe that's why. I don't know.

These strategies work for me.

Body Scan meditation exercise. https://youtu.be/BlWo7sqWLNk here is an example

Breathing exercises to steady your heart rate

Meditation to clear your mind

Ultimately, becoming wholly present so that your mind is at rest. A clear mind and consciousness will wrap you in a comforting blanket and sweep you off to Dreamland!

For those who like sounds while sleeping, I heartily recommend mynoise.net. It has amazing soundscapes... static noises, rainforest wildlife, medieval library, starship bridge... It is excellent for sleeping, adding some background noise, or enhancing the atmosphere of a DND session.

I am a chronic insomniac. At my worst I can average less than 90 minutes of sleep in a 24 hour period, which is actually very dangerous. Before bed I eat some bland protein (plain super firm tofu and a handful of almonds), never carbs, and I microdose either Indica or if that is not available, Indica based Delta 8. Microdose is the key word here. I take two deep puffs and that's it. Enough for a little head buzz but not enough to get high. Bundle up, close my eyes, and most of the time fall asleep for a solid 4-6 hours.

cuddle with big dog

Yellow zzzquil. The regular one works too but the yellow one is better.

Obviously it's person-dependent. I find what helps me most is turning on audio to something I actually want to listen to. That gets my mind off going to sleep. And I fall asleep instead of listening to the things I want to hear. So I've got a bunch of audiobooks from Audible. I've recently cancelled that, however. I've got so many, and plan to use the phone app Libby in conjunction with my local library. Also, I subscribe to a bunch of podcasts.

When I lie down I just set the timer to 30m or "end of chapter", and I rarely have to extend that.

I agree with what other people have said plus:

The bed should only be used for sleeping, when you wake up get out of bed and don't go back. Don't use your laptop or phone in bed, if you still have a tv - don't watch it in bed.

This helps set the situational subconscious expectation that the bed is for sleeping.

I went to the doctor and told them I had insomnia. Got diagnosed with depression. So now I take Seroquel and sleep ok. My point is to get a doctor's opinion to rule out a medical condition.

Exercise will control your circadian rhythm, set your metabolism on a more consistent routine, and help you sleep better. Endurance based exercises are best; cycling, swimming, running, rowing, etc. You need 1 hour every 3 days at a minimum in my experience. Don't think in terms of a week, just do it somewhere between daily and every 3 days no matter what. Even someone like me that has major chronic health problems from a broken neck and back manages to pull off this one. In fact, I fall apart and turn into a sleepless zombie if I fail to maintain my exercise routine. I'm likely one of the most sleep deprived people here. This works when nothing else does or is possible.

I have been practicing the 99 count down of breath. Each breath count down.
Slow down your breathing as you count. Your thoughts will drift off and that’s good, but come back to it as soon as you realize you stopped counting. I rarely get past 50. The more you practice the better you will get at it, as sleep likes routine.

I like to think of nostalgic memories.

Exercise

Antiques Roadshow.

I've found that I have to keep my hands off my body, the stimulation of being touched keeps me alert.

for me, i find background watching/ listening to history videos really effective. Not sure what the rationale there is, but that's how it goes.

If you have trouble sleeping in general, it might be a bad habits thing. Melatonin supplements can help to get you tired. 1mg before you go to bed is enough, if you try to relax and sleep. They don't do anything if you do stuff that keeps you awake however.

This particularly anything exciting like sports, listening to energetic music, watching tense movies, playing fast or demanding games etc. Avoid any such thing for at least two hours before you try to sleep.

5mg melatonin and 200mg L-Theanine works for me. I order from Thorne. I believe they are reputable.

Noise canceling headphones plus Brownian noise.

https://archive.org/details/brownnoise_202103

In my case Sennheiser hd450bt.

Turn off phone data, so only regular texts from VIP can break through DND.

Solitaire, crosswords or codewords app to sleep. Voyager with pagination on if you really want to read but have an end page.

As someone who is disabled my go too is a nice comfortable bed, my service dog by me, a weighted blanket which never new how amazing it helps my sleep. And my CPAP machine.

These help me sleep, oh also I have sleep as android help me track my sleeping patterns and play thunderstorms every night to drown out everything around me so my brain can relax

You know.. ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)

I had sleep issues for years, almost failed high school because of it and then I was late to my own graduation. Now I have a routine that serves me well: Wake up and go to sleep at the same time every day, no caffeine, no sugar at night, nightlight on my monitors at night, listen to boring audiobooks with a sleep timer, don't lay in bed watching TV.

Drugs hard core prescription sleeping pills. I'm sorry but if you're as desperate as I was and have tried everything then hard sleeping drugs typically with a benzodiazapine in it

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Previously I used the 4-7-8 method (take a deep breath for a 4-count, hold it for a 7-count, exhale for an 8-count). I did that until I fell asleep.

Recently I started deep breathing/exhaling (no counting) and it works just as well.

Turn on some video without commercials and something at a more or less constant volume, like Ancient Aliens or How It's Made. Set the sleep timer for 30 min. Turn the screen off if your TV supports it. Set the volume low/moderate. Get comfortable in bed in your favorite position, close your eyes, and listen to the video. I usually don't ever hear the sleep timer turn it off.

Whenever thoughts are too much for me, I try to focus my focus my eyes on the black presented whilst they're closed. Don't think about all the stuff that's bothering you, just focus on that bit of black, right there in front of you. keep focusing long enough, and it always sends me to sleep.

Course, I also take a muscle relaxer (or couple benedryl if I'm out) before bedtime and that shit helps immensely lol