15 ms·
Thinking of yourself as an insomniac may be a part of the problem
- jchanimal 9y agoYes. Telling myself it was not a big deal led me to crave the 3am wake-ups as an opportunity for writing some of my most fluid code. Now I know the door to productivity is clearing my sleep debt and developing the kind of surplus to where there is no such thing as early. Speaking of, it's past my bedtime...
- cryptoz 9y agoIf you wake up at night do not look at the time. It does not matter. It will only serve to hurt you. Just close your eyes and relax and never ever look at the time. The sky is dark and your alarm didn't go off and that's all you need to know.
- mayneack 9y agoSpeaking personally as someone who usually gets enough sleep, I'd much rather wake up of my own accord than by alarm. If I wake up within an hour of my alarm, I just get up.
- john_moscow 9y agoTry a sunrise simulator alarm. It will gradually turn on the light 20-40 minutes before the wakeup time, relying on your body to pick it up and wake up more naturally.
- joering2 9y agoI found big difference in the way my sleep goes, if I leave the phone outside my bedroom, ie. in the kitchen. If my phone is even on silence mode but on the night stand, I wake up and want to check on it immediately.
- avh02 9y agoPersonally solved this years ago - turn off Wi-Fi was data when I head to bed, that way only calls (usually urgent) wake me up, sms's aren't usually a bother. Only turn it on once I'm up in the morning.
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y agoThis is brilliant, I'm surprised phones don't have this built in.
- avh02 9y agoa lot do as "do not disturb" but i've found them to be annoying in one way or another (e.g: blinking LED in a dark room, or applications not abiding or whatever) so, I take the shotgun approach and kill all data.
- sundvor 9y agoSure, no big deal. Adjacent HN article https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16954079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16954079 . `Health dangers of sleep deprivation: "If you're not sleeping enough, "you will be both dead sooner, and the quality of your (now shorter) life will be significantly worse"`.
- paublyrne 9y agoWhat I understood the authors point to be was not that missing sleep is no big deal, but that focussing on it being a big deal amplifies the insomnia itself, while being relaxed about the need for sleep allows you to sleep more easily.
- DrPhish 9y agoThis is exactly the Zen moment that fixed my lifelong insomnia: lying in bed relaxed with my eyes closed, even if I'm not asleep, leaves me feeling worlds better in the morning than fretting about not being able to sleep. It's something that happened when I forgot about it completely. Once I realized I could literally just lie in bed for 8 hours and be OK, I was able to let go. It's like a trap that closes tighter about you the more you struggle, and releases if you allow yourself to relax Once I really got that, sleep became regular and uninterrupted
- phire 9y agoMy mum always taught me this, and I've always found it works. Simply lying/relaxing in bed for an hour or two can leave you feeling surprisingly refreshed.
- anonytrary 9y ago> Lying in bed, relaxing and not focusing on not being able to sleep. That sounds a lot like meditation! Let your thoughts flow, do not grasp onto them, simply lay there and breathe. It really does help. I have been doing this for the past two weeks and it has helped me realize that my "sleeping problems" are mostly self-created. I found my biggest problem during bedtime was always rooted in thinking. In hindsight, it makes total sense that training myself to let go of my thoughts was the solution. The short term gratification of interesting thought is outweighed by the long term benefits of healthy sleep.
- collyw 9y agoI have started meditation with one of the aims being to improve my sleep. I still have problems sleeping, but it helps a lot when you are able to let thoughts go without ruminating on them.
- corobo 9y agoI like to think of meditation as garbage collection for the brain. If you don't do it at a specific time to suit you, your brain will do it at the only time it's idle (when you're trying to fall asleep)
- bernardino 9y agoDefinitely agree that our way of thinking of sleep plays a critical role in how we sleep, i.e. "To fall asleep naturally, as opposed to just crashing into sleep when our wings melt, or knocking ourselves out with alcohol or drugs, we must be willing to do two things. We need to lose our mind – to surrender our waking sense of self. And we need to invoke sleep" from this article entitled "Falling for sleep: When wakefulness is seen as the main event, no wonder so many have trouble sleeping. Can we rekindle the joy of slumber?" on Aeon (https://aeon.co/essays/the-cure-for-insomnia-is-to-fall-in-love-with-sleep-again https://aeon.co/essays/the-cure-for-insomnia-is-to-fall-in-l...).
- keithnz 9y agofunny how in the top stories in HN at the moment there is another article about the dangers of not getting enough sleep. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16954079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16954079 though maybe don't read it if you want to try this one.
- ItsMe000001 9y agoThe article here is not about that less sleep is okay, but that worrying about it is counterproductive because it keeps you awake even longer. I thought the headline alone already pretty much shows the core of the argument. It does not say "It's not a big deal", but "Tell yourself it’s not a big deal". It's about your mental state, not about the sleep duration.
- keithnz 9y agomy point is, it's hard to relax and not worry about it when you read another article that says, you are gonna die early :)
- cdelsolar 9y agoYeah, but that's an "in the long run" type of thing. You're not going to die early from a couple nights of bad sleep. Take it one day at a time and say "I'll be fine tomorrow if I don't sleep, I've been perfectly functional before on little to no sleep"
- ItsMe000001 9y agoHow I solved it: Work from home and get up whenever you want. Whenever I had an episode of wakefulness, usually between around 2 and 4 am, I would get up, watch a video, and get back to sleep, (perfect external aluminum) blinds fully closed, and sleep until 10 or 11 am. So I would always get a a full amount of sleep. I recovered from (long-term very low-dose) chronic heavy metal poisoning (treated with chelators) for years, turned out that was the source of my occasional sleep issues. During the long excretion phase (years) the problems got pretty bad, so I got to test what the best methods are pretty thoroughly. That means you have to find a way to have no time pressure before noon and be able to use that time for sleep. Then worrying stops. I found that interruptions, while inconvenient, don't matter, your brain gets used to it and adjusts. What matters is that you get the full amount of 7-8 hours. How do I know? The last hour of sleep is different - if you get that last hour or not makes a big difference. It was all a lot more intense for me for a few years so I could get a good look at sleep phases. The worst one is the initial 1-3 hours, and the worst time is ~3 am. When you have issues such as my heavy metal problem that's the nightmare "I have cancer I'm going to die" hour (anxiety/panic attack, no factual basis). Somebody else asked about just this here, I don't want to tell them I suspect they may have a problem similar to what I had... base on my experience that is a sign that something is not right, chemically, in the brain.
- FrozenVoid 9y agoIts a big deal. Sleep deprived people make mistakes and cause more accidents than normal. There is a minimum need to sleep and the body will try to take a nap, microsleep or just give up(blackout)...and some people consider it okay.
- ledriveby 9y agoRead the fine article please.
- FrozenVoid 9y agoRead this fine article and stop blindly downvoting facts. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16954079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16954079
- pdpi 9y ago> stop blindly downvoting facts. The point is that those facts are irrelevant, in much the same way that it's irrelevant to bring up that tomatoes are botanically a fruit when discussing fruit salad. Nowhere does the article say sleep deprivation isn't bad for you in myriad ways. Rather, it's making the point that, for people who are sleep deprived due to insomnia, stressing out about your lack of sleep compounds the problem, by making it even harder to fall asleep. So one way to solve insomnia-related sleep deprivation is precisely to not make a big deal of it, and remove the anxiety component.
- FrozenVoid 9y ago``So one way to solve X is precisely to not make a big deal of it, and remove the anxiety component.`` Weight gain? Cancer? School shootings? Climate Change? Air Pollution? Worrying all about that bad stuff is counter-productive and causes stress which makes it worse... With this genius method they all can be solved by removing the 'anxiety component'(also known as reality), therefore making the problem go away..eventually, you just need to stop caring about the problem!
- kneel 9y agoBuying a foam mattress topper and high quality pillows was the best thing I ever did for my sleep. I went years without before housesitting for a friend and realizing how much better I slept.
- pizza 9y agoI'm interested in getting a new pillow. What makes a high quality pillow a high quality pillow? Any recommendations?
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y agoI was always against the idea of memory foam pillows. I thought they'd be too hot, they would feel "odd", they'd swallow my face and suffocate me... To cut a long story short we stayed in an AirBnB a few months back that had them and they were an absolute revelation. My wife and I ordered some there and then and they were waiting for us when we got home. You can pay a fortune for a name brand one but ours are just no-name pillows from Amazon. I think the pillows in the AirBnB were from IKEA, IIRC.
- marpstar 9y agosomething that's always worked for me: slow your breathing and take medium-deep breaths while continually telling yourself nothing but "I am breathing deeply". I'm usually out in 5 minutes.
- arikr 9y ago100%. The book that helped with my insomnia (cured it, actually) more than anything else I tried (incl over the counter sleeping pills, CBT, etc) was "acceptance and commitment therapy." Specifically the book "The Sleep Book."
- coltnz 9y agoThis has worked a treat for me so passing it on. 1. Make a list of the 3 things to do tomorrow. 2. Pick a scene from your life of some length that you remember with great detail and with some fondness. Start playing it back in you head, let you mind tell it as linearly or non linearly as it wants. I have a poker hand where I made an apparently crazy call [Not really, there was massive pupil dilation by an amateur]. It's a good candidate because of length and some vivid moments in the hand with big characters involved. 3. got to 2. If you're conscious of repeating, appreciate your relaxed state.
- quickthrower2 9y agoAlso cut down on the caffeine, screen time, etc.
- taneq 9y agoNo-one likes to hear this but it's true. Cut out caffeine in the afternoons (it has a ~6hr half-life in your system) and install F.lux or something to lower the colour temperature of your monitors. (Anecdatum: When I want to stay up late, I turn off F.lux and it adds probably 2 hrs before I start feeling tired.)
- quickthrower2 9y agoThanks for the F.lux recommendation
- BozeWolf 9y agoThere is absolutely no proof flux or night mode works. Night mode is not a substitute for less screen time.
- gnulinux 9y agoNight mode does absolutely nothing to me
- maccard 9y agoPlenty of people know this, and do it, and still struggle. I limit myself to maximum of 2 coffees a day, no later than 3pm, and no phone/games after 10:00 and I still find myself lying in bed awake at 3am regularly
- GoToRO 9y agoBecause it's not enough to do one thing, you have to do all the things: exercise, go outdoors, socialize, live. It's like a chain: it only works when all the links are intact. A 99.99% chain is as good as a 1% chain.
- pizza 9y ago
- ToonDoom 9y agoI love this article. It makes so much sense, applies to other areas and bucks the current trend or micro managing yourself. Imagine what telling someone who suffers from anxiety that they suffer from anxienty does!
- topmonk 9y agoI've found that if I get up and write down my thoughts, afterwards I'll be able to sleep. I just write whatever I'm thinking at the moment. Sometimes I end up with some very interesting insights by doing this. After an hour or so, I feel a change in my mental state where I become more significantly more relaxed and less stressed. When I go back to bed I sleep like a baby.
- wastedhours 9y agoI'd advise to always have a notebook next to your bed in any situation - for getting thoughts out of your head in a general sense like this, writing down work ideas [I always get sparks of inspiration just before falling asleep], writing down dreams if that sort of thing interests you.
- thisisit 9y agoI just had this insight yesterday! And now there is a thread on this. I have been trying meditation/mindulness for a while. So, I have been trying to meditate before sleeping, relaxing my muscles. And sometimes it worked, sometimes it dint. Yesterday I had an epiphany that I might be grasping for relaxation while trying to follow my mindful and muscle relaxation exercises. So, all I did was forget about muscle relaxation and just laid there, falling asleep in 5 minutes.
- jventura 9y agoCheck this other thread that someone posted above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16671944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16671944 It talks exactly about what you are saying in your 2nd paragraph. Similarly, sometimes it works for me, sometimes I focus too much on checking if I'm relaxed and I cannot sleep..
- onetimemanytime 9y agoWake up 4 hours after sleeping. If I tell myself to just stay in bed, I fall asleep again and get a full rest. So, there's some truth to it.
- Too 9y ago"non-complaining poor sleepers" – who sleep badly but don’t define themselves as insomniacs – don’t suffer the high blood pressure commonly associated with severe sleeplessness. Meanwhile, “complaining good sleepers” – who get enough shut-eye, but are heavily invested in their alleged insomnia – were essentially as tired, anxious and depressed as those who genuinely didn’t sleep. Causation vs correlation? This could easily be the other way around, maybe it's because they don't feel good they complain about it...
- coldtea 9y agoThe key is that the non-complaining people also "sleep badly" (and fewer hours). So whether they complaining insomniacs don't feel good and thus complain, or complain and thus don't feel good, we at least know that it's not the sleeplessness (as it is common to both groups).
- im3w1l 9y agoHow much sleep someone needs varies a lot. Maybe the non-complainers simply didn't need that much sleep?
- coldtea 9y ago>How much sleep someone needs varies a lot. From everything I've read (at the medical documents/research, not the lifehack level) it doesn't vary much. It varies only a little with age and the presence (or not) of a gene, but it's the same across such groups (e.g. not some individual organism preference). Those that sleep less simply damage their body, and will pay for it later and with reduced functioning (compared to enough sleep) -- it's not that they actually "need less". Same for those that sleep more. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12683469 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12683469 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12603781 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12603781 Most researchers now believe that the relationship between sleep duration and mortality (link is external) is best described as a U-shaped curve with the right side of the “U” considerably higher. That is, less than 5 1/2 hours of sleep is associated with some degree of increased mortality. However, sleeping beyond 9 or 10 hours per night, is associated with a markedly increased mortality
- username3 9y agoHow to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less 781 points by rhapsodic 35 days ago | 190 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16671944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16671944
- lancefisher 9y agoI started doing this after I read that article last month, and it has worked wonders for me. I was surprised it worked so well.
- Double_a_92 9y agoDon't force yourself to sleep. Worst that can happen is that you are tired the next day.
- tallanvor 9y agoThis is probably good advice for people who have occasional insomnia. But if you have insomnia more regularly, especially for days at a time, or you consistently don't feel rested despite believing that you've slept, you really should try to talk to a doctor - not to ask for sleeping pills (although that may be a result), but to start the process of finding out if there's a larger problem that can be treated. I deal with delayed sleep onset, which is livable - it just means that it takes me longer to fall asleep, and occasional insomnia on top of it wouldn't be a big deal. But I also suffer from a REM-related parasomnia which apparently has never been officially described or named, so instead gets stuck in the "Other parasomnias - unspecified" bucket. Basically once I fall asleep, the NREM phases look perfectly normal, but once I enter REM, I suffer multiple arousals (basically I wake up, but for too short a period to be aware that I'm awake). So rather than going through REM phases, I spend that time waking up multiple times per minute. Unfortunately so far nobody has been able to suggest a treatment. Gabapentin helps a little, but it's far from a solution.
- xab9 9y agoI had been recommended agomelatine (in the form of Valdoxan) for my anxiety, but it's primarily a sleep regulator. I'm not a doctor, don't know much about medicine, but maybe it's relevant, dunno.
- tallanvor 9y agoAgomelatine is being studied as a sleep regulator since it acts on melatonin receptors, but it's primarily used as an antidepressant. Interestingly, I see that there's no tapering needed when discontinuing this, so it may not hurt to ask my doctor if it's worth trying.
- noir_lord 9y agoI take gabapentin for nerve damage (I have a spinal condition) and amytryptline because it helps with spasms. I've slept better since I've been taking the amytrypline though it wasn't taken for insomnia (which I've had since I was 17).
- DanielBMarkham 9y agoIt's 3am in the states, and I'm at the computer. I slept for five hours, from 9 until 2. I was woken up by timer that was accidentally set to turn a TV on. After lying in bed relaxing for an hour or so, I got up. Started working. This happens quite a bit, and it used to bug me a lot. I finally made my peace with it, not because of any Zen moment (Sorry DrPhish), but because there was nothing else to do. It is what it is. So I stopped complaining, I stopped worrying about it, I stopped trying to figure out if I was getting the right sleep or not. Instead I sleep when I'm tired. If I wake up and can't go back to sleep? I work. Eventually my body will catch up with whatever it wants to do. I work for myself. If I want to sleep, I sleep. This is one of the benefits of being self-employed. On the plus side, you can get a lot of stuff done in the middle of the night. I do my best creative work when I'm up in these dark-of-the-night hours. It's quiet, it's peaceful, and I have time to think about and consider things instead of feeling like I'm on a treadmill. I really enjoyed this article. It's interesting that I arrived at the same place without realizing what I was doing. I'm going to save it to share with my friends next time I hear them complaining. :)
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago> It is what it is. Sounds pretty Zen to me. :)
- drdeadringer 9y agoThis reminds me of "second sleep" from medieval times.
- mrweasel 9y agoWas there ever other sources for the second sleep, other than "At Day's Close"?
- freehunter 9y ago"He knew this, even in the horror with which he started from his first sleep, and threw up the window to dispel it by the presence of some object, beyond the room, which had not been, as it were, the witness of his dream." Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge (1840) "Don Quixote followed nature, and being satisfied with his first sleep, did not solicit more. As for Sancho, he never wanted a second, for the first lasted him from night to morning." Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote (1615) "And at the wakening of your first sleepe You shall have a hott drinke made, And at the wakening of your next sleepe Your sorrowes will have a slake." Early English ballad, Old Robin of Portingale The Tiv tribe in Nigeria employ the terms "first sleep" and "second sleep" to refer to specific periods of the night Taken from (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783). The article references "At Day's Close", sure, but it also references many other sources.
- xab9 9y agoI believe that the article is right about how the labels we create for ourselves start to define us, to many of us the real question is how to stop caring, or being afraid, or being anxious though. You can tell someone to stop fretting about something - but probably a good psychologist is a better way to hear these pieces of advice, not to mention how we are bombarded by advertisments and beliefs in our everyday life that go against the message of "don't fret".
- serpix 9y agoAfter two burnouts nowadays if insomnia sets in I just turn the alarm off, accept that it is one of those nights and relax. If that won't work due to racy thoughts I just get up and do something. The next day is immediately cleared from appointments, duties, plans and exercise. Good sleep is priority 1 over work, exercise and even food. I'd rather be unemployed than being a walking zombie ever again.
- teekert 9y agoI hear from many people that they have problems sleeping, I have never ever had that problem. Imho the big difference was almost always them telling me: they fret about not being able to sleep vs. me telling them: I can truly enjoy just getting into bed and I sometimes wrestle to not fall asleep because that feeling of being tired and hitting the bed is just so nice I want to extend the time I experience it... The wrestle is always useless because sleep comes very fast. Even when I don't fall asleep immediately I can enjoy taking the time to think about work or plan the next day or think about future vacations or what I'm going to do to my home server when 18.04 comes out or the latest episode of Isaac Arthur [0], there are many nice things to think about with little else on the mind. It's almost a shame sleep disrupts my train of thought sometimes :) I'm a bit of a fretter myself but never about sleep. [0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g
- underwater 9y agoMy wife is the same. I am more of a night owl and my ideal lie-in-bed time happens in the morning. Unfortunately society seems to frown on doing that.
- tjoff 9y ago> and that even severe sleep deprivation poses no real risk of poor performance, health troubles or early death. I struggle to see how anyone that has or even seen someone with severe sleep deprivation can say this with a straight face. You stop functioning as a human. You can not think straight, and it's not "oh, silly me I forgot I needed to serialize access to this function" kind of thinking, but more like - "oh, have I always had foot on my left leg?". Yes, often stress of not sleeping is the reason for not being able to sleep. I just have a hard time imagining that I could convince someone with sleep problems to actually believe that it isn't bad. Yet people in this thread seem to agree... So I might be wrong on that. My mother used to work odd hours and always maintained that it isn't that bad to just rest rather than sleep if you're unable to. I truly wished I believed that but my experience has been quite the opposite. I could just as well run a marathon as lying awake in bed and I'd be equally exhausted the next day. This is also in collision with something that has worked well for me, just get up if you can't sleep. Do not condition your brain that it is OK to lie down in bed awake. That's a habit you don't want to get into, better get up and do something for about an hour and try again. It sucks and it's hard to motivate yourself to get up 03:30 in the morning because you want to be able to sleep in the future, but in the long run it is worth it. And that advice (echoed by many) is quite in collision course with the advice here. Not saying that either is "right", but for me lying in bed awake just does not work. And I've really tried to commit to it.
- jhasse 9y ago> but for me lying in bed awake just does not work. Maybe because you're subconsciously thinking "I wont function as a human tomorrow" the whole time ;)
- mamcx 9y agoI already accept that I have bad sleep patterns and not worry about it, but still I get "brain-fog" most of the days and perform poorly. Wish to know how solve that!
- gameshot911 9y ago
- tomthe 9y agoI always worried about not getting enough sleep until I started tracking it: I realized that I never sleep the "good 8 hours". I am completely fine with a bit less than 6 hours. This knowledge helped me stay calm while trying to sleep.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- 2sk21 9y agoI don't know if I am alone in this but I find that listening to audio books puts me right to sleep within a few minutes. There is something soothing about listening to a steady spoken voice on a moderately interesting subject, typically some scientific field other than my own.
- dzhiurgis 9y agoSame, but podcasts. There have been days where it wouldn't work and I go thru 1-2hrs of them, but generally they work very well.
- sourceless 9y agoA couple years ago I was diagnosed with DSPD (delayed sleep phase disorder) after several months of non-24 hour sleep cycles. The advice the specialist gave me was similar: don’t worry if you can’t sleep. If that means you have to get up and do something, do that and try again later. If you’re relaxed enough just laying there, do that. I’ve not been able to rid myself of the timing issues that plague my sleep, but my secondary insomnia is completely gone, and most of it was because of my attitude toward sleep (and a little because of better sleep hygiene lengthening the cycle time of my delayed phase).
- lisper 9y agoSometimes I can be asleep even though I feel as though I'm awake. I know because my wife will wake me up because I've been snoring.
- kylesellas 9y agoI've had this exact problem especially on nights before important or stessful events the next morning such as job interviews. At first, the anxiety of the interview is what keeps me up. Then, as it gets later and I check the clock, I get stressed about the lack of sleep I'll have the next day. Sometimes getting up, going to another room and getting a glass of water before returning to bed and resetting the process has helped.
- dev_256 9y agoEnded in psychiatric ward because it was “not a big deal”.
- Moodles 9y agoI think accepting the situation for what it is also helps in other circumstances. E.g. you're in the gym and about to work very hard on a few sets. Just accept there's no getting out of it, and you have to do it. Then it's not so bad. Climbing a mountain? abandon all hope and just get on with it. Same with work. You just accept it, rather than resist it.
- philbarr 9y agoI recently fixed my sleep problems by getting some earplugs and learning how to use them properly (there's a technique). I couldn't believe the difference it made.
- Waterluvian 9y agoWith my old job I would often get really frustrated as I saw the potential hours of sleep disappear to insomnia. And I bet it was a feedback loop. With my new job I work from home. So I no longer fear having to drive or be socially present on terribly little sleep. As a result I'm so much more relaxed when I go to bed and the times I lose sleep are becoming quite rare. When I was young I thought that a job fitting my lifestyle was maybe 5% of the perk. But today I believe it's probably 50% of my compensation.
- prmths 9y agoOne of the top stories on HN right now. "Health dangers of sleep deprivation" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16954079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16954079 And then we have this. Do journalists get together to troll their readers with clickbait?
- monktastic1 9y agoI don't see any trolling. This article makes clear that there are health dangers, but why it's important not to worry about them.
- lunulata 9y agoRight... but for actual insomniacs this advice blows. Get diagnosed one way or the other and avoid self diagnosis.
- jm__87 9y agoAs someone who recently got over insomnia, this is actually really great advice for insomnia (assuming your sleep issues are not due to sleep apnea or restless leg syndrome).
- mancerayder 9y agoWhat about sensitivity to noise? The guy upstairs walking around in an old uninsulated house causes thumping which instantly wakes me up. A rug didn't help. Next door, my bedroom is next to stairs where stompers stomp up and down the stairs morning and night. Earplugs and noise machines don't help. While thinking causes me to remain awake, sensitivity to disturbances causes me to wake up. It's been a sort of punishment my entire life, made worse because no one takes me seriously or cares, since they cannot relate.
- dominotw 9y agoI moved to a highrise cos I had the same problem. Plus something about having a doorman made it easier to fall asleep. I can totally relate to ppl not taking it seriously.
- pasbesoin 9y agoI was afraid it would be worse. In part, no matter what something "should" be, I seem to end up with the worst version of it. I moved to my own house -- all to myself. To end up with the loudest neighbors yet. Car stereo subwoofers "thudding" through my sealed up house, along with indifferent law enforcement. I didn't want a huge drive, nor to be socially isolated (hah!). I bought into what was supposed to be a modest but nice community. I didn't have the money for a snobby one where law enforcement has a big stick up their butt. In retrospect, on that point, be very careful about the community. If I hadn't become so afraid of apartment/condo neighbor noise (after repeated experiences), I could have afforded a more upscale one. Or buy out in the sticks with enough land to physically keep neighbors at bay. But then, of course, you have the challenge of Internet connectivity -- among other things.
- mancerayder 9y agoI'm going to have to be honest here and say that moving to an upscale neighborhood lowers the chances of thumping noise / party noise type environments. In NYC at least, the higher end areas have snootier people and police who are more active. As a super light sleeper and tech geek who needs to concentrate, I have to ally myself with the snooty.
- furgooswft13 9y agoSomehow having boring HN stories/comments to read, or mind-numbing twitch streams to stare at on my phone in bed exhausts my mind way faster than staring at the ceiling and churning.
- taeric 9y agoSo, imposter syndrome can help break you out of bad groups too? :)
- kingkawn 9y agoI think most of the syndromes that people suffer from are needlessly reinforced by treating them as an aspect of one’s fixed identity
- carapace 9y agoLay down on something not too hard or soft, close your eyes and relax. RELAX: scan your body with your interior perception and notice where tension is and then relax it. There are books and courses and online videos for relaxation techniques. Even if you don't actually fall asleep, you will get rest. Most of us burn calories maintaining muscular tension that has no real purpose. It is hard to sleep unless you are physically relaxed. But again, even if you don't actually fall asleep you will still be rested when you get up, if you relax. If you cannot make this work for any reason go see a doctor. Hope I don't sound like a jerk, but this is from my personal experience. I think most (but not all) people who have trouble sleeping are just doing it wrong as ridiculous as that sounds. Ooo! One other tip: Darkness. The darker it is the better you will sleep. Put black electrician's tape over all those LEDs and get thick curtains, whatever it takes. (In re: noise, no advice. I'm a city kid and I find it easier to fall asleep with some traffic and sirens. YMMV.)
- jm__87 9y agoAs someone who recently completed CBTI for my insomnia, I can't recommend this approach more. I sleep quite well now. Definitely combatting poor attitudes regarding sleep is very important.