Tips for falling asleep

What are some of your tips for falling asleep?

The last few nights I am now aware that I’m not getting to sleep. Laying there - waiting for heart rate to go down and then feel an “episode” and roll over - repeat. Welp another hour down. So getting junk readings

Just seeing if anyone has routines they follow etc while I stay up until I get exhausted.

I've only been doing therapy for 2 months and did not generally have any problems falling asleep but now with trying to acclimate to the mask falling asleep is hit or miss. Some of the tips I've been trying are:
No coffee or caffeine after 3 PM
Stop watching TV or using smart phone or computer 1 hour before bed time (heavy action or intense drama movies wire me up too much and depressing news stories worry me too much)
Reading for the last hour before bed
No after dinner snacking
I also take an over the counter sleep aid, at least for now until I accept the mask and the new normal

Haven't tried music yet....might help.

All this doesn't always work but It's early in the game.

Gary

Those are great suggestions from gwfl. A couple of other thoughts: try to get outdoors in the sun during the day for 30 minutes if you can, and get some exercise during the day (but not close to bedtime). And if the machine is bugging you, try setting it up outside your bedroom during the day or evening and use it while you watch TV or read. That will help speed up the process of getting used to it.

About getting the heart rate down: quite a few people find that a little simple meditation before they get in bed helps them to calm down. All you have to do is sit comfortably and notice your breathing. Thoughts will come into your head; you acknowledge them and then turn your attention back to your breathing. It can take a week or so to get the hang of it, but it might be worth trying.

I can't sleep easily without noise, but not nature sounds or music, I like talking. There's a podcast called "Sleep with Me" where the host drones on for more than an hour kind of stream of consciousness. His voice is soothing and there's rarely any sound that will disrupt sleep. I also listen to a few choice podcasts, and occasionally to NPR One (though mostly the news upsets me if I wake up and start paying attention). I don't like nature sounds (and anything with water makes me need to pee!) and I find "relaxation" music so repetitive it drives me up a wall.

My husband purchased the "Calm" app, and that has people reading stories. It helps him fall asleep although he stayed up for a while listening to a guy recite every variety of sheep and their characteristics.

Both of us have issues STAYING asleep. Most of the time, the voices can get me back to sleep pretty well. Occasionally, I put on a Hulu home rennovation show, and that puts me right out again.

I am a high school choral director...so music is constantly going on in my head...to go to sleep I can’t listen to music...but talk radio does it for me...my spouse is always asking what I am listening to...have no idea...just someone talking so music will cease in my head.

I have very little pain in the daytime, but various parts ache or twinge at night
--enough to scare the sandman away.
A couple of ibuprofen puts them down so I can sleep fairly well.

Number 1 is my most important item that usually seems to be the reason I cannot go to sleep. The other items on the list seem to alternate.

1. I start by consciously thinking about anything that has been running through my head for the day. Do I feel like there is anything unresolved that my brain keeps going back to when I try to sleep. If so...I let myself think about it for only 2 minutes with the idea being that I process it enough to make a decision to let it go for the night. Worst case, I tell myself I can continue with thought the next day.

2. I may turn an audio book on that I have limited interest in and set the sleep timer for 10 minutes. Nothing works better than thinking I need to stay awake and hear this. lol. The moment I try, I am out.

3. This one takes time, but I do a lot of meditation but this is usually my last resort. It takes time to truly learn to meditate and realize you are actually focusing and letting go of intruding thoughts and noise out of your head like you think you are. Most people think the first couple of times they do it, they were able to focus on just their breathing or whatever they chose, but in reality you realize somewhere in the hundreds of hours mark how it was truly going. Either way, daily practice with this can help greatly. I use it as a last resort though because you do not want to get in the habit of meditating to fall asleep, defeats the idea of why you are practicing it in the first place and can start to teach your mind some bad habits when practicing during the day.

I listen to audiobooks that I've heard a dozen or more times before - usually pop-fiction brain candy by an author I like read by a narrator that I like. I put the audio level just low enough that I can barely hear it. Since I already know the plot line, I don't have to very listen hard. If I wake up, I can listen in on where the plot is and instead of letting brain-weasels scurry on their exercise worry wheel, I'm listening to a plot I'm familiar with and sink back to sleep. Don't listen to something new or something that's got a high-action suspense vibe.

Good picks: Not in any particular order.

• Any of Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce novels. Start with Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.
• Any of Terry Pratchett's DiscWorld novels. Start with The Color of Magic. The entire Tiffany Aching series.
• Anything by Orson Scott Card. Start with the Alvin Maker series or his Ender Wiggin series.
• Kim Harrision's The Hollows series.
• Janet Evanovich - Start with the Stephanie Plum series or Fox and O'Hare series. Predictable in a good way. Funny.
• Deborah Harkness - The All Souls trilogy - Okay, it's a damned harlequin romance, fine, but the historic research is phenomenal.
• Frank Herbert - Dune - Long book with lots of plot twists. Not too much humor
• Neil Gaiman - Any of his books - Start with Good Omens.

Bad Picks: Just don't.

• F Scott Fitzgerals - The Great Gatsby - No single character in this book has any redeeming value, including the protagonist.
• Marion Zimmer Bradley - The Mists of Avalon - Interesting fiction to read once. Very. Slow. Plot. Narrator Davina Bradley's recording is not well normalized, so her volume at the beginning of a sentence is too loud, and at the end of a sentence is too soft. There is no easy volume setting for her, so you end up getting woken up every sentence beginning or you just can't hear the end of any of her sentences depending on where you set your volume.
• George Elliot - Middlemarch - Good grief, how did this ever get published, let alone get into the expected reading lists of so many school systems? Rowing a boat in the sand will get to your plot's destination faster than this tedium. That said, if you're looking for boring, this is a great boring book.
• Anything by Garth Nix. Total downer.

Chris

I, too, use the Calm app, have for years. I restart it when I wake up during the night which happens anywhere from 2-4 times. Sometimes just a timed meditation (soothing music sounds), sometimes one of the sleep stories. My husband is partial to the one about the breeds of sheep too!