Befriend sleep
For those of you who are not entirely sure on what insomnia is, here are few of the responses I got that let you know what insomnia is:
“Insomnia is the failure to fall asleep or stay asleep at night, causing sleep that is not refreshing. The reason insomnia is more qualitative is because it is defined by the quality of your sleep and how you feel after sleeping, rather than the number of hours slept.”
“Insomnia is when one has the inability to fall asleep.”
Coming from someone who suffers from insomnia, it can be very tiring. You are doing your homework when your eyes slowly start to feel heavy. You take that as a sign to wrap up for the day and get into bed. However, as you drag yourself into bed, this immense amount of energy appears within you from nowhere. You shut your eyes and try to ignore all that energy and all those thoughts. It has been an hour, and all you have done is tossed and turned and rustled your feet against the blanket. Another hour goes by and you are just laying there. Nothing new, it happens every day. Finally after hours of trying you fall asleep but only to keep waking up. Next day you wake up and carry on with your daily activities with a struggle as you are immensely fighting the sleep.
A misconception that several people have is that insomnia is the same for everyone that suffers from it, however, that is not true. For some people, falling asleep is easy. However, staying asleep is the difficult part. Another misconception is that some people believe that someone has insomnia if it takes them an hour or so to fall asleep. However, like mentioned above in that quote. Insomnia is not about how much sleep, or how long it takes for one to fall asleep, but in fact, it is how tired you wake up the next day, and how sleepy you are throughout the day.
A few tips that I would like to give:
- Do not get into bed and count how many hours of sleep you have left every half an hour. That stresses you out and increases your chances of not being able to fall asleep.
- Do not get into bed if you are not sleepy. Only get into bed and lay down if you have the intent to fall asleep.
- If you do get into bed and are not able to fall asleep after 20 minutes then go find something BORING to do without having the lights on bright.
- Associate your bed with sleeping and sleeping only. Do not eat or do fun activities or anything else on your bed.
- Using phones, laptops or watching TV right before going to sleep is not recommended. These are the things that contribute to staying awake and have a high intensity of light.
- Try to get in bed around a similar time every day and try to wake up at a similar time. This way you are creating a mental sleep clock in your head.
- Try having a warm bath before getting into bed. This way you are getting your body ready for sleep and letting your body know that it is sleep time.
- An activity that you can try doing to help you fall asleep is mindfulness meditation.
If you have tried all of this and nothing helps then I would suggest going counseling or start taking a low dosage of melatonin. Best to confirm with your doctor first. -
