Sleepless
Lifestyle tips and suggestions that worked for me during my struggles with bouts of sleep issues ( Nowhere close to insomnia or other major sleep-related/ anxiety issues).
“I’m going to get my 7 hours of sleep tonight!”, declaring this was a part of my daily night time ritual.
I would declare this religiously as I would go about my night routine.
I might have forgotten to eat, I might have forgotten to work, I might have forgotten to get out of bed at all on that day :), but I would never forget to declare this.
3 am would either see me having a full-blown tantrum that I was still awake or see me listlessly curled up, pondering on how difficult it was to get some sleep.
Tossing and turning, come nightfall, I would easily fall prey to the very thing that I strove to increase the quantity of during the day. Thoughts.
Elusive and accelerated, they would grip me tight with their manicured talons and swoop me up in their fearsome storms.
Minutes and hours would pass by before I realized that I had left this planet but had not reached the one that I intended to.
The ticking clock would increase my anxiety until I would feel like breaking the glass and grabbing hold of time.
These accelerated thoughts that I spoke of, were never of unicorns or rainbows. Food too did not help me out here.
They were almost always negative. Anxieties of yore would creep up. Fears that would be bubbling away just under the surface of the day would boil over and scald the night.
Sometimes, getting out of bed and penning those irksome fears down would help. Exhausted, I would fall into a fitful slumber full of dark dreams for a few hours. But I soon realized that this was not something that I could do every night.
I had to find a better solution for this.
So, being the Internet-savvy individual that I am, I searched the Internet for instructions to fall asleep easily, hoping that my fellow man would have broken this down and presented it step by step.
And oh yes! he had. I found many insightful articles and videos on relaxation techniques, routines to follow before bed and much more.
Propelled by the inspiration gathered with the above information, I began incorporating some of the suggestions in my life.
Here are some of my insights and experiences with the ones that helped me the most:
1. Limit your social media time before bed / Do not use any electronic devices before bed.
This piece of advice made a huge difference to the speed with which I fell asleep and also the quality of sleep that I would experience.
Even though I was conscious of the fact that the world and its inhabitants are not as happy as they get depicted on social media, somehow, I still fell prey to its evils.
The more I scrolled through my feed, thinking that I was in complete control of my emotions, the more I was actually giving up this control to my feed.
Comparisons started morphing into envy and anxiety became the norm for me. This would spill over into my nights, no matter how much I considered myself above such trivial things.
Limiting my time as well as scheduling and planning the time for social media went a long way in curbing my anxiety during the night.
Completely going off social media, is not the right option for a lot of us and we do not need to take such drastic measures to keep our emotions in check.
Sometimes, even our careers revolve around keeping up with the latest trends.
So, during the times when I find that I am going through bouts of sleep issues, I start limiting my time on social media during the day.
I indulge myself till the late afternoon or early evening but no later than that.
This prevents me from feeling completely cut off from the social networking world but it also does not crowd my mind at night.
After the last time that I check that particularly anxiety-inducing post, I do a lot of other activities such as reading, talking to others or indulging in a hobby. So, my brain doesn’t have it right at the foremost, when I go to bed.
I used to feel that watching an episode of Full House or any other relaxing comedy would make me wind down and improve my quality of sleep. After all, some laughter and good vibes should go a long way and give me the best sleep that I have ever experienced, right?
But I was wrong. I found that I usually end up binge-watching a few episodes in bed and somehow even though I used to feel happy and sleepy, the quick and blissful sleep that I was expecting never came.
Difficult though it was, I stopped relying on my phone to give me my much sought after relaxation time. Now, on days when I feel that I need some outside distraction to ease my mind, I turn to books or indulge in some light conversation.
We often feel that if we don’t distract ourselves with some forms of entertainment, we cannot escape from our thoughts and that we will be caught in our mind’s chokehold. But we need to remember that, we do not need external agents to keep our internal states under control. In trying to suppress and avoid our thoughts and feelings throughout the day through various distractions, we are just relenting our control and making it easier for them to attack us when we are more vulnerable.
2. The real meaning of sticking to a sleep schedule.
Sticking to a definite time that I would get into bed was not the toughest part for me. It was the sheer anxiety that I would get as I would try to force myself to drift off to sleep at my set time.
The amount of pressure that I was putting on myself by counting the hours of sleep that I would get if I fell asleep at that very moment and the calculations that were kept ready for each minute after that, were themselves the cause of my unhappiness.
Though it is not mentioned anywhere that we should force ourselves to drift off to sleep at the same time, I had gone overboard with this and was facing the negative effects that this caused.
Currently, I usually have a pretty standard sleep schedule that I stick to, but once in bed, I try not to keep track of the time and let my mind just lean into its magic.
3. Watch your thoughts throughout the day.
Practicing meditation and relaxation techniques a few hours before we go to bed is helpful. But I often find that every thought, right from the moment we wake up, to the moment we lay our heads down again, affects our experience with that night’s sleep.
I have about an hour’s commute to work and I find that whenever I spend it passively just plugged into some music, I drift off into a deep sea of thoughts with almost all of them leading up to a lot of negativity. I was living the adage, “An idle mind is a devil’s workshop”. This negative mood would fester in me, carrying me across the day attracting more and more negativity as I trudged on.
Having observed this trend, I consciously decided to be active during my commute. Now, I make it a point to listen to something constructive such as podcasts and audiobooks or even engage in conversation with my co-passengers. I take special care to ensure that I do not sit passively.
Watching our thoughts throughout the entire day, drawing a fine line between a few sprinkles of negative thoughts and an entire sea filled with them, processing our emotions as and when we feel them, really go a long way in lightening the load for our minds at night.
4. Feel productive / accomplished in our own eyes.
I find that on days when I binge watch Netflix the whole day, even if it is my day off, by the end of the day, feeling sluggish and groggy, I expect sleep to be just a minute away. Instead, what I receive is tossing and turning, disturbance and unease.
In my introspections, I realized that every day, I needed assurance that I had been productive. Growing either through a hobby or through my profession or some amazing breakthrough somewhere.
I realized this as I would be restless on days when there wasn’t much work for me to do. Or on days when I felt that I had goofed up at work or not delivered my best.
So now I try to not procrastinate or I try to consciously keep myself busy and complete whatever it is that I intended to, on that day so that I would feel satisfied with myself by its end.
For most of us, the idea of productivity is drilled into our minds and souls. Wherever we go, virtually or physically, being productive every single day is respected and associated with success.
The idea of having lost an entire day makes some of us feel anxious concerning our final goals.
Recognizing this and taking appropriate measures to satisfy this need for us to feel accomplished in our own eyes reduces some of the unspoken angst that we feel as the day draws to a close.
Well, these were the four main pieces of advice that helped me during my bad bouts. My bad bouts are nowhere near insomnia or other major sleep-related or anxiety issues. But they interfere with my overall quality of life and make it sometimes very difficult to go about my routines.
The effort to get a goodnight’s sleep varies for each person depending on the myriad agents preventing them from being in tune with the supposedly easy and involuntary requirements of their minds.
We need to carefully observe and try to understand what our obstacles are and then tweak and incorporate the different aids that are available. This is something that we need to do on our own and no one can help us with this. There are a lot of tools and information out there today, all we need to do is customize it to fit our needs.
I still grapple with bouts of sleeplessness more often than I like.
The reasons are different each time. Uncovering them and making a plan to overcome them, in themselves, create a sense of satisfaction of their own.
So the very fact that I know that I am fighting these issues, propels me just a bit more towards getting that restful, blissful sleep.
I hope to keep listening to my mind and body and stay in tune with the different aids available to help me improve the quality of my life.
I hope to keep trying to incorporate the outside to sustain my inside.
