I’ve gained insomnia over the course of my college career and now require 4 hours of lying awake/shuffling around/getting up and doing something else after I go to bed in order for me to actually sleep. This has caused a cycle of anxiety/depression/sleep deprivation in my life. I’ve gone to a therapist and a doctor that specialized in insomnia for over a year now and things have gotten worse, not better. I’ve also read everything that comes up within the first 5 pages of the google search “How to deal with insomnia” or “how to sleep better at night” and still I can’t sleep. I do hardcore insanity workouts 6 days a week, keep stress levels low throughout the day, and maintain a regular sleeping schedule but yet my mind and body goes crazy when it’s bedtime. In a perfectly cool room (67 degrees), my body gets too hot when I have the blanket on and gets too cold when I take it off…so much so that I have to adjust the coverage inch by inch every single night in order to get the perfect balance of hotness and coolness. It’s like my mind is sleepy and lazy during the daytime and at night it goes on overdrive and won’t shut up.
According to my therapist, issues like this are common to college students. How does one deal with this?
Sounds like you have a serious case and you may want to ask your doctor for a referral to a sleep clinic. If you are actually doing what is recommended then you may need more help than you can find on a website like this.
One possibility. Get tested for sleep apnea. The first test is simple. You sleep with a pulse oximeter on your finger – the same little clip you wear at the hospital. You hardly know its there.
If your oxygen levels are OK, you don’t do the next test. Simple.
Your regular doctor can screen you as a candidate and set up the test if its warranted.
Just get a hold of some jujube at the supermarket. I’ve had bouts with insomnia sometimes but if I eat a box of these fresh Chinese dates, I could barely keep my eyes opened.
I had pretty serious insomnia in graduate school. It was brought on by stress.
I agree with the advice to go get a sleep study if you can at a nearby hospital. That might help.
But here are some other things that helped me:
Are you working down to the moment before you go to sleep? If so, that might be stimulating your brain too much too close to bed. Your brain sometimes needs a wind down time before you sleep, so try to end any intense work activities a couple hours before you sleep. Instead, do calming activities that cue your bed that it’s almost time to sleep. Read a book (an actual physical book), listen to music, meditate.
There’s some research showing that electronic screens contribute to insomnia when used in bed - surfing the Internet or playing a game on your phone before bed might actually be keeping you awake. So try to eliminate that until you can identify the source of the insomnia.
Don’t do insanity workouts; do moderate workouts. It is possible to work out TOO much, and if you are already exercising 6 days a week the workouts don’t need to be insane.
Monitor what you eat before bed. Obviously don’t drink any caffeinated beverages before sleep - and what’s before will differ per person. When I was trying to battle my insomnia, I couldn’t drink anything caffeinated after about 2 pm or my sleep would be ruined. Alcohol and certain foods can also disrupt your sleep cycles. So pay attention that.
I’m also a person stymied by temperature, so my solution was to make it freezing in my room and then cover up with the blanket. You can use a box or oscillating fan turned on you to help simulate this.
Create a bedtime routine - a series of things that you do before bed to help your brain realize that you are going to sleep soon. You have to do it consistently over a period of nights, but eventually you will condition your body to recognize that routine as the precursor for sleep.
If you are lying in bed and you cannot sleep, don’t get up. Instead, use little tricks to try to make yourself go to sleep. My therapist advised counting backwards by 7 from like 100 (100, 93, 86…). That helped a little.
DON’T TAKE NAPS. Naps disrupt your normal sleeping patterns and make it difficult to fall asleep at night.
Don’t just create a regular sleeping schedule; make sure your entire schedule is relatively regular - getting up at the same time, too. When I was getting up regularly every day at 6 am to run, it was much easier to fall asleep quickly at 11 pm because I was super tired by then.
Now, as a 29-year-old, I contend with a completely different problem: the inability to stay awake past about 1 am.