<p>I'm really paranoid at night so I can't just fall asleep either... but leaving the TV on with the volume low helps me out. And I usually tune into Nick at Nite, but that's probably just a personal preference.</p>
<p>Depending on how serious the sleep difficulty is, you seriously may need medical attention. My son has had trouble sleeping all his life. He even had a sleep study done & the test confirmed that he was not getting enough REM sleep. Since about May, he's been on 25mg/night of Trazadone + 300mcg Melatonin & it's helped quite a bit with him falling asleep within about 30 minutes after lying down (rather than after tossing & turning for hours) & waking a bit less exhausted. He has been working with the docs to get this far--the most helpful one has been the allergist rather than the sleep specialist (I know, ironic).
HImom</p>
<p>I have trouble sleeping often, especially during the times when I actually <em>need</em> sleep. I never had a problem until I started high school and the anxiety of getting good grades sortof hit me like a brick wall. Freshman year second semester exams I couldn't fall asleep before the 2nd day, and I ended up taking 2 exams with just 1.5 hours of sleep. COFFEE is your friend in these situations. :D But since then, I have "sleep anxiety", where I can't fall asleep because I'm worried about not being able to fall asleep.</p>
<p>The only thing that works for me is actually being tired. Tomorrow's the first day of school so I'll probably get like zero sleep tonight, but that's OK because tomorrow night I'll fall asleep at like 10:30 or 11:00 and get a full night's sleep (well, as close as I'll ever get). </p>
<p>I will occasionally take NyQuil, mainly on exam nights. I take a dose around 9:30 and fall asleep at 10:00 and wake at 7:00. If I didn't before an exam, I would fall asleep around 5:00 and get 2 hours of sleep. If you do this, do NOT take it at like 7:00 hoping to get 12 hours of sleep. THIS WILL ONLY MAKE YOU MORE TIRED. Getting more than what you're used to doesn't "revive" you, it just makes you groggy.</p>
<p>I never needed to try to fall asleep, unless there are curfews, like there were in my summer program (and in which I stayed in bed for a long time without sleeping). I never have a schedule - I just collapse to the floor when my body decides that it wants to sleep. And yes, sometimes I do sleep on the floor because I never try to control it.</p>
<p>I like to stretch before bed, or if I'm in bed and I can't relax I tense all my muscles one at a time and relax them...also, background noise helps me so I leave my fan on (a less ghetto version of this is a white noise machine). If something is bothering your mind you can try journaling (yeah, I'm a weenie, I do touchy-feely things like that lol). </p>
<p>Those are more general-sleep ideas though, is your problem more of just having your sleeping pattern out of whack? You might just go to school and let your body sort it out...you'll be tired for the first few days, but nothing exciting happens then anyway.</p>
<p>NPR and fun thoughts.</p>
<p>sheeps ughhhh i once counted up to 40,000 + (i can't remember) sheeps before. but I was counting really fast near the end. It took hours. it's not a good method in my opinion</p>
<p>Daydreaming usually doesn't help me, because I'm really imaginative, and I end up coming up with all of these strange, interesting scenarios that I enjoy so much that I keep on adding and adding to them, until it's 2 in the morning and I'm dead tired....lol</p>
<p>What I usually do is I just close my eyes and try not to think of anything except how tired I am...just sort of close your mind, I guess. Most of the time, I'm too tired to do more than read a few passages of a bible until my head is drooping...</p>
<p>AP Campbell's Biology works amazing. Read two pages and you'll be out like a baby.</p>
<p>If you want to go to sleep at 11 pm, then do this:</p>
<p>-at 10 pm, turn off ALL of the lights in your room and close your door, so that no outside light bothers you (*really important)
-grab your ipod or Mp3 player and blast the volume to your favorite song and let the CD player go to SHUFFLE.
-lie on your back and relax (and try not to think about the events of the day or what you have to do tomorrow)</p>
<p>You'll be asleep by 11.</p>
<p>Can you really sleep that way Rbase? I get up and jumping around when my favorite song. I put my favorite songs on Alarm, and my Ipod plays into my speakers. Gets me up. (Sometimes.)</p>
<p>I have a really boring book (Roger Penrose - The Emperor's New Mind) that I read when I really want to sleep. It's just so dense that it makes me nod off.</p>
<p>This will probably sound very sad, but during the school year it helps to me fall asleep knowing I finished my homework. All of it. I feel like a dork sometimes but somehow just collapsing into my bed after a hot shower is like a small slice of heaven. Of course going to sleep at 3 am, regardless, is like a piece of heaven. ;)</p>
<p>Just grab that thick Critique of Pure Reason from ur shelf and start reading. I assure u the abtruseness of it will be enough to put u to sleep and even if u don't fall asleep u get smarter. :)</p>
<p>However i seriously can not think of not sleeping reading through the text.</p>
<p>Sleeping pills. :D</p>
<p>Drink milk. It contains chemicals needed for the production of a neurotransmittor which induces sleep.</p>
<p>What helps me sleep?</p>
<p>Getting my homework done before 1:00am and being satisfied with how I studied for tests. I'll never be able to sleep if I wasn't sure if I studied enough for a test. Homework is getting to my health. lol</p>
<p>It's really only REM sleep that's beneficial. A study had the experimenters wake up the subjects just before REM sleep settled in and made them sleep again, so these people got non-REM sleep. And they acted as if they didn't sleep at all.</p>
<p>Now, how to trigger REM sleep. I dunno...</p>