Combining the dilemmas of the time change thread and the waking up in the middle of the night thread!
You can’t fall asleep upon going to bed (or you aren’t tired to go to bed) OR you wait up in the middle of the night OR just earlier than you like. What is your strategy? Punt the sleep? Get productive?
Do you get up and clean the house? Read? Exercise? Do you raid the refrigerator? Pull up work emails?
I rarely have trouble going to sleep. In bed by 10 (sometimes reading) most nights. If I’m not tired to go to bed, I’ll probably just read extra.
If I wake up in the middle of the night (has happened more recently because there was a lot of life stuff going on) I need to break the “over thinking” cycle - get my mind to NOT fixate on one issue/problem in life. Strategy to go back to sleep includes making a bathroom run, changing my sleeping spot (physically change rooms or find a couch), scroll my phone (I know, I know…).
If I just wake up earlier than expected I’ll give just “resting” a go for a little bit and then just get up and start my day. I don’t ever regret less sleep but more time!
Years ago, an older friend (who made it to 100 and “recommended it”!), said that when she woke up in the night, she felt it was “found time” and a perfect excuse to read. I decided to embrace that. Sort of.
If it’s the middle of the night, I usually go to the bathroom and just go back to sleep. If I can’t because my mind is going, I read. And if it’s close to time to get up, I usually check email/social media in bed, where it’s warm!
For me, the biggest thing is to not worry about it. I’ve been through PLENTY of nights with little to no sleep and I survived just fine. Worrying about it just makes it 10x worse. I’ve never been one who required a lot of sleep, and then I had an S who was sick a lot and didn’t sleep through the night until he was 3. I think I averaged <4 hours/night in 30 min-2 hour segments those years.
So I just accept my sleep as it comes. I found that ear plugs help me out a TON. Not so much from a noise aspect - though that does help tremendously - but it helps to quiet my mind. My mind is my biggest factor. It runs on overdrive 100 mph every minute. Ear plugs help mute it.
If that still doesn’t help, I’ll move to the couch. I’m a great couch sleeper. Something about the couch, I find comforting and that usually works. If not, I’ll get up and go downstairs and eat something and try again later. And if that doesn’t work, I figure just laying quietly with my eyes shut is better than nothing. Again, I’ve been through many a days/nights with zero sleep. I’ll be fine.
And i always wake super early on purpose. 3:50am is when the alarm goes off. Usually I go to bed around 9:30pm, and a good night means I only need 1 pee break in the middle.
^^THIS^^. I spent much of my insomniac childhood worrying about the fact that I couldn’t go to sleep and would feel awful the next day, which of course made it harder to sleep. Once I finally gave myself permission to have a bad night of sleep and just started reading during the nights, I actually found it easier to drift off to sleep.
I have no problem going to sleep, but I’ll wake up around 4am. If I have a lot on my mind then I would go to the worse place. What I do is to turn on a meditation music. I try to focus on the music then more often than not I could fall back. I will lay in bed until 5:30 no matter what. It is how I get over jet lag too. I stay in bed until it’s time to get up. I don’t watch TV, read, surf the net.
I have many nights I don’t sleep well. Sometimes I just lay in bed. If I’m in the middle of a good book I will read (from my iPad, in bed). I also sometimes just give up for awhile and go downstairs to read, and maybe even have a light snack (a handful of nuts for example).
I go through periods of pretty good sleep, and periods of pretty bad sleep, but I can’t associate lack of sleep with anything in particular. I do know that often when traveling, the first night is the hardest.
I recently did an online sleep program through the Cleveland Clinic and my biggest take aways - don’t toss and turn. If you can’t fall asleep in 20 minutes, get up and move to another room and do a quiet activity. It’s normal to wake up for short periods of time during the night. We actually need a bit less sleep as we age.
Not worrying about sleeping enough or “good enough” was really helpful.
Now if I wake up, I try to meditate for a bit or I just go read.
I don’t do any screen time after 9:00, unless it’s an emergency (like my mom calls). I always read in bed before I go to sleep.
If I am awake at 3 am, I give myself 30 minutes to fall back asleep. If I don’t, I get up, walk a lap around the house, open my book and read for a half hour or so, then try again.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Our bedroom is also pitch black and fairly cool. (My DH is a very patient man, lucky me)
My mom falls asleep around 8 and wakes up at 4:30 or 5. Once she stopped worrying about enough sleep, or a proper schedule, she has been perfectly fine with it this way.
I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night after an annoying dream (you know, not a nightmare but just nothing is going your way) and turn on a podcast from my queue. Nine times out of ten, in the morning I realize I don’t remember anything past the first minute or two of it. Of course, that only works if you sleep in a room alone or with a very sound sleeper, or can tolerate an earbud in your ear when trying to sleep.
If I wake up early, like an hour too early, I will just get up. I can swim or run in the dark. Middle of the night is tougher. Often my mind is too active and I cannot settle. When that happens I move to the couch, read a bit, try to sleep again after awhile. Sadly, I am awake but not awake enough to work.
If I didn’t toss and turn I’d never sleep a night in my life! I have been a very mobile sleeper since I was a kid and shared a room with my older sister who complained about me tossing and turning (flipping and flopping) in my twin bed in the night.
I just stay in bed. Now that I’m retired, it’s frustrating to toss and turn… but it’s not as stressful. Extra perk - no longer worried the pager might go off.
I used to think “ugh, I need to be up to be online for that 7am call” (or 6am, or for the worst 6 months of my career up EVERY day by 5:30am to do some rather stressful online “daily chores” from the home office). Don’t miss that at all.
I am a night owl and absolutely cannot go to bed early. It just does not work. 11pm is about the earliest I can go to bed. And I can’t go to sleep for another 20-30 minutes. My husband can hit the pillow and go out in 2-3 minutes but that does not work for me. I read. That takes my mind off my worries and lets my brain calm down. Typically I go to bed after midnight, maybe 1am.
If I wake in the middle of the night I try not to get up to pee unless I really have to because standing up and walking to the bathroom will wake me up more.
If I am just too awake in the middle of the night I will read. It doesn’t bother my husband. I have a small book light that just lights up the pages.
I am way way way better if I get my 7 or 8 hours. If I run on less for too long I start getting bad anxiety and depression. It really makes a huge difference to get the right amount of sleep.
seriously. That’s a good night. Usually for me, it’s every 2 hours, but when you sleep for 6, at least that’s only twice. I hate when the first one comes early and the second is like 30 minutes before you have to get up. Do I try to hold it and lie there, or get up?