Me starting my new job in 2 days that requires me to be awake at 8am while my current sleep schedule has me waking up at 4pm.
(Chuckles) I’m in danger.
Wake up at 8am tomorrow. You will be very tired, but stay out of bed. You want to be as tired as possible. Next night go to bed earlier and you shouldn’t have too much trouble falling asleep before your job.
Also, if that doesn’t work, don’t worry too much. Your first day on the job is usually easier and you’ll be able to pull through.
Amen brother, using the same tactics for my exam tomorrow.
In case of exams it is easier to stay awake all day. Or even better play Dota all night, every time I tried it I got bare minimum and passed all exams
I just want to let you know I pulled through. I went to bed at my normal time and just woke up exhausted and just pushed through it all day. That night I passed right out after being home and it fixed everything.
I only wanted to let you know because you put a decent bit of thought into your response.
Congratulations! I knew you could do it.
I feel like not sleeping at all at the usual time would work the best here, assuming OP is falling asleep at 8am
Does anyone have tips for this
- Do all the usual sleep advice: no caffeine the day before, no electronics in bed, no bright lights, etc. Make sure the only thing keeping you awake is anxiety.
- If anxiety is the only thing keeping you up, then the only way to get sleep is to reduce the anxiety. Different things will work for different people, it’s worth experimenting to see what works best. There are a million different ways.
- If you can’t calm down, just accept that you may not get any sleep. For the vast majority of situations, a night without sleep will not hurt you or your performance as much as you think. Sometimes the best way to calm down is to realize that the stakes are not as high as you imagined and that you are going to be okay.
Bonus tip re: your last bullet is just try and lay in bed and keep your eyes closed, almost like an extended meditation. I let my mind wander etc not like a structured meditation, but just try and physically rest. This def takes the sting out of lack of sleep.
Also, a big part of dark bags under your eyes is not letting them rest. This helps a ton with that even if I’m only getting a handful of true sleep hours on a given night. And psychologically, not having the “heavy eyes” feeling helps when I’m awake.
All the “sleep hygiene” advice helps, but I also find listening to a lowkey podcast in the dark distracts and relaxes me. When I start drifting off I stop the playback and (usually) fall asleep.
All the other comments are tips to get you to sleep, putting yet more pressure on trying to actually sleep, which then makes it even harder. Then all the stuff you put in your body tires you even more and all the worry exhausts you, making things worse.
Instead of needing to sleep, just tell yourself that it’s fine if you don’t sleep at all, you’re in bed, you’re resting, and if that’s all you get to do for the entire night, you’ll do fine and have had enough rest to get through the day.
The act of letting go of having to sleep puts you in a state where you will most likely fall asleep anyway, and if you don’t, that’s fine too.
This is the way
It’s found that closing your eyes and pretending to sleep (I listen to podcasts so I have more patience with this) makes you better rested than being up and about or laying in bed on a phone. If I genuinely can’t sleep, I reassure myself with that. Most nights, despite PTSD, I’ll get at least a couple hours of actual sleep this way.
Melatonin
Weed
Nop. Sleep quality will be worse.
Also yes
Paying attention to my breathing has sometimes worked (though not always) (not changing it, but feeling how your chest goes up and down and hearing the air rushing in and out and maybe even picturing the rhythm in your head). It distracts me from other thoughts and calms me down.
If that doesn’t work, I try to distract myself with an interesting fiction book. That normally brings my head to less adrenaline-inducing thoughts (since now when trying to fall asleep I will be more focused on who the murderer of the dead child could be, or why the Zogophonts abandoned that resource-rich planet)
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Would be a cool game mechanic to play with. Typical RPGs just assume you can go to bed, instantly fall asleep and get up at the correct time. What if your character had insomnia due to stress/trauma/…? Any game that does this?
Anxiety:
Just another Monday
Very nice 3D meme you made for us
