Had this a fair amount near project deadlines. I’m a project manager and have been personally responsible for seven-figure time-sensitive deliverables.
First I stopped drinking caffeine any time after 12PM on a day. That REALLY helped a lot. Two, maybe three, coffees in the morning, then switch to herbal or decaf tea.
Second, I learned to put a pencil or pen and a notepad next to my bed. When things started really buzzing around upstairs, I’d turn on the night light and jot down where my thoughts were taking me. I had then “compartmentalized” it – put it in a place and locked it in for later attention – and it often helped me to convince my own brain that I had dealt with the issue as much as I could at that time.
In the morning I read my notes and executed the ideas that they generated then, or afterward.
Important: pen and paper, but NO ELECTRONICS!
Doing it in a textpad or Outlook calendar or something meant an excuse to look at other stuff and maybe there goes another hour of being distracted.
What I discovered after a few years of doing this was a pattern – everything always looked worst at 3AM. Usually the next day my anxieties were vastly overblown and what I was worried about was nothing big at all in the light of day.
Exercise helps some, but medication took me the rest of the way. I need both for actual, decent sleep.
When things get really tough, I try to visualize the racing thoughts like blocks of light and imagine tucking them away into a box. It’s a slow process, but it works for me and I liken it to counting sheep.
I don’t suffer from this regularly, so maybe my advice is moot. However, I have found the ‘paced breathing’ app on play store to be very helpful for calming the mind, I set it to inhale 4 seconds, hold 7 seconds and exhale for 8 seconds. After 10 minutes of this your body is pretty much forced to relax, it’s very helpful for any kind of anxiety.
If you can’t fix the thinking, then audible audiobook with a sleep timer at a volume just high enough so you can hear it but not loud enough to wake you up if you fall asleep.
A small amount of trazadone and not “trying” to sleep. I typically focus on how comfortable and warm I am and close my eyes thinking “don’t force it, you will fall asleep at the right time.”
For nights those things don’t work and my brain is just racing out of control, I have hydroxyzine. Which is an antihistamine with anti-anxiety effects. Works like a charm.
After that, just accepting that some nights won’t be as good as others and I can always get back on track over the next couple of nights.
A simple meditation I conditioned myself to do whenever this happens is: I’ll internally tell myself to clear my mind of any thoughts. Think of nothing. And then I’ll just try to focus on maintaining that until I pass out. Typically, that happens in under a few minutes.
I pop two pills and play Netflix documentary — any – doesn’t matter which – and turn to the other side so the light from the screen doesn’t hinder my falling asleep
I put on my headphones and listen to a guided meditation. I already have it queued up, so all I have to do is press the button on my headphones , no looking at my phone .
I know it sounds silly- before bed I cast YT to my tv and find a dark screen video with “healing frequencies” (different hz). There are meditations as well.
I figured it out! During grad school when my mind was working overtime on tough projects I got insomnia.
I learned not to fight it. Simply got up out of bed and quietly distracted myself (usually read) for about 90 minutes – that is one sleep cycle.
Importantly, no bright lights nor loud sounds which wake up a person, nor any food which is a reward leading to more insomnia later. Then about 90 minutes in, as soon as I feel tired, I slip into my waiting bed and voila!
Sometimes I wake up around 1:30 am and just hang out until 3 am – no worries.
I listen to the podcast “Sleep With Me”, and there are others out there as well. Basically give my brain something to fixate on that won’t keep it awake either.
For a long time I had to use ambien to sleep at all. Once I realized that the ADHD was causing the sleep disturbance, I got Adderall for the day and a low dose of trazodone at night.
A technique I used before the ambien that helped sometimes was counting backward from 300 by 3s. It gave one track of my mind something to do and it calmed some of the thoughts.
Podcasts. I’m not sure why, it has to be something I am loosely interested in but not enough to deeply invest into. Somehow just hearing people talk about something that interests me vaguely puts me to sleep easier than most things. So I love playing TTRPGs but I am less invested in listening to people play them, before bed though? Just enough for me to care, not enough for me to pay attention. I fall asleep like a rock.
I listen to Futurama while falling asleep, its basically just background chatter that I am familiar enough with that it doesn’t actually take up brain power.
There’s even a subreddit for it! r/Futurama_Sleepers
Melatonin before bed. I don’t wait and try to calm it down on my own because I know it won’t work. I turn on a comfort show, either watch a little bit then turn it off and try again to go to sleep or just lie there listening to it with my eyes closed. If it’s something I’ve seen a million times usually I can fall asleep with it playing.
Also having a weighted blanket oddly helps me but just on my feet. If my feet are cold i cant sleep but i hate having socks on.
Therapist mentioned focus on physical sensations when trying to sleep, weight of blankets, how warm you are, how the fabrics feel, how comfortable you are, how the breeze from a fan feels on your face. Also put on calming apps on your phone.
I keep my Kindle by my bed, and when I invariably wake up at 3am, I’ll read for an hour or two before I fall asleep again. It deceases the volume of my internal monologue, long enough for me to get back to sleep.
I keep paper and a pen on my nightstand. When this happens I sit up, and I rewrite down the thoughts I’m having and tell myself that I’m writing this all down now so I can deal with it in the morning. It has a reasonably good success rate
Imagining story scenes I was planning to write over and over again. The problem is that, by now, I have written down most of the story, so imagining the future scenes is getting hard.
I usually wait till I’m so tired and bored that I can barely keep my eyes open. then I walk over to my bed and fall asleep quickly. I used to try and go to sleep at set times like a sane person, but it just doesn’t work for me. I wont sleep unless I’m seriously tired, so I would end up lying awake in bed for hours.
Watching s TV show thats you’ve already seen. Preferably one with a lot of dialog. Turn the volume down low just enough so you can make out most of ehat they are saying and close your eyes. For me the giving me brain just enough stimulus to focus on rather than my thoughts helps out bunches.
I enjoy history so I watch this guy who talks about historical events in a soft spoken voice for 9 hours. I typically only make it through 15 minutes before I conk out. @asmrhistorian on youtube
Been using melatonin sublingual spray for a bit over two weeks and it’s been a game changer, has worked like a dream every time.
Take the spray, wait a while, massive sleepiness occurs, get into bed with rain sounds, and maybe 30 seconds later, poof, it’s the next morning.
They recommend 2 sprays but I found 3 works best (but I’m near-obese so more body mass to melatonin over…)
Setting up my computer to reduce blue light after dark also helped a bit when I did it.
Coffee only once in the morning to wake up.
Say hydrated, like drink half a litre of water when the sun goes down, being dehydrated makes it harder to fall sleep, and you don’t sleep as well.
For racing thoughts I found a noise making/rain app on my phone (with a 30 minute timer) work well as a distraction (though it’s super annoying that every time I set it up an ad plays…)
Do exercise, that makes quite the difference too if you’re active or not, but of course don’t exercise right before sleep.
A long time ago I used to use weed for sleep, it worked very well, but it reduced my ability to code efficiently, and it caused me to not have any dreams anymore which is a deal breaker for me.
Like, all of this helped, but the game changer has really been the melatonin…
Close your eyes and picture yourself on the bank of a beautiful river at dusk. Whenever a thought races into your mind, say “intrusive thought” then place it in the river and watch it float away.
Lorazapam is amazing. I got a prescription from my previous Dr. for insomnia do to racing thoughts. Just having it next to my bed is really comforting to know if it gets bad I can pop a pill and I will get a good nights sleep. I am aware that it is highly addictive so I am extremely careful not to take it more than once a week on average. Current Dr pretty clearly wants to get me off it but I have her check my history that I have never filled my prescription more than twice a year and she backs off.
I imagine myself walking through the skin of a giant soap bubble, and as I walk through all of the things that are worrying me and distracting me from sleep are washed away and left on the other side. Inside the bubble is a small cottage, and I imagine every detail of the surrounding forest and exterior, and then the inside of the house as I walk around it. I design the whole thing in minute detail as I walk through, and sometimes it takes me some weeks to get a room exactly right. Sometimes I come back and change it entirely. But it ends up feeling like a refuge and I eventually fall asleep and feel much more relaxed imagining myself in a safe space of my own making.
I feel I have the answer (works for me, at least), and it is frustrating (imo):
The way I see it; your life is like a song, and the melody needs to be resolved.
If you need to be asleep at 9pm and you watch videos until 10pm, then your brain will begin resolving the days actions, thoughts, and feelings at 10pm (maybe until 11pm!).
But if you forgo the technology (and everything else) and get in bed at 8:30 and try to sleep, you’re usual tossing and turning (and thinking) will happen sooner and you’ll achieve more rest (as long as you’re actually tired and not on a bad schedule, which is solved in a different way).
So, sadly, for me, I have found the answer to be ‘try to sleep early;’ which sucks but is effective and though I didn’t get to ‘game’ or ‘hang out,’ I got plenty of sleep and am not tired.
Might not be everyone’s issue, but I think it is, lol. I hope this helps!
Side note:
I feel most people who don’t have trouble sleeping have more opportunities throughout the day to resolve their thoughts ‘as they go,’ whereas most people who work and have families are dedicating their brain power to other people’s issues and then pursue entertainment (which is really just more of ‘other people’s thoughts’) preventing them from resolving their own until bedtime.
I’m sure there are exceptions, and there’s likely a point where the physical exhaustion of ‘solving everyone else’s problems’ would likely make you tired enough to pass out XD
The best thing for me was just get up and start doing something. Your body & mind will start shutting down when it’s ready. I’ve fallen asleep within probably 5 minutes leaned over the kitchen sink attempting to do dishes.
I read something in the NYT – pick any word, take the first letter, and start naming as many other words you can think of that start with that one. When you run out, move to the second letter of the word, and so forth. It was developed to help slow our minds down/stop the racing thoughts when trying to sleep.
I started doing this and I’ve had to rely on pharma much less in order to be able to fall asleep.
I use podcasts but I also have used “cognitive shuffling” which works when podcasts don’t.
I also developed my own technique to create a story and then try to visualize it like it’s a movie in my head. Same story, night after night, just moving the plot a bit farther each day. That worked very well.
Let’s say you have 100 thoughts a minute. You can’t control every one, but you can control at least 1/100. So make sure 1/100 of every thought is a mindful choice, usually a happy thought. Do this for a full day.
The next day, aim for 2/100 thoughts being purposely controlled by you, again aim for a happy one. Do this all day.
Day 3 gets interesting. 2/100 thoughts should be mindfully constructed by you and ensure they are happy. But now 1/100 should be a sad thought. Then, throughout the day continue switching from those 2 happy thoughts to the 1 sad one. Do this all day.
Day 4 you now have a firm grasp on how to do this. Every day, increase the amount of times you control your thoughts but switch from mostly happy to sad. You are now controlling your thoughts, emotions, and a lot of other things you didn’t know you wanted control over. This is the point where I got control of all my addictions. *turns out I was VERY addicted to diet soda pop
CBD, mindfulness, lavender oil. All these things together. Then, laying down in my pitch-black room and closing my eyes, letting my mind wander as it needs to and eventually I just fall asleep.
The best thing that works for me is to set my mind to thinking about something that has no real impact. I really love thinking of absurd or impossible hypothetical situations and planning out every detail or letting myself overthink.
It’s fun to base them on movies or tv too, such as like “What would you do if you had the Death Note?”, “How would you escape x?”, “Whats the perfect crime?”, “Whats the best superpower to have?”, “What would you do during the purge?”.
Totally just random situations that I’m able to immerse myself in until I pass out, and that don’t stress me out thinking about real things going on. :>
Write down every bad thing you are worried about then next to that write what’s the worse case scenario then next to that write what you can do to mitigate it
A spoonful of peanut butter and a 1mg melatonin about 30 minutes before bed. Then I read for at least ten minutes. Within 5 minutes of putting my book down, I’m dead asleep.
I listen to Reddit threads with a text to speech app. Unfortunately my favorite app for that is no longer supported by iOS. The one I use now, called WebOutLoud, is kind of annoying with pop up ads. If anyone has found a good, simple app for reading web pages, please lmk.
I’ve found a method with a near 100% success rate and honestly it feels like I’ve unlocked a cheat code to falling asleep. Here’s what you do,
Lie in a comfortable position
Take deep breaths
Slowly, count backwards from 100 down to 1.
It’s helpful to count on an outward breath and important that you don’t try and count in seconds, you can leave it a few beats between numbers.
I find it gives your brain just enough to focus on that you can’t think of other things but not enough that you can’t fall into sleep.
I imagine a massive plaid flannel blanket covering the entire ocean, and then I try running as far as I can onto it from the beach while dodging the puddles that seep through and form on the surface of the blanket.
music or anything gentle like an informative youtube video I can listen to and focus on but close my eyes. gotta play it quietly. it’s like giving my brain a toy like a spoiled toddler so it will be distracted enough that I can pass out.
I’ve struggled with insomnia since high school. I started reading on a Kindle about 2 years ago. It has helped me not think about anything other than the story. No more random, embarrassing thoughts on how I did something weird or wrong in the past lol. And reading also makes your eyes tired so I usually can’t read more than 30 mins before passing out!
I taught my dog to do deep pressure therapy whenever I was restless and she even helped with nightmares. Years later and I can sleep normally without help
I have no idea what hacky place I got this from, because it sounds silly, but I’ve found it can be pretty useful: just think of unrelated words. Start with something like apple, and just wait until a new word forms, maybe culottes, and wait again, new word. I like to keep the pace relaxed, there’s no competition to it.
Like with meditation, if your thoughts go back to racing, it’s totally fine, happens all the time, just gently pick the train of thought back up , put it on the track, and go back to free associating.
I’ve been doing this for about 6-8 months, and it has been a pretty positive habit! It’s antithetical to pattern forming, run on thoughts, complicated things, and worry. If it helps/embarrasses me, I also try to smile while I’m doing it
Excercise: When it’s really bad, I hit the reps so hard that when I get home I’m too physically tired to stay awake.
Imagination: I find what keeps me awake is when my mind starts looping on real world problems. If I spend my awake hours in bed day dreaming about impossible scenarios, it helps keep me away from the real world problems that are creating the loops. So I insert myself into fantasy worlds or Sci fi stories.
Above all else, leave the phone out of reach.
Doom scrolling will keep you awake as your brain is constantly being fed new input to process.
Meditation. I use the controlled breathing method with brown or white noise.
Before that, I found mildly entertaining audio books also helped. They had to be mildly entertaining. Too good and I stayed awake to hear it, too bad and I couldn’t force myself to listen to it.
I pick a number in the hundreds and count backwards by 3’s. I have to concentrate enough that it distracts me from the other things. I don’t usually make it past about 60 numbers. I usually start in the 300s somewhere.
An app called iSleep Easy. There are different guided sleep meditations you can arrange for a playlist of your choosing. I’ve had severe insomnia at many times in my life and this works when nothing else does. Most of the time I fall asleep before I make it through the whole playlist. On really bad nights, I’ll fall asleep during the second loop of the playlist.
I started focusing all of my attention on just listening to the fan in my room each night. My mind would eventually wander off the fan but when I noticed that I just stubbornly kept going back to focusing on it. I’d do that a few times and then suddenly wake up the next day. Been doing it ever since.
I watch reruns of shows I’ve watched enough to where it’s not engaging enough to keep me awake, but just enough to where it distracts my brain from the constant thoughts
I take prescribed meds to sleep that are technically for anxiety. The “racing thoughts” made something click with my Dr. But they don’t always help with the sleepiness portion of being in bed. So I read on my Kindle for a while and then listen to the Seth/Josh Meyers podcast while “resting my eyes.” The interviews are interesting enough if I end up with an insomniac night, but inconsequential if I fall asleep. NO SCROLLING!!!
Edit: melatonin NEVER worked for me – it was like my mind and body were always fighting against it.
I listen to a podcast or audio book on a timer. It’s 15 minutes but realistically I’m asleep in the first 5 minutes.
Highly recommend anything by Aaron Mahnke, his voice is so soothing… his podcasts, depending on whether you are ok with scary stuff might keep you up though so not for everyone
I throw on an audio book and set a timer for 15 minutes. I rarely have to extend the timer, and if I miss part if the book, it’s only 15 minutes. Easy to skip back.
Something I literally just tried last night was setting up a bunch of flickering fake candles in my room and had just those and a book light on for a while. Slept better than I have for a while.
My other tip is putting on a cozy audio book and doing sudoko until I’m so tired I want to pass out. The low light and slowness of it all helps quiet my brain.
I started a meditation routine for chronic pain, and it stopped my mind from racing on the second night. Usually, I have to take something to sleep, or it can take hours to doze off. It is odd because I have tried so many meditations for sleep and had no results. Here is the link
I have struggled with insomnia for over 20 years. I am on trazadone to help me sleep, but it’s not a strong sleep aide, it just helps.
I have found guided meditation to be really helpful. Something where I can focus my thoughts on a single thing, like a pond with ripples, or a creek with bubbles. Something gentle, something calm….
It’s great for going to sleep. Staying asleep is another issue.
I use a white noise machine or sometimes a podcast or audiobook in a language I don’t speak or understand. Just fills the ‘noise’ in my head pretty well.
And if that fails, trying to work on thinking about something boring – the whole thing about counting sheep isn’t totally baseless. A bit of an exercise in meditation in its own right – but usually what I try to do is recount my day in my head in reverse in as much detail as possible. It fills that void of thinking about something but not something that keeps you ‘active’ or tense. By nature of already struggling with racing thoughts, you’ll deviate – which is fine, just bring it back as soon as you notice and try really to focus on your day backwards.
I love doing gym so i usually think what i have done today what to do tommorow and in that process i dont know when i sleep. Basically just think of something which makes u happy
TV shows that I have seen a hundred times. (Futurama is a go to). Interesting enough to shut off the brain, but since Ive seen it a hundred times it’s not stimulating enough to keep me awake. I’ll put the sleep timer on the TV for 30 minutes and rarely make it to 5 minutes before I pass out.
Reading. My brain would not shut off til I tried reading. But the trick is when you are reading in bed and you feel that wave of fatigue hit, close to book and put it down. Don’t try to finish the chapter, the page, nor the paragraph. If you resist that fatigue it will be gone. That worked for me and I got to enjoy reading again.
Exercise, taking daily allergy medication, white noise machine, ADHD diagnosis and medication (stimulants surprisingly help me sleep a bit), having a partner with a healthy sleep schedule
Cut down caffeine to one cup a day before 8am and increase my exercise. Also, hot and cold exposure (saunas, hot tubs, ice baths, cold showers) does wonders, too. Finally, a little liquid magnesium before bed and I’m ready to slip into a 7-8 hour coma.
I had to convince myself sleep is overrated. I’ve gotten 8 hours of sleep and felt drained the entire day while sometimes I’m perfectly fine off of 4 hours of sleep.
Taking low dose cbd/thc gummies, and learning to interrupt thoughts. I got into the habit of saying “I don’t need to think about this right now”. I also listen to podcasts, or watch ASMR artists on YouTube.
Also big one: take vitamins! Essentials everyday. D3 + K2 and Collagen in the morning
500mg of Magnesium and low dose zinc 2hrs before bed. You’ll sleep beautifully ♥️
I would force myself to focus on recounting something with a slow pace (similar to counting sheep). For me it was broadcasting a baseball game. I would be the announcer and calling the action, describing the pitcher on the mound, the batter in the box, the weather etc.. I would focus on pitches and plays, scores, outs innings. I think I would usually fall asleep in the third inning. It took practice to keep focus and from breaking away.
Another thing I would do would be yoga breathing (Bee breath) and focus on the sound and try to visualize it.
Fall asleep listening to an interesting but somewhat difficult to follow podcast (like the economist, freakonomics, etc.) either with earbuds or one of those pillow speakers. Set it on a 10-15 min sleep timer. Keeps mind occupied with something else, but allows you to drift off
Comments
I read before bed and that’s been really helping me
Melatonin gummies
Turn off the screen 20 minutes before. Pop 1. You’ll be asleep in a few.
Weed
Showering
Talking to myself as if I’m a whale helps every time.
“Yyyyyooooouuuuu mmmmuuuuussssttttt gggoooooo toooooo sleeeeeee-“
It’s enough of an activity to distract the mind from the monkey business but boring as hell so it puts you to sleep
Praying and laying it all to God fixes this.
I saw this as “racist thoughts” and thought I didn’t know this is why people can’t sleep?
Had this a fair amount near project deadlines. I’m a project manager and have been personally responsible for seven-figure time-sensitive deliverables.
First I stopped drinking caffeine any time after 12PM on a day. That REALLY helped a lot. Two, maybe three, coffees in the morning, then switch to herbal or decaf tea.
Second, I learned to put a pencil or pen and a notepad next to my bed. When things started really buzzing around upstairs, I’d turn on the night light and jot down where my thoughts were taking me. I had then “compartmentalized” it – put it in a place and locked it in for later attention – and it often helped me to convince my own brain that I had dealt with the issue as much as I could at that time.
In the morning I read my notes and executed the ideas that they generated then, or afterward.
Important: pen and paper, but NO ELECTRONICS!
Doing it in a textpad or Outlook calendar or something meant an excuse to look at other stuff and maybe there goes another hour of being distracted.
What I discovered after a few years of doing this was a pattern – everything always looked worst at 3AM. Usually the next day my anxieties were vastly overblown and what I was worried about was nothing big at all in the light of day.
Exercise helps some, but medication took me the rest of the way. I need both for actual, decent sleep.
When things get really tough, I try to visualize the racing thoughts like blocks of light and imagine tucking them away into a box. It’s a slow process, but it works for me and I liken it to counting sheep.
Therapy.
Melatonin + Getting into a regular sleep schedule.
A podcast called Nothing Much Happens. I’ve listened to a few sleep podcasts over the years, this was the winner for me.
Focusing on something else. I like to build my own world, my own story.
I mean, I too like F1 but I’ve never lost sleep over it!
/s
I don’t suffer from this regularly, so maybe my advice is moot. However, I have found the ‘paced breathing’ app on play store to be very helpful for calming the mind, I set it to inhale 4 seconds, hold 7 seconds and exhale for 8 seconds. After 10 minutes of this your body is pretty much forced to relax, it’s very helpful for any kind of anxiety.
Indica.
If you can’t fix the thinking, then audible audiobook with a sleep timer at a volume just high enough so you can hear it but not loud enough to wake you up if you fall asleep.
daily cardio
I love street outlaws too. Glad I’m not alone
A small amount of trazadone and not “trying” to sleep. I typically focus on how comfortable and warm I am and close my eyes thinking “don’t force it, you will fall asleep at the right time.”
For nights those things don’t work and my brain is just racing out of control, I have hydroxyzine. Which is an antihistamine with anti-anxiety effects. Works like a charm.
After that, just accepting that some nights won’t be as good as others and I can always get back on track over the next couple of nights.
I watch tv, can’t concentrate on my thoughts if im listening to the tv
Im not religious but prayer does help everytime.
A simple meditation I conditioned myself to do whenever this happens is: I’ll internally tell myself to clear my mind of any thoughts. Think of nothing. And then I’ll just try to focus on maintaining that until I pass out. Typically, that happens in under a few minutes.
Doing a good work out before sleep helps
I pop two pills and play Netflix documentary — any – doesn’t matter which – and turn to the other side so the light from the screen doesn’t hinder my falling asleep
Music. Or noise from the Washing machine.
Another trick is to focus on thing. Me, as a storyteller, I focus on story that I made up in my head and make me feel good, or distracted.
M&M&M
Melatonin, Magnesium, Masturbation.
Can’t have racing thoughts if you’re busy cranking hog before bed.
I listen to a sleep story on the Calm app.
I put on my headphones and listen to a guided meditation. I already have it queued up, so all I have to do is press the button on my headphones , no looking at my phone .
A capsule of valerian root extract! Also a YouTube video of ocean waves at night
I started excercising daily and getting out in the fresh air. Life changing.
I know it sounds silly- before bed I cast YT to my tv and find a dark screen video with “healing frequencies” (different hz). There are meditations as well.
I figured it out! During grad school when my mind was working overtime on tough projects I got insomnia.
I learned not to fight it. Simply got up out of bed and quietly distracted myself (usually read) for about 90 minutes – that is one sleep cycle.
Importantly, no bright lights nor loud sounds which wake up a person, nor any food which is a reward leading to more insomnia later. Then about 90 minutes in, as soon as I feel tired, I slip into my waiting bed and voila!
Sometimes I wake up around 1:30 am and just hang out until 3 am – no worries.
I listen to the podcast “Sleep With Me”, and there are others out there as well. Basically give my brain something to fixate on that won’t keep it awake either.
And pharmaceuticals.
I had a past coworker who said focusing on his breathing helps (how it feels, the sound, etc.). Makes sense since it’s meditating, essentially.
Sit/lay, quietly and say out loud “I wonder what my mind will think next.”… and just notice…
Look on YouTube for military sleep technique. It has me asleep in two minutes
Indica tincture. A couple of drops before going to bed. I tried a lot over the years and this is the only thing that works for me.
Listening to TV or youtube. My mind stops speaking when it’s time to listen
For a long time I had to use ambien to sleep at all. Once I realized that the ADHD was causing the sleep disturbance, I got Adderall for the day and a low dose of trazodone at night.
A technique I used before the ambien that helped sometimes was counting backward from 300 by 3s. It gave one track of my mind something to do and it calmed some of the thoughts.
Podcasts. I’m not sure why, it has to be something I am loosely interested in but not enough to deeply invest into. Somehow just hearing people talk about something that interests me vaguely puts me to sleep easier than most things. So I love playing TTRPGs but I am less invested in listening to people play them, before bed though? Just enough for me to care, not enough for me to pay attention. I fall asleep like a rock.
Benjamin Franklin had a second bed in a second bedroom. When he couldn’t sleep he just went to the other bed and fell right asleep.
We shouldn’t judge people, maybe OP is a lowly peasant who can’t afford multiple bedrooms for each person in the home.
I usually play Need For Speed or Forza for a couple hours before bed. Works every time.
I listen to Futurama while falling asleep, its basically just background chatter that I am familiar enough with that it doesn’t actually take up brain power.
There’s even a subreddit for it! r/Futurama_Sleepers
Smoking weed and staying up until I’m essentially sleepwalking. I’m then good for a full 5-6 hours.
Pick any word and then think of all words that start with that letter. It stops the racing thoughts and I seem to fall asleep after about 8 words.
Cannabis
Tractor thoughts
Breathing exercise and focusing on them.
Melatonin before bed. I don’t wait and try to calm it down on my own because I know it won’t work. I turn on a comfort show, either watch a little bit then turn it off and try again to go to sleep or just lie there listening to it with my eyes closed. If it’s something I’ve seen a million times usually I can fall asleep with it playing.
Quit coffee.
The all star combo of benadryll and melatonin.
Also having a weighted blanket oddly helps me but just on my feet. If my feet are cold i cant sleep but i hate having socks on.
Therapist mentioned focus on physical sensations when trying to sleep, weight of blankets, how warm you are, how the fabrics feel, how comfortable you are, how the breeze from a fan feels on your face. Also put on calming apps on your phone.
Cbd oil and magnesium Threonate after dinner.
I keep my Kindle by my bed, and when I invariably wake up at 3am, I’ll read for an hour or two before I fall asleep again. It deceases the volume of my internal monologue, long enough for me to get back to sleep.
Listening to Warhammer 40k lore videos on YouTube. I’m not even a Warhammer fan, but it works a charm.
Watch more racing! Let the noise rock you to sleep.
Sleep hygiene, meditation
A Spotify playlist and set a sleep timer for 1 hour.
Blackout curtains
Weighted blanket
I try to only think about how comfortable I will be in bed in the morning wanting to sleep and that usually works
I keep paper and a pen on my nightstand. When this happens I sit up, and I rewrite down the thoughts I’m having and tell myself that I’m writing this all down now so I can deal with it in the morning. It has a reasonably good success rate
Consistent background noise. Just a fan, something like that.
Imagining story scenes I was planning to write over and over again. The problem is that, by now, I have written down most of the story, so imagining the future scenes is getting hard.
I usually wait till I’m so tired and bored that I can barely keep my eyes open. then I walk over to my bed and fall asleep quickly. I used to try and go to sleep at set times like a sane person, but it just doesn’t work for me. I wont sleep unless I’m seriously tired, so I would end up lying awake in bed for hours.
Weed
Hydroxyzine lol
Watching s TV show thats you’ve already seen. Preferably one with a lot of dialog. Turn the volume down low just enough so you can make out most of ehat they are saying and close your eyes. For me the giving me brain just enough stimulus to focus on rather than my thoughts helps out bunches.
I enjoy history so I watch this guy who talks about historical events in a soft spoken voice for 9 hours. I typically only make it through 15 minutes before I conk out. @asmrhistorian on youtube
Another vote for guided meditation videos on youtube. Just something to distract you.
Shakti mat/acupressure mat for 20-30 minutes while listening to music
Been using melatonin sublingual spray for a bit over two weeks and it’s been a game changer, has worked like a dream every time.
Take the spray, wait a while, massive sleepiness occurs, get into bed with rain sounds, and maybe 30 seconds later, poof, it’s the next morning.
They recommend 2 sprays but I found 3 works best (but I’m near-obese so more body mass to melatonin over…)
Setting up my computer to reduce blue light after dark also helped a bit when I did it.
Coffee only once in the morning to wake up.
Say hydrated, like drink half a litre of water when the sun goes down, being dehydrated makes it harder to fall sleep, and you don’t sleep as well.
For racing thoughts I found a noise making/rain app on my phone (with a 30 minute timer) work well as a distraction (though it’s super annoying that every time I set it up an ad plays…)
Do exercise, that makes quite the difference too if you’re active or not, but of course don’t exercise right before sleep.
A long time ago I used to use weed for sleep, it worked very well, but it reduced my ability to code efficiently, and it caused me to not have any dreams anymore which is a deal breaker for me.
Like, all of this helped, but the game changer has really been the melatonin…
Brown noise sound – youtube has multi-hour, black screen videos of white noise, brown noise (deeper/softer than white), and other background noises
This sometimes works for me:
Close your eyes and picture yourself on the bank of a beautiful river at dusk. Whenever a thought races into your mind, say “intrusive thought” then place it in the river and watch it float away.
Crossword puzzles before bed and honestly anti anxiety meds
Reading
Honestly white noise or some type of droning sound like that. It really soothes my brain and helps me stay calm to fall asleep.
Low dose 2.5mg thc gummie lol
Pick a letter. Count to 8. Find a word starting with the letter. Rinse, repeat until asleep.
Edit: with the same letter.
Maybe stop going to the track…
Counting down from 1001 in steps of 7 sometimes helps.
5 mg cannabis gummy 30 minutes before lying down. Note most of these come as 10 mg gummies; just cut in half.
Lorazapam is amazing. I got a prescription from my previous Dr. for insomnia do to racing thoughts. Just having it next to my bed is really comforting to know if it gets bad I can pop a pill and I will get a good nights sleep. I am aware that it is highly addictive so I am extremely careful not to take it more than once a week on average. Current Dr pretty clearly wants to get me off it but I have her check my history that I have never filled my prescription more than twice a year and she backs off.
I imagine myself walking through the skin of a giant soap bubble, and as I walk through all of the things that are worrying me and distracting me from sleep are washed away and left on the other side. Inside the bubble is a small cottage, and I imagine every detail of the surrounding forest and exterior, and then the inside of the house as I walk around it. I design the whole thing in minute detail as I walk through, and sometimes it takes me some weeks to get a room exactly right. Sometimes I come back and change it entirely. But it ends up feeling like a refuge and I eventually fall asleep and feel much more relaxed imagining myself in a safe space of my own making.
I feel I have the answer (works for me, at least), and it is frustrating (imo):
The way I see it; your life is like a song, and the melody needs to be resolved.
If you need to be asleep at 9pm and you watch videos until 10pm, then your brain will begin resolving the days actions, thoughts, and feelings at 10pm (maybe until 11pm!).
But if you forgo the technology (and everything else) and get in bed at 8:30 and try to sleep, you’re usual tossing and turning (and thinking) will happen sooner and you’ll achieve more rest (as long as you’re actually tired and not on a bad schedule, which is solved in a different way).
So, sadly, for me, I have found the answer to be ‘try to sleep early;’ which sucks but is effective and though I didn’t get to ‘game’ or ‘hang out,’ I got plenty of sleep and am not tired.
Might not be everyone’s issue, but I think it is, lol. I hope this helps!
Side note:
I feel most people who don’t have trouble sleeping have more opportunities throughout the day to resolve their thoughts ‘as they go,’ whereas most people who work and have families are dedicating their brain power to other people’s issues and then pursue entertainment (which is really just more of ‘other people’s thoughts’) preventing them from resolving their own until bedtime.
I’m sure there are exceptions, and there’s likely a point where the physical exhaustion of ‘solving everyone else’s problems’ would likely make you tired enough to pass out XD
The best thing for me was just get up and start doing something. Your body & mind will start shutting down when it’s ready. I’ve fallen asleep within probably 5 minutes leaned over the kitchen sink attempting to do dishes.
I read something in the NYT – pick any word, take the first letter, and start naming as many other words you can think of that start with that one. When you run out, move to the second letter of the word, and so forth. It was developed to help slow our minds down/stop the racing thoughts when trying to sleep.
I started doing this and I’ve had to rely on pharma much less in order to be able to fall asleep.
ASMR might help, by listening to the video it can help quiet the mind
Trazodone and weed.
The “usual” methods like Melatonin and such do fuck-all because I’m AuDHD.
Melatonin.
Podcasts on low with soft speaking. Game changer.
I use podcasts but I also have used “cognitive shuffling” which works when podcasts don’t.
I also developed my own technique to create a story and then try to visualize it like it’s a movie in my head. Same story, night after night, just moving the plot a bit farther each day. That worked very well.
I had racing thoughts before bed for many years. Turns out I have bipolar. medication can help racing thoughts
Let’s say you have 100 thoughts a minute. You can’t control every one, but you can control at least 1/100. So make sure 1/100 of every thought is a mindful choice, usually a happy thought. Do this for a full day.
The next day, aim for 2/100 thoughts being purposely controlled by you, again aim for a happy one. Do this all day.
Day 3 gets interesting. 2/100 thoughts should be mindfully constructed by you and ensure they are happy. But now 1/100 should be a sad thought. Then, throughout the day continue switching from those 2 happy thoughts to the 1 sad one. Do this all day.
Day 4 you now have a firm grasp on how to do this. Every day, increase the amount of times you control your thoughts but switch from mostly happy to sad. You are now controlling your thoughts, emotions, and a lot of other things you didn’t know you wanted control over. This is the point where I got control of all my addictions. *turns out I was VERY addicted to diet soda pop
Coherent breathing. Need to improve HRV/sympathetic nervous system.
Slumber Studio podcasts. Soothing voices reading classic books and stories.
l-theanine, CBD, audiobooks, any or all of them
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3zkkLckeyM
Just waited till it was time to get up
CBD, mindfulness, lavender oil. All these things together. Then, laying down in my pitch-black room and closing my eyes, letting my mind wander as it needs to and eventually I just fall asleep.
Bob Ross on Twitch
The best thing that works for me is to set my mind to thinking about something that has no real impact. I really love thinking of absurd or impossible hypothetical situations and planning out every detail or letting myself overthink.
It’s fun to base them on movies or tv too, such as like “What would you do if you had the Death Note?”, “How would you escape x?”, “Whats the perfect crime?”, “Whats the best superpower to have?”, “What would you do during the purge?”.
Totally just random situations that I’m able to immerse myself in until I pass out, and that don’t stress me out thinking about real things going on. :>
Physical labor, mind races right up till the body crashes lol.
Weed was a short term solution. Learning to manage my anxiety through therapy was a long term solution.
I started taking Lexapro. Turns out my “struggling to sleep because of racing thoughts” was part of a broader “anxiety disorder”
Write down every bad thing you are worried about then next to that write what’s the worse case scenario then next to that write what you can do to mitigate it
A spoonful of peanut butter and a 1mg melatonin about 30 minutes before bed. Then I read for at least ten minutes. Within 5 minutes of putting my book down, I’m dead asleep.
Cognitive shuffling!
I listen to Reddit threads with a text to speech app. Unfortunately my favorite app for that is no longer supported by iOS. The one I use now, called WebOutLoud, is kind of annoying with pop up ads. If anyone has found a good, simple app for reading web pages, please lmk.
I’ve found a method with a near 100% success rate and honestly it feels like I’ve unlocked a cheat code to falling asleep. Here’s what you do,
It’s helpful to count on an outward breath and important that you don’t try and count in seconds, you can leave it a few beats between numbers.
I find it gives your brain just enough to focus on that you can’t think of other things but not enough that you can’t fall into sleep.
I very rarely make it past the 60’s
Audiobooks
I just imagine I’m somewhere else while my eyes are closed. Floating in space is my go to
I imagine a massive plaid flannel blanket covering the entire ocean, and then I try running as far as I can onto it from the beach while dodging the puddles that seep through and form on the surface of the blanket.
music or anything gentle like an informative youtube video I can listen to and focus on but close my eyes. gotta play it quietly. it’s like giving my brain a toy like a spoiled toddler so it will be distracted enough that I can pass out.
Reading.
I’ve struggled with insomnia since high school. I started reading on a Kindle about 2 years ago. It has helped me not think about anything other than the story. No more random, embarrassing thoughts on how I did something weird or wrong in the past lol. And reading also makes your eyes tired so I usually can’t read more than 30 mins before passing out!
I taught my dog to do deep pressure therapy whenever I was restless and she even helped with nightmares. Years later and I can sleep normally without help
I have no idea what hacky place I got this from, because it sounds silly, but I’ve found it can be pretty useful: just think of unrelated words. Start with something like apple, and just wait until a new word forms, maybe culottes, and wait again, new word. I like to keep the pace relaxed, there’s no competition to it.
Like with meditation, if your thoughts go back to racing, it’s totally fine, happens all the time, just gently pick the train of thought back up , put it on the track, and go back to free associating.
I’ve been doing this for about 6-8 months, and it has been a pretty positive habit! It’s antithetical to pattern forming, run on thoughts, complicated things, and worry. If it helps/embarrasses me, I also try to smile while I’m doing it
Prozac
25 mg of trazodone.
Listening to a podcast or gaming stream on Twitch.
Fap and asmr
Weed gummies
Cannabis
Zquill
Rock yourself side to side slowly when trying to go to sleep. Also a weighted blanket can make a big difference.
Focusing on breathing and nothing else. It takes a while but it always works.
Excercise: When it’s really bad, I hit the reps so hard that when I get home I’m too physically tired to stay awake.
Imagination: I find what keeps me awake is when my mind starts looping on real world problems. If I spend my awake hours in bed day dreaming about impossible scenarios, it helps keep me away from the real world problems that are creating the loops. So I insert myself into fantasy worlds or Sci fi stories.
Above all else, leave the phone out of reach.
Doom scrolling will keep you awake as your brain is constantly being fed new input to process.
Weed. It’s medically legal here and has been life changing
Marijuana.
read a book
ASMR YouTube videos of people being tickled, hair played with etc, only thing that makes me sleep, every time!
Meditation. I use the controlled breathing method with brown or white noise.
Before that, I found mildly entertaining audio books also helped. They had to be mildly entertaining. Too good and I stayed awake to hear it, too bad and I couldn’t force myself to listen to it.
But both just force my brain to stop racing.
Schedule a time to start thinking about it again. Trust that you’ll figure it out later.
I pick a number in the hundreds and count backwards by 3’s. I have to concentrate enough that it distracts me from the other things. I don’t usually make it past about 60 numbers. I usually start in the 300s somewhere.
An app called iSleep Easy. There are different guided sleep meditations you can arrange for a playlist of your choosing. I’ve had severe insomnia at many times in my life and this works when nothing else does. Most of the time I fall asleep before I make it through the whole playlist. On really bad nights, I’ll fall asleep during the second loop of the playlist.
Sleeping aid. Nothing else works. I even over think over the noise machine. I need to be knocked tf out.
I started focusing all of my attention on just listening to the fan in my room each night. My mind would eventually wander off the fan but when I noticed that I just stubbornly kept going back to focusing on it. I’d do that a few times and then suddenly wake up the next day. Been doing it ever since.
Write those thoughts down. Ideally on paper – the physical action helps.
Here is my not patented genuine sleep cocktail
And if I am really having a bad day. Hits of my “gardening” pen.
And boy. I havnt dreamed/nightmares since the election
Lofi music on YouTube and cozy lighting
Had kids
Now I’m asleep before I hit the pillow 🤣
I watch reruns of shows I’ve watched enough to where it’s not engaging enough to keep me awake, but just enough to where it distracts my brain from the constant thoughts
not eating 4 hours before sleeping
walking 10k steps or even walking before sleeping
shower/sex/masturbate
Those 24-hour nature asmr videos on youtube.
I take prescribed meds to sleep that are technically for anxiety. The “racing thoughts” made something click with my Dr. But they don’t always help with the sleepiness portion of being in bed. So I read on my Kindle for a while and then listen to the Seth/Josh Meyers podcast while “resting my eyes.” The interviews are interesting enough if I end up with an insomniac night, but inconsequential if I fall asleep. NO SCROLLING!!!
Edit: melatonin NEVER worked for me – it was like my mind and body were always fighting against it.
Stamina. Eventually fatigue becomes stronger than those thoughts.
I listen to crime podcast and focus my attention towards the details of the case , few min in i usually fall asleep.
I listen to a podcast or audio book on a timer. It’s 15 minutes but realistically I’m asleep in the first 5 minutes.
Highly recommend anything by Aaron Mahnke, his voice is so soothing… his podcasts, depending on whether you are ok with scary stuff might keep you up though so not for everyone
I throw on an audio book and set a timer for 15 minutes. I rarely have to extend the timer, and if I miss part if the book, it’s only 15 minutes. Easy to skip back.
Put the phone in another room when it’s time for bed.
Make a gratitude list in your mind.
Enjoy the ride of racing thoughts.
Something I literally just tried last night was setting up a bunch of flickering fake candles in my room and had just those and a book light on for a while. Slept better than I have for a while.
My other tip is putting on a cozy audio book and doing sudoko until I’m so tired I want to pass out. The low light and slowness of it all helps quiet my brain.
Tradozone. It’s a much safer alternative to the addictive sleeping aids often used in the USA (like the one that for some reason makes you racist).
Obviously, you have to talk to a doctor to make sure it’s the correct thing for you.
When I am having trouble sleeping I take Unisom – its like melatonin on crack
I started a meditation routine for chronic pain, and it stopped my mind from racing on the second night. Usually, I have to take something to sleep, or it can take hours to doze off. It is odd because I have tried so many meditations for sleep and had no results. Here is the link
https://youtu.be/6jKRH2OJ0O8?feature=shared
I have tried just about everything. Melatonin works but not that much…
Sleep Podcasts.
For a while I would listen to “Sleep With Me,” and lately I like “Nothing Much Happens.”
Listening to recordings of BBC Shipping Forecasts on YouTube. Seriously. Try it.
I typically put on a movie that I know really well. More often than not I’m out before the opening scene is complete.
I have struggled with insomnia for over 20 years. I am on trazadone to help me sleep, but it’s not a strong sleep aide, it just helps.
I have found guided meditation to be really helpful. Something where I can focus my thoughts on a single thing, like a pond with ripples, or a creek with bubbles. Something gentle, something calm….
It’s great for going to sleep. Staying asleep is another issue.
Sounds pretty basic but fill the space.
I use a white noise machine or sometimes a podcast or audiobook in a language I don’t speak or understand. Just fills the ‘noise’ in my head pretty well.
And if that fails, trying to work on thinking about something boring – the whole thing about counting sheep isn’t totally baseless. A bit of an exercise in meditation in its own right – but usually what I try to do is recount my day in my head in reverse in as much detail as possible. It fills that void of thinking about something but not something that keeps you ‘active’ or tense. By nature of already struggling with racing thoughts, you’ll deviate – which is fine, just bring it back as soon as you notice and try really to focus on your day backwards.
Ambien.
I love doing gym so i usually think what i have done today what to do tommorow and in that process i dont know when i sleep. Basically just think of something which makes u happy
Guided meditation and lysine.
I found podcasts that are engaging but not overly so I want to stay up and listen.
TV shows that I have seen a hundred times. (Futurama is a go to). Interesting enough to shut off the brain, but since Ive seen it a hundred times it’s not stimulating enough to keep me awake. I’ll put the sleep timer on the TV for 30 minutes and rarely make it to 5 minutes before I pass out.
Ristoril
Reading. My brain would not shut off til I tried reading. But the trick is when you are reading in bed and you feel that wave of fatigue hit, close to book and put it down. Don’t try to finish the chapter, the page, nor the paragraph. If you resist that fatigue it will be gone. That worked for me and I got to enjoy reading again.
Exercise, taking daily allergy medication, white noise machine, ADHD diagnosis and medication (stimulants surprisingly help me sleep a bit), having a partner with a healthy sleep schedule
Cut down caffeine to one cup a day before 8am and increase my exercise. Also, hot and cold exposure (saunas, hot tubs, ice baths, cold showers) does wonders, too. Finally, a little liquid magnesium before bed and I’m ready to slip into a 7-8 hour coma.
A speaker under my pillow playing a book on tape.
I had to convince myself sleep is overrated. I’ve gotten 8 hours of sleep and felt drained the entire day while sometimes I’m perfectly fine off of 4 hours of sleep.
Taking low dose cbd/thc gummies, and learning to interrupt thoughts. I got into the habit of saying “I don’t need to think about this right now”. I also listen to podcasts, or watch ASMR artists on YouTube.
Also big one: take vitamins! Essentials everyday. D3 + K2 and Collagen in the morning
500mg of Magnesium and low dose zinc 2hrs before bed. You’ll sleep beautifully ♥️
I start the day with yoga and I end the day with a boring podcast. It works like magic.
Journaling.
Turn off the computer at least an hour before bedtime and read a (preferably paper) book. Avoid Reddit at all costs during this period.
No caffeine after noon.
Melatonin about an hour before bedtime.
Lately, it’s been “all of the above, plus Irish whiskey or Scotch.”
Do times tables in your head. Rarely get to 7’s.
Running and no caffeine you’ll sleep like a baby
I sing myself to sleep a lot, not out loud but like tracing over the song in my head kinda.
Vigorous exercise early in the AM. Get so physically exhausted your brain doesn’t have the energy to think
I would force myself to focus on recounting something with a slow pace (similar to counting sheep). For me it was broadcasting a baseball game. I would be the announcer and calling the action, describing the pitcher on the mound, the batter in the box, the weather etc.. I would focus on pitches and plays, scores, outs innings. I think I would usually fall asleep in the third inning. It took practice to keep focus and from breaking away.
Another thing I would do would be yoga breathing (Bee breath) and focus on the sound and try to visualize it.
Fall asleep listening to an interesting but somewhat difficult to follow podcast (like the economist, freakonomics, etc.) either with earbuds or one of those pillow speakers. Set it on a 10-15 min sleep timer. Keeps mind occupied with something else, but allows you to drift off
🍁💨