Tips for when you can't sleep

About 5 years ago, I suddenly had a lot of trouble sleeping, no idea why, but I slept more often not than well. Quite difficult because your whole life gets tangled up because of it, and believe me when I say that not sleeping can really drive you crazy. Over the years, it got better, but I had convinced myself of a totally impossible sleep rhythm , from 03:00 to 11:00. That was fine during student life, but with a full-time job, it's less practical. In the meantime, I am reasonably okay and sleep at normal times, although I notice that everything indicates that it is about to go completely wrong again and the sleepless nights are piling up. Therefore, as a reminder for myself but also for the rest of the world who suffers from this, tips & tricks for those who have trouble sleeping.

Of course, you can stuff yourself with sleeping pills but I’d rather not. Sleeping pills are heavy things and you can get horribly addicted to them. I limit my use to a strictly necessary minimum and I prefer to take some melatonin pills. You can get them without a prescription everywhere and they help you fall asleep in a natural way.

Almost everyone checks their phone before going to sleep, or maybe you watched a movie or series on your laptop. It seems very relaxing, but for your brain, such a screen full of moving glowing pixels is a lot of information to process, and therefore it doesn't go into rest mode. Better to read a book by candlelight, and if that feels a bit too exaggerated, then read a book in dim light.

Are you really awake? Then get out of bed. I was in sleep therapy for a while (seriously) and I was told that when you lie awake in bed night after night, you will eventually start to associate “lying awake” with “bed,” and that is not beneficial. What you get is that the thought of going to sleep already brings panic that you have to endure another hellishly long night. Turn the insomnia into something positive, go tidy up, clean out your closet, do paperwork, shave your legs, wash your hair, it doesn't matter, but don't lie awake in bed in despair.

In addition to sleep therapy, I also did sleep physiotherapy for a while (still do, seriously) and learned exercises that help me sleep better, including a muscle exercise that almost puts you in a trance. You lie flat on your back with your eyes closed, arms beside your body. The idea is to tense and relax each muscle group in your body separately, starting with your hands, then arms, head, neck, back, hips, legs, and your feet, left and right separately, and from large to small. So you start with your right or left hand, ball it into a fist, hold it for a few seconds, and then relax it. Do this a few times and then do the left hand. Then you do the same, but instead of tensing your whole hand, you only tense the muscles in your palm, and then in your fingers. From large to small, then arms; first the whole arm, then upper arm, forearm, etc. face: scrunch your nose, squeeze your eyes shut, stretch your mouth, etc. You tense everything and let it go, and at the end of your body (this takes a while) you are so relaxed that you can hardly move.

In addition to the therapies mentioned above, some blood tests were also done on me during that time to see if I might be sensitive to something and therefore not sleeping. I am very sensitive to caffeine and therefore never drink coffee, and at home, I drink as much caffeine-free tea as possible. Diet Coke is my big weakness, oh how I love a cold can of Diet Coke. During that sleepless period, I bought caffeine-free Diet Coke, a kind of nasty sickly sweet lemonade that has nothing to do with Coke but did satisfy my craving and didn't keep me awake.

I started to panic around 20:00 because oh Jesus, I won't sleep again tonight and then I can't go to college again and it will never be okay again.

At one point, my problem was that I had college every day at 09:00 but also only slept at 06:00 every night, if I slept at all. That caused so much stress because I wasn't passing my courses, and because of that, I started to panic around 20:00 because oh Jesus, I won't sleep again tonight and then I can't go to college again and it will never be okay again. Eventually, I approached my tutor and told her what was going on, and she arranged that from that moment on, I would never have college before 11:00. Then I thought every evening, “oh come on, it will be fine, if I sleep at 05:00, I still have 5 hours of sleep!” and that was the beginning of the solution. In working life, it is harder to realize, but still, you never know how your boss will react. This brings me to the next point:

It feels very stupid to have to say every day, “pfff I slept so badly again” because you feel like a whiner and besides, you don't sleep every night, so people know that story by now. But not sleeping is often psychological, and by not sharing it, the misery piles up in your head, and those deafeningly silent dark nights only get longer, and you start to feel lonelier with the night. Of course, you don't have to flood your Facebook every day with your misery, but it's very nice if at least your colleagues and best friends know what is going on so they can take that into account.

Easier said than done, of course, but Pavlov is a strong mechanism, and you can teach yourself a lot. What works for me is to write everything off. If I can't sleep, it's because there's an awful noise in my head from thoughts and songs and to-dos and conversations and memories and worries, and it just keeps going. I then get out of bed, make a cup of tea, grab my laptop (screen set very dark) and write out each line of thought separately. Sometimes that results in 10 pages of rambling, but it's out of my head, and while writing, I find peace and feel sleep coming.

 If nothing works anymore and it really becomes a problem, seek help. You are not a whiner, insomnia is a serious condition, and there are many specialists who can help you with it. Good luck everyone and, sleep well in advance.