Are you just always tired? Do you have some kind of bedtime ritual? Have you had issues sleeping in the past and how did you handle that?
Had insomia in highschool. Didn’t know what it was but taught myself guided meditation to overcome it.
For me, it was usually a song being stuck in my head. I would see myself floating up and away from the earth amd into space where the void was silent.
I also learned to pay attention to the mental “feel” I had while driftong off to sleep and pictured myself sinking into sleep like a submarine beneath the waves.
I know these aren’t super helpful descriptions because if I could really verbalise and teach it I would be doing that for a living.
For me, most importantly I lay in bed with my eyes closed those are the two big prerequisites to sleep. If you’re getting out of bed or keeping your eyes open to use your phone or whatever, of course you’re not gonna get to sleep.
From there, what I do doesn’t matter much. I think about stuff, make up a story, just imagine a bunch of swirly lights and patterns, doesn’t much matter. Keep your eyes closed and eventually sleep happens.
CBTI is the answer to everyone’s inability to sleep. Cognitive behavioral therapy (Insomnia) it’s worth looking up and learning about, if you can’t get there alone it’s worth finding a CBTI therapist if sleep is that problematic
I’m happy it (presumably) worked for you, but be mindful that some people don’t benefit from CBT, either due to it being ineffective or suffering from other issues. I’ve been to several courses, and it’s interesting how it spins your understanding of sleep on its head. It’s also crazy how fast new things get introduced in the years I’ve taken it.
I wish I could vouch for how effective it is on ‘falling asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow’. It seems others in group sessions find that it’s better/restful sleep, but not necessarily instant. But the people I’m usually grouped with have aggressive forms of insomnia.
I’m an introverted person who finds people exhausting, and I’m around people all day long. I hit some kind of point of extreme burnout about three years ago and things never let up, so I’m functional pretty much all the time but if I get any peace and quiet for more than about 30 seconds I just pass out indefinitely until someone wakes me up again lol.
Parenthood. You reach the point of pure exhaustion somewhere around 6 months. Depending on your child, it can last for years.
Self control mostly. I was taught to meditate by doing nothing but sitting, eyes closed, counting my breaths. It gave me a strong control over my thoughts. Now if I want to sleep, I lie down and turn my brain off. I’m out in a few minutes if it’s not too hot.
I used to take at least an hour to fall asleep. Then I had two kids. I can now fall asleep within a minute or two.
Worth it.
I have separated my living space into “zones” in my head. When I am awake, I am not allowed in the sleeping zone, aka my bed. By only being in my bed when I am going to sleep, I have trained my body that it is the “sleeping place.”
Ive always had trouble sleeping, too active an imagination I suppose. So for me the trick was drugs, they work a treat… Maybe too much of a treat.
Genetics
Don’t even need to hit a pillowThe steering wheel however…
“I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather. Not screaming and in agony like all of his passengers.”
One year old child.
Hey, I can do it in minutes. Just, like, 90-120 of them.
I avoid screens (with one exception mentioned in a bit)—especially social media (including fediverse)—for like an hour ahead of time, read a book, make sure I’m well fed and hydrated without eating too close to bedtime, wear a sleep mask, and put on some soothing music, podcast or (mostly audio-based) video—with the screen off as soon as I hit play. Sometimes I even resort to my noise-cancelling headphones—or earplugs, if the sounds of my own breathing, swallowing, and bloodflow don’t bother me too much that night. It helps to meditate and/or make sure to exercise/work hard enough to wear myself out each day.
Comfort helps. Finding the right position, having the right sheets, mattress, pillow, getting the ac/fan/heater so the room feels perfect, maybe cracking a window for fresh air. Feeling secure and safe where I’m sleeping, confident that I’ll make it through the night without rude awakenings. Each isn’t very powerful on its own, bit all together make a big difference in how readily I drift off.
Finally, I just try not to worry too much whether I fall asleep or not; if it’s not looking like it’s happening, I’ll try to write a story for myself or draw a masterpiece in my minds eye. If that doesn’t work, I’ll focus on invoking some Wake-Induced Lucid Dreaming instead: forcing myself to lie perfectly still with my eyes closed, not even shifting for comfort nor to scratch itches nor swat flies, letting my mind wander wherever it wants to and just going with the hypnagogic hallucinations (they can get a little uncomfortable at times). This rarely has the intended effect, but I usually do end up waking up later, realizing I fell asleep without knowing it.
Disclaimer: my routine won’t solve insomnia, it won’t fix neurological disorders that affect circadian rhythm, it probably won’t work on the first night even if you don’t have the aforementioned issues. But adding any part of it to your routine (if you can) will make it just that much easier to fall sleep, when you can get around to it, even if you do have underlying conditions.
Also, at the risk of sounding like a boomer, screens are really bad for sleep. I grew up with them: my family had a habit of watching tv until bedtime, I trained myself to fall asleep while staring at my laptop (which I often have on my bed), or I’ll pick up my phone after I put the laptop down. Nowadays I can feel how awake my brain gets when I check lemmy or read news around bedtime. If I have my phone near me, I’ll have this nagging feeling to do “just one more” check of all my socials.
And it always keeps me awake until I will myself to turn it off and close my eyes.
It’s a ritual. The secret for me is basically counting sheep. Except, I don’t actually count sheep, but there’s lots of other things. Nowadays I can just clear my mind, but that was not always so.
When I was a kid, I had trouble sleeping. I was scared of the dark or something. So I closed my eyes and started focussing on the shapes I saw to take my mind off it. It were basic geometric shapes in different colors that floated to the edge of my vision. Than new ones would pop up. That helped and eventually I was using that methid every day to fall asleep fast.
In my teenage years I was into “lucid dreaming”. Never managed to really do that, but they use special methods to fall asleep which also create some kind of ritual. Like looking at your alarm until you fall asleep. And than when it shows weird numbers, you know you’re asleep, but that part is speculative lol.
Like that there are a few otger “rituals” you can try. I think tge most important part is a semi regular sleep schedule and a ritual. Also, don’t watch tv or phone in bed. That’s the kind of ritual to prevents you from sleeping.
Train yourself. Pavlov’s sleep. Every time you go to bed, watch/listen to the same thing. Eventually, your brain associate the thing with “time to sleep”. That’s how it works for me, anyway. I turn on the same movie and pass out in minutes. Don’t do it with one of your favorites, though.
And also, don’t do things like lay in bed watching TV or messing with your phone all the time. You want the bed to be mostly mentally associated with sleep
Fun story, i used to do a lot of fly-in/out for a mine close to the artic circle which involved getting stuck on loud propeller planes for hours.
At some point, I realised that I could fall asleep before take-off but rarely during. Unintentionnally, I trained myself to fall asleep before takeoff.
Now, I just fall asleep before takeoff in any plane which makes my wife mad when she is excited to travel somewhere and I just doze off …
My “thing” is a Hercules movie from Mystery Science Theater 3000. Those movies are so low intensity, and I’ve fallen asleep to them hundreds of times over the past few years. I put a sleep timer on my ancient iPad on low brightness and low volume for 15m, and I’m usually asleep before time’s up.
I usually fall asleep to random youtube iceberg videos. Never thought about doing the same piece of media every night. My initial thought is that I’ll get bored of it after x amount of sleeps and then my mind starts wandering into my anxious thoughts. I’ll give it a shot though
Maybe finds a few you like and make a playlist, then just watch those specific ones? Something that you can mentally focus on when in bed with your eyes closed, but also something that’s not competing to hold your visual attention as well as no giant volume swings for your audio attention. Don’t want to fall asleep to quiet dialog only to be woken by the shootout in the next scene, or fall asleep to a mellow ballad and awoken by a rock track, for example.
Edited to add: around getting bored with it— I have changed what I listen or watch every few years, but it’s a very slow ramp up of new and ramp down of old. Something your brain recognizes and likes, but isn’t trying to stay awake to read the next page or see the next episode or upcoming challenge or whatever.
I think at the core, I am applying the same idea or concept of getting into a routine but i don’t focus too much on the words they’re saying as much as the tone or cadence of speech. Honestly now that I think of it, it feels like falling asleep in a lecture lol. Like it doesn’t matter who’s talking or maybe even what they are talking about, as long as they keep droning on monotonously
