At work last week we had to go around the circle and share one happy thing, and I initially panicked because I couldn’t think of a single thing to say, not one single happy thing. “Welp,” I thought to myself, “Time for therapy, followed by leaving my family to go find myself in a country I can use for personal discovery/fulfillment in a condescending and problematic way!”
But after a little more thought I realized I DO have lots of happy things, I just don’t have a bunch of the kind that work well to share with co-workers in a going-around-the-circle type exercise. Like, “I did laundry last night so I am wearing my favorite jeans today, and it makes me happy that today I’ll be working in THESE jeans instead of the ones I have to tug up every five seconds!” That feels weird to share in a group of co-workers, and I don’t want them sneaking peeks to see if my jeans-favoritism is justified, and/or noticing in the future how often I really do have to pull up the other ones. “I got new salt and pepper shakers so that Paul will stop taking the set from the stove to the living room while I still need them for the dinner I’m cooking.” Sounds more like a thinly-veiled Spouse Gripe, even though I was delighted to have an excuse to buy new shakers. Oh, or what about: “This morning I woke up at 2:00 and realized it was colder than it should be, and panicked that we’d run out of heating oil, and thought we were going to wake up this morning to a freezing house and no hot water and a big hassle—but actually we still had fuel and the house was warm and there was hot water, and probably I just felt cold in the night because peri-menopause seems to have broken my internal thermostat.” Too long. Overshare. Boring. Weird. A non-negative stated as a positive.
Plus, at work we’re not allowed to say anything political or religious. Not that there’s much I’m happy about there. But it keeps me from using things like “Today I felt a brief glimmer of hope when….”
I do think there is a shortage of happy things to think about right now. I tend to wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble getting back to sleep, and when that happens I used to have lots of things I would think about to soothe myself back to sleep: I would imagine shopping at Target, or I would think about baby names and/or babies, or I would think about yummy foods I might bake/eat the next day, or I would think about the book I was reading, and in that way I would fall asleep again. Recently I’ve been finding myself lying awake being literally unable to think of anything like that. Incredulously, I go through my mental topics file and find nothing but worries and agitations under every heading. Or, if I do find something good, it leads quickly to a worry/agitation: e.g., I’ll think about how Rob and William will be home for spring break in a few more weeks, and then that reminds me of some of my frets about Rob. Or I’ll think about the book Little Women, which I’m re-reading and which ought to be a happy comfort, and instead I end up thinking about how Marmee apparently has this colossal daily struggle with her temper but, unlike me, manages it so well that her children think she is Never Angry. And so I lie there fretting at a time of the night when frets seem larger and harder to subdue.
Do you have tricks you use to get back to sleep in the middle of the night? Do you have any Happy Things To Think About that I could borrow?
Tbh sometimes I go through YOUR old posts, like comfort reading! I also read other people’s old blog archives. Just the day-to-day thoughts of other people about their lives, if written about engagingly enough, seems to do the trick by helping me to let go of anxious thoughts. Plus meditating helps.
I imagine scene by scene Pride and Prejudice. Or I imagine about Would Mary Bennett get married? Or where all the FRIENDS are now (Joey still lives with Monica and Chandler)
Great ideas!
I took this course (https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being) and learned that savoring past happiness can make you just as happy as when you first experienced it. So I think about happy hour with friends and laughing until it hurts, or a horseback ride in the desert and the colors of the desert floor after a rain. Believe it or not, that technique has helped me a lot. I learned other techniques too, but this idea of reliving past happiness is the one I pull out most often
What a lovely idea! Thank you for sharing this.
When I can’t sleep, I pick a topic, then make an alphabetical list of things in that topic. My favorite is birds. A is for albatross, b is for barn owl, c is for canary, etc. if I get to a letter where I don’t know a bird that fits, I just skip it. I usually have to go through the list a couple of times, but it usually works to distract me enough that I fall back to sleep.
I do the same thing! I usually do foods or geographic places I’ve been – countries / cities
This is a new one for me – thanks! I’ll try it.
I usually envision the beach (my happy place). Like a perfect, warm day, light breeze, smell the salt air, hear the waves. This is my go to scene. Focus on slowing my breathing though I can’t quite meditate, just try to get to thay zone. I love the idea of reliving something happy and still give it a whirl next time I need it. Thank you for sharing this topic. For sharing at work, you could always share the basic thought without the personal detail. Just the “I am wearing my favorite jeans- so glad I did that extra load of laundry”.
I do this with characters! So like Harry Potter…A is for Albus Dumbledore, B is for Bill Weasley, etc. But usually when I’m in the bathroom and forgot to bring my book LOL.
I remembered this tip at 4am! Thank you, Charese!
You’re welcome! I hope it helped!
Sometimes I like to think about good TV shows or movies I’ve seen recently, then I might explain to myself mentally just what I enjoyed about it. I enjoyed this 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown because this person did unexpectedly well and he was really happy about it, and because this other person was hilarious and she made the host crack up. This episode of Doctor Who was great because there was some good character work to explain why this person does this, and they had some awesome scenes with all women (including women of colour) and it didn’t feel artificial at all because it’s just the way Doctor Who is these days.
Explaining it to myself can help me understand my reaction better, and can also mean I’m getting absorbed in the show/movie again, and that helps me block out everything stressing me out in this expired tub of french onion dip that is the world.
I send a card or a small package to friends on Galentine’s Day (the day before Valentine’s Day, a day for celebrating your friends! It’s from Parks & Rec) so I like to mentally compose what I’m going to send. Stickers, what card, what to write on the card, trinkets to enclose, etc. Maybe you could mentally compose care packages for people? There’s always a holiday approaching so it doesn’t matter what time of year it is!
When I wake up having panicky thoughts, I employ mindfulness techniques–very simple techniques work best for me at that time of night, because my goal is to get back to sleep as quickly as possible, rather than ruminating on thoughts that I cannot control (ie: the fact that We Will All Die Someday). I use the “be in the moment” techniques, such as really focusing on how my face feels against my pillow, or how my arms feel against the sheets or what my breath feels like going down my trachea. NO THINKING. Only experiencing physical sensations in a neutral, observatory way. Other tricks are to “listen mindfully.” Essentially, this means listening to whatever sounds I hear in the house and then allowing them to wash over me, dismissing them as soon as I notice them. Both of these techniques take a little bit of practice, but not much, and they have literally changed my life.
When none of those techniques work (which is rare), I use a mindfulness CD I bought for my son when he was 5 and could not fall asleep unless he was absolutely exhausted from walking in circles around his room for hours at a time. (That CD changed BOTH of our lives, because we are both anxious worriers by nature, and his anxiety manifested very early.) The CD is for sale on Amazon and is called “Sitting Like a Frog.” It teaches kids mindfulness through meditation and it is amazing for adults, too. I like the track called “Conveyor-belt of Worries.” My son likes the track about the treasure chest, because it makes him feel good about himself. He is 11 now and sometimes we still listen to it together when life is hard. There is something there for everyone, I think.
I get very passionate about this topic, because so many of us have anxiety, and finding something that we can do to help ourselves (rather than having a panic attack) is really comforting.
Thank you for the comment about your son. My son is almost 5 and has a lot of trouble going to sleep unless he’s absolutely exhausted too. Sometimes this doesn’t feel like a season of life and instead feels like a hell that we will never escape from. I had actually not considered that he might be experiencing anxiety, and I am going to employ this Sitting Like a Frog material tonight to see if it helps. Thank you for sharing!
Rachel–
You have my empathy. It’s very difficult to have a child who literally cannot sleep even when he is very tired. Lack of sleep affects every facet of life for everyone in the family.
I really hope the CD helps you as much as it helped us. I am an evangelist for mindfulness, because it has made such a difference in our lives! It didn’t happen all at once, though, especially because my son’s anxiety was so significant and he was incredibly scornful that a CD with “just some words” could help him. (Yes, even at 5, that child had scorn down pat.) But after a week or so, he started to realize that he liked the way it made him feel when we meditated.
Another tip I can give you with small children is to use “guided meditation” that you direct and tailor to the child’s personality. I had one meditation that I used to great effect with my son: at bedtime, I had him close his eyes and I verbally play acted us being a Mommy Cat and a “Son’s Name” Kitten. Using my calmest, most soothing voice throughout the entire meditation, I would start the meditation with us waking up in the morning. Then I would guide him through extremely active imagery of play, while interspersing deep breathing techniques throughout the imagery. I would gradually lead the imagery to the later day, increasing the breathing cues. Eventually, Mommy Cat and Child Kitten would find a patch of sunlight in our meditation. I would slowly wind the imagery down into calmer, quieter thoughts, and then I would end the image with “and then Son Kitten Went…To…Sleep.” Amazingly enough, he went to sleep every single time I did this. It got so that I could put him to sleep in less than 10 minutes flat. No joke.
I used that meditation literally for months. It worked like Magic. I cried tears of joy the first few times, because it had literally been years since he had fallen asleep at a “normal” time.
Rebecca
That cat mediation is genius! I’m already plotting how I can tailor it to us. My son likes pretending to be a baby, and sometimes baby animals, so this would probably work great for us. I need to do some more research into specific breathing techniques.
I’m sure you’re sitting on the edge of your seat to see how last night went. I first played a video on youtube of the frog part (I was hesitant to pay for the book right away), and it included jumping around and then sitting still. He liked the jumping more, of course lol. But he did a decent job at the sitting still. He asked for more stories, so I downloaded the book on audible and we listened to a few chapters. To his 4 year old credit, he laid still and did most of the breathing exercises for almost half an hour. Then right after, he jumped up and said, “I can’t sleep!” and I had to sing to him for half an hour until he fell asleep like usual lol. BUT I consider that progress! I introduced a new thing and he played along. Maybe if I can keep this up, we will get somewhere a little less hair-pulling for me. My silver lining is that he WILL go to sleep if I stay in the room and cuddle him/sing to him, so he’s always asleep by 10. BUT that’s with us starting the routine (darken lights, wind down words and cuddles, books, etc) at 8, and I really want him to learn to go to sleep by himself! He’s otherwise perfectly adapted to life though (health, eating, language, behavior, etc), so I tell myself that we all need ONE thing to keep us grounded. I am REALLY appreciative of your sharing and tips! If nothing else, it makes me feel less like a failure and less alone in the world! Thank you so much for taking the time!
Oh, I found the book to be useless. We actually just threw it away last week. The CD was where it was at for us. :) It was so boring the darned thing could have put me to sleep just by reading it. LOL.
If you try the guided meditation, I suggest cuing into what his breathing sounds like at various points. This way, you can extend the active part if necessary or extend the breathing parts if necessary. I could always tell when my son was starting to settle down, because his body felt “heavier” on the bed next to me, if that makes any sense. :)
Good luck!
Some middle-of-the-night activities for me: Youtube videos of bloopers from my favorite old NBC sitcoms, especially Seinfeld. Saturday Night Live videos where they start laughing never fail to make me laugh. I am a major lurker on twitter- I have it on private and don’t have many followers but I follow a ton of people- so when something really makes me laugh or makes me happy I retweet it. When I am blue, I go through my twitter profile and it makes me feel cheered.
I have several “sleep scenes” that I like to imagine and I pick one to pretend like I’m in it. Like, there’s a passage in Lord of the Rings where Merry and Pippin are sleeping in the Ent House while the Ents are having their big meeting and I imagine that I’m sleeping in an Ent-house with the moon shining and the moss for my bed and the Ents guarding me. Or maybe I’ll imagine I’m sleeping in Gryiffindor Tower at Hogwarts in a four-poster bed. Generally imagining up my favorite cozy moments from my favorite books.
Oops, didn’t mean to repy, meant to post a new comments sorry.
I love this imagery! I will have to try this the next time I need a guided meditation script. These images exude safety, security, warmth and comfort. That is exactly what I want when I cannot sleep. Thanks. :)
Rebecca
I count backwards by 3s from 900. Sometimes I finish and am still awake but am always happy when the next day I realize I fell asleep before I reached zero!
What did you say in the circle? Happy thoughts, I got so few, although Girl Scout Cookie selling is over for us and that’s awesome.
I said that William had had a good first semester at college. He worked there part-time, so they all know him and ask about him.
I have a podcast I’ve listened to feefor years, so the host’s voices are really familiar and it gets me out of my own head. Usually I fall asleep during the intro and can just fast forward a few minutes for the next night, but if I can’t fall asleep at least I feel like I’ve learned something rather than spending all night worrying about the sleep that I’m missing
I do this too! Have you ever tried the podcast called Sleep With Me? I’ve NEVER made it through a whole episode, and I actually hardly ever make it past the first 10 minutes.
I have tried that one too! It’s fascinating how incredibly boring it is!
I listen to the podcast of our local popular radio station. It is light enough that it rarely covers something that makes me fret, has no plot to keep my brain awake so I want to follow along with what happens, AND has a familiar order (trivia part, call in part, trending stories on twitter, etc). It’s familiar, and repetitive and not heaving or involving. Perfect.
I think about paint colors, because I have become obsessed with redecorating the bedrooms of kids who will ALL be out of college in 10 years. And you might think that I could leave that issue for, say, 9 years, but I have a . . . let’s call it a lively interest in paint colors. I own fan decks, that’s how bad it is.
I don’t let myself think about my kids’ college careers or their ability to cope with the responsibilities of adulthood or anything else. I just let myself obsess about my benign obsessions.
mimi smartypants shared a method of falling asleep sort of recently (?) that sounded amazing. I don’t have a link but it involved visualizing a digital clock with metal flippy numbers (like an old gas pump or kitchen clock) counting down from 999 and after each second you visualize the numbers dissolving and turning to powder so you can snort them up through a fancy cocaine straw. I’m not doing it justice; i need to try it out. If the cocaine part makes you fretty you could substitute inhaling something less illegal.
My method is 1) rotating in bed so that my head and feet trade places and 2) a go-the-eff-to-sleep-self technique I learned as a little kid reading a little kid book titled Gus and Buster Work Things Out (or something like that). It was about a pair of raccoon brothers who didn’t get along. When Buster couldn’t sleep he visualized telling each part of of his body to go to sleep, starting with his toes. Since I read the book, I do the same thing, though after I tell my toes to go to sleep I visualize them being sprinkled with blue fairy sleepy-time dust and sort of dissolving into stars, though they still look like my toes, just bluer and sparklier. Then it’s time to tell my ankles to go to sleep. I’ve never made it past visualizing half my body as peaceful, blue sleepy time dust before I’m genuinely asleep. Note: this didn’t work at all when I had anxiety attacks on the reg about life and work and stuff, but it works again now.
Ugh, middle of the night wake ups are terrible. I hope this phase of life goes by quickly.
Like another commenter, i often read through your archives when i need comfort. But I can understand how reading through one’s own archives might not have the same effect, especially with the troubling tendency of nostalgia to ebb into despair. You could go through old Target/Goodwill shopping posts, though — those are happy to read.
I think your salt and pepper shakers would be an excellent Happy Thought to share with the group. I always love to read your posts about fun purchases. Also, I don’t think you need to be totally 100% in the moment with your happy thought – it could be a borrowed one from the past. When your niece was just born. A fun trip. Visiting the shelter to look at possible cats.
Like you, I try and work my way through a book that I’m reading. Failing that, I’ll try and envision going to a place that’s familiar and happy, like a lake house. I think through every part of it: the sound of the car on the gravel drive and the blackness of the night when we arrive. Opening the car door, the light goes on. Getting out of the car, what am I taking to go inside? The sound of the waves on the shore, etc.
When I’m fretting (what if my kids get into drugs/sex/a car wreck, what if they never come back to loving me now that they’re teenagers), I tell myself that now is not the time to worry about that and I’ll think about it in the morning. And in the morning, it never seems to bad.
*work my way through a book, mentally, I mean. I try and remember everything that happened step by step.
Maybe you would like to borrow my thing-to-think-about-at-night? It is pretty satisfying.
I am planning to get a poodle puppy to train as a therapy dog at the middle school where I work. That means I get to NAME A PUPPY!! Plus, it has fun limitations— it can’t sound like things that are regularly said in the classroom (“Margo,” despite being a favorite of mine, is out because I say “go” so often when teaching). And it can’t be a name that is super likely to be in my class over the next 10-12 years or so (so, no Sophia or Noah… which is fine).
It is kind of a fun exercise!
I’m just going to recommend a book I just read, called The Book of Delights, by Ross Gay. The title sounds kind of saccharine and chicken soup-y, but it’s a book of mini essays about delight, even in this time of difficulty, and I loved every single one. I wanted to read them all in one gulp and also to slow way down and savor them.
I have been struggling with waking up in the wee hours for a couple of years now. It blows. (It’s called maintenance insomnia, if you’re curious, as opposed to onset insomnia which is difficulty falling asleep.)
Rumination is a major part of maintenance insomnia, so I do best when I’m able to interrupt that train (wreck) of thought with something benign or positive. Lately I’ve been imagining the kids as babies, especially my son because it’s harder to remember (sleep deprivation etc.). I try to really imagine his little face, his cheeks and dimples, how his eyes looked, what his hair was like, etc. It’s really soothing and positive.
Something else I saw recommended (but haven’t tried yet because I keep forgetting to bring earbuds upstairs and don’t want to wake my husband) is an app called mySleepButton. It’s a purposeful way to distract you from ruminating by suggesting items for you to picture in your mind. You could do this without the app but it’s useful to have the prompts. Here’s the website: https://mysleepbutton.com/support/msb-sleep-tips/
Regarding the “share something positive” thing, that’s really hard for me too. I have a fairly happy life, I think, but man does my mind go blank when I’m put on the spot. I think you pinpointed the problem – the items I do think of don’t seem particularly work-appropriate or significant “enough” whatever that means. Like, I am WAY on board with the favorite jeans thing, but I also might not want to say that to my co-workers. Or something like “I made the BEST NACHOS this weekend” would come to mind but seem like maybe that’s weird to be excited about? But I’m telling you, they were SO GOOD. I think it was the corn/bean salsa. This comment took a turn, didn’t it. ;)
I have a mediation that I’ve used for years to go to sleep. Basically start at my feet and check in mentally with each body part, telling it to get heavy and quiet. On a good day, I’m asleep by my hips. On a bad day, I make it to the top of my head and start again (I’ve never gone through my whole body twice). It works for me.
Good thing that happened- my office knows that I love train graffiti (it helps that the train tracks are right behind the parking lot at work), so I would probably share my favorite piece of the week “Wednesday’s was particularly great- DOME and GFAME really had some nice blues and greens in their designs.”
Peri-menopause is a special kind of horror. I am reading Ada Calhoun’s new book, ‘Why Women Can’t Sleep’ and, while interesting, it offers nothing I did not know except that lots of gals are in the boat with us. I am almost always up for an hour in the middle of the night. One tip– picture a place you have been or want to be and re-create it in your mind. I find imagining temperature and textures of said place more helpful than visuals. Mine is almost always either a hot part of the woods in summer with the drone of insects and birds and warmth of sun OR a cool forest floor at the mouth of a cave where I curl up like an animal and feel rocks, dirt, leaves, moss…etc. But mostly I suck at getting back to sleep so am happy to read comments here.
I’ve been reading your blog so long. I was waking often in the middle of the night and fretting for HOURS. Well Tylenol PM has helped with that mostly. Also it helped knowing our 3am brain is not our correct brain so I just try to tell it to shut up. But often I tell myself all will be fine, all will be right, and I would put money down that I learned that from reading YOU many years ago.
I once found this article while struggling to go to sleep in the first place: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/02/14/how-mechanical-rubber-goods-are-made/
And I have read it several times (well, the beginning of it because I have never made it through without falling asleep) and how I just THINK about how rubber hoses are made and I can always fall asleep.
You inspired me to write about my own happy thoughts! But mostly in the middle of the night I concentrate on breathing mindfully and also remember that just lying in bed is giving my body rest, so even if I don’t fall asleep, I’m still resting. It’s a soothing thought.
I have a set of psalms and things that I have memorized that I repeat – it’s just enough mental effort to keep track of that I can mostly stop thinking about things, and I usually drop off to sleep in the middle. (I have probably ~15 minutes memorized; if I do not repeat them and I’m awake-ish, I’ll likely be awake for half an hour or an hour or longer, but if I do repeat them and focus on them, I conk out somewhere in the middle of them 90% of the time.) I assume this would work similarly for most not-ultra-catchy memorized texts (favorite poetry, yes; catchy song lyrics, noooo), but does require a bit of setup in *having* that chunk of memorized text (I memorize while on the exercise bike each day; it makes it less boring). It also does tend to require some maintenance in the moment – turning the brain back towards attention to the memorized thing instead of rabbit trails – but that’s much more manageable when there is something at the ready that you can be paying attention to.
If I’ve got a more active brain track (so, something I really need to kick out of my head instead of just needing a little extra help to keep the brain from latching onto things), then I either listen to an audiobook until I am at the can-repeat-psalms-to-conk-out phase, *or* I plan something in detail or figure something out. It needs to be something where my plans do not ultimately matter a lot, so if I fall asleep and forget, that is just peachy – like, “if I host a party next summer, what would I like to serve and how would I rearrange the furniture and…” – or you can design a house to retire in, or design a dollhouse and think of what household objects you could repurpose in it, or plan out a garden, or think if you were going to the Oscars, what would you like to wear and design the dress down to exact pocket placement, etc. I have generally found that it needs to be either placid and normal and plausible-ish but not immediate *or* so outlandish/silly that it’s not distressing to me that, most likely, I will not *actually* get to wear/do/be whatever. (I also keep a pen and paper right near me, so if I *do* have a sudden no-we-really-do-need-to-remember-this inspiration or recollection, I can scrawl it down in the darkness and then call it dealt with and go back to hanging out in the dark and trying to go to sleep.)
I’d also note that the backlit-screen thing does seem to keep me awake longer; I swap to reading on a Kindle Paperwhite or an actual paper book before bed, and that helps. (I suspect it helps partly because of the light, partly because of the “we are now in the going-to-bed-phase” habit thing, and partly because *you cannot “just quickly check” Twitter* on a paperwhite or in a real book.)
I also do layering in bed and tend to want to stay cooler before getting to sleep (so, body outside of covers with feet under covers) and then when I’m just about to sleep, I automatically nest into the full layers of covers. But internal temperature regulation is a bear, especially when it goes awry in various directions at different times. (side-selective electric blanket or electric heating pad in bed, maybe?)
Anyway, yeah, bodies and hormones and the world being what it is right now (those people are claiming to be *Christians* and are still excusing and dismissing extensive lies, bullying, and various things that are extremely against the law???) are all conspiring against your sleep, and that sucks. But various “sleep hygiene” things can help – but also recognize that this is more of an uphill battle right now, so do not beat yourself up about some insomnia. (although maybe talking to a doctor would be good; sometimes things are adjustable or fixable)
(also, I endorse avoiding the Spousal Gripe, as well as avoiding the appearance of Spousal Gripe, when reasonable, and sometimes we are not at full capacity for re-framing things to avoid sounding like we’re doing a Spousal Gripe – but you could just say “we got a second pair of salt and pepper shakers so one can be with the cook in the kitchen while the other is on the table!” and that would leave Spouse out of it. And we did something similar and it is *lovely* and I strongly endorse it. Salt and pepper both in the kitchen and where the eaters are, and Assigned Scissors in Every Room!)(okay, we do not have a pair of Living Room Scissors. But everywhere that packages are opened or paper is cut or whatever: there are scissors there and you use those scissors. It is magic.)
Anyway. I hope you sleep better soon.
Also deep breathing exercises. Breathe in (with chest and belly) for four+ heartbeats, hold for two, breathe out for 4-6 heartbeats, hold for two, repeat. (can you tell that I’ve got a medical condition that induces insomnia, which also takes three separate medications that can also cause insomnia? Sigh…)
(also to echo what a previous comment said, if you are resting in the dark, it is restful to your body even if you are not asleep, which is nice and can help reduce I’m-not-sleeping further agitation?)
I totally get what you mean about having happy things that are not things you want to share at work. The situation is one of those things that some workplaces do where the intentions are good, but the execution isn’t always easy for everyone (especially introverts; I think extroverts tend to be the ones coming up with these Great! Ideas! for Sharing! and Bonding!).
What I do at night is put on an audio book, and it has to be one I know well enough not to mess myself up by getting too into it and thus not falling asleep. I put the sleep timer on for 45 minutes, and am almost always asleep before it turns off. Sometimes in the night if I get too awake, I’ll put it on again. When I feel my brain getting off track, I focus on the words, and listening, and it usually helps me fall asleep. I just got a sleep mask that has bluetooth and little speakers, so i could listen on a trip without disturbing my aunt, and it worked well.
When I wake up during the night, I try to not think about anything. What I do instead is feel. What do I feel? My bedding. I love the feel of my pillows, blankets and sheets almost to a point that is disturbing. So, I wake up and enjoy how fabulous it feels to be in my bed. I fluff a pillow or two and sink back into the wonderfulness. Instead of trying to go back to sleep, I enjoy being in my bed. This is very relaxing and makes me happy. I either fall back to sleep or enjoy being in bed – both are okay with me.
I like to visualise a cottage right next to a body of water somewhere really remote (maybe Scotland?) where somehow my life is magically simple and all the anxiety-inducing/weighing me down/how will this be paid for aspects of life don’t apply. Unfortunately it usually falls through when I think about whether my kids exist in this fortress of solitude, because family life = stress but even at 3am I’m not willing to imagine them away.
Failing that I run through the alphabet from A-Z with a cool baby name for each letter, and I try and stick to themes – 26 word/nature names, 26 old person names etc etc.
I don’t generally have an issue with waking up in the middle of the night (knock wood); so I’ve nothing to add to all the good ideas listed here.
But I did want to share – I’ve re-read Little Women many, many times over the years. Re-reading it as an adult was an eye opener in that I found that what drew me in as a child had changed as an adult. Seeing Marmee through new eyes, etc.
These tips are so helpful! When I couldn’t get back to sleep, I used to relive every moment of one of my kid’s birthing story- what I did the day before, when my water broke, getting ready and going to the hospital, what happened there, etc. I would usually fall asleep before the baby was born! For some reason, I think because it was over 20 years ago now and my memory is not as good, it just doesn’t work anymore. It makes me kind of sad. But! Now I have new ideas to try.
Some nights I like to go for a flight around my town – just jump out of the window and glide away, visiting landmarks and enjoying the cool night air. Other nights I spend time in one of my ‘ideal lives’ – living as a fabulously wealthy and successful writer in a charming French village, or illustrating chilren’s books in my cottage in the Orkney Islands. For a while I was a xeno-biologist on an interstellar ship, which was a nice change.
Wherever I go, It always works better with some nice soothing rain sounds to block out distractions. The best source of relaxing sounds I’ve found is mynoise.net, which has a vast selection to suit any preference.
When I’m really anxious and hitting panic stage I do multiplication in my head (like 47×24 size). I’m not great at sums and it takes all of my concentration.
When I can’t sleep I listen to Judy Dench and Stephen Fry reading Winnie the Pooh (it’s on YouTube). It distracts without engrossing so I can fall back asleep but feel safe and calm.
Happy things: Chocolate exists; stickers are fun.
In my real life, I am super happy because my son made a really good decision on Saturday. He drove to meet up with a friend who had arrived in another friend’s car with a third friend. The other driver got stoned. My son asked the other two friends if either of them had a driver’s license, and one did. So he arranged that the licensed friend would drive stoned kid home in stoned kid’s car while my son followed in his car, and then my son would drive the other two home. Everyone got home safe and before the under-18-driver curfew. “Promise you won’t get mad” he asked me before he told me all of this*. MAD? MAD? I am prouder of him than of anything in my life. He did the right thing in the right way at the right time and I am so happy about it.
We took him to his favorite restaurant to celebrate.
* He was worried I’d be mad at him for hanging out with someone who gets stoned. No. No, I’m not mad at him.
Well perimenopause turned my usual low level worrier tendencies up to 11 in the middle of the night so I do a couple of things that sometimes work to get me back to sleep. The first is to run through my head a song that makes me feel sleepy. In my case that’s Sting’s Fragile. It’s a very slow, quiet song. The second, usually more successful although probably weird thing is to run through either new or complicated zumba routines in my head. My brain is engaged trying to learn something that causes me absolutely no stress so it seems to work. I should probably learn meditation or something but I don’t seem to think about doing that when I’m actually awake during the day. Sigh.
When my mind starts running on its hamster wheel and I need to go to sleep I don’t try to think about anything personal; even happy thoughts won’t help me fall asleep if I find them too engaging. Instead I put on a podcast about something interesting (but not RIVETING, kind of neutral, hm, that’s kind of cool stuff – for me that means podcasts like Planet Money or Hidden Brain) and set the sleep timer for 15 minutes. I’m usually out before it shuts off.
I also have the Calm app which has sleep stories and guided meditations and soundscapes and breathing prompts, but I got it for my son who suffers from migraines so I don’t use it a lot myself. One thing I found out that surprised me is that I thought I’d like the rain soundscapes, but everything kind of irritated me a bit except for the crickets which made me really happy.
Last year at this time, I was 1 month into what would be 5 months of severe insomnia: getting 1-3 hours of broken sleep each night. In my desperation, I found this sleep meditation on Amazon: it is $0.99 and lasts for about an hour https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LH2FMVM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_d_asin_title_o03?ie=UTF8&psc=1 (if the link doesn’t work, it is called “A Time for Sleep: Guided Relaxation Techniques for Peaceful Slumber”). The first night I used it, I was a little worried that I would stay awake because I would be interested in what she was saying and what she would say next, since I hadn’t heard it before, but I was so exhausted that as soon as I gave my brain an escape from the spiraling anxiety thoughts, I fell asleep. After using it for a while, sometimes I had to play it twice or alternate nights with other things. I also found some other sleep meditations that were a little more expensive. I would listen to one of those as I was trying to fall asleep and turn it on again when I woke up in the night. They didn’t always work, but they worked often enough that I kept using them. I also went through my music and made some relaxing playlists that I could turn on in the middle of the night to give my mind something to focus on besides the spiraling anxiety. I found the CD, “Beauty and the Beast: Of Love and Hope”, that was from the old TV show “Beauty and the Beast”; several of the tracks are Ron Perlman reading poetry in a very soothing voice (I DESPERATELY wish there were more CDs of Ron Perlman reading poetry in his very soothing voice!). I had to make a playlist picking out the poetry and only some of the songs because others of the songs get loud in places and would startle me-I copied all of those onto the playlist twice to make it long enough. I think the key is to focus your mind on whatever is playing and bring your mind back to it when you notice your thoughts starting up again.
Now that the insomnia is back to just trouble falling asleep and then being wide awake at 3 or 4a.m., I am having great success with the memorizing mentioned above: During the day I work on memorizing a short section of something that is decently long-ish, and at night, when I am ready to go to sleep or I find myself awake when I shouldn’t be, I recite as much as I know so far in my head. When I discover my mind has wandered, I go back to the last place I remember or just start over. I am usually asleep before I get through it the second time. I am still surprised every time this works.
The mindfulness mentioned above (focusing on observing the feel or sound or look of things in the room) has also helped me.
Sometimes, if the wakeful thoughts are being persistent, I will say to myself over and over, “It is time to sleep right now; I can think about that in the morning.”
Sometimes, if there is a certain stressful situation looming, I will think about what it would be like if all of the specific components of that situation worked out in the most advantageous way: I will think of each component separately and how it would domino into making the next component work out well too. I read somewhere: “the human nervous system cannot tell the difference between an actual experience and an experience imagined vividly and in detail.” I already know that it doesn’t really help my nervous system to imagine in vivid detail the terrible way I’m afraid something will turn out, so I’m trying to imagine it the way I WISH it would turn out (reminding myself that this is a WISH/ALTERNATE POSSIBILITY and not an EXPECTATION), so that I only have to deal with the terrible way once, when, er, IF it happens, instead of many times before that.
To fall asleep, either at the beginning of the night or when woken in the middle of the night, I picture myself on some sort of transportation. I didn’t realize how odd this sounds until it came up recently with friends. I picture myself on a boat (cruise, private cabin), plane (1st class, the kind with the cocoons), train (again, private cabin) and I’m alone and I’m moving and I think about the different muffled sounds, and how my body would feel and move. I find it very soothing, though maybe because I am in the small-children phase of life so the thought of solo travel is the height of luxury and rest.
I’m Australian but have travelled to the US many times and have visited 26 of the 50 states. When I wake up in the middle of the night I try reciting all 50 states in loose alphabetical order from memory. Like Alaska, Arkansas, Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, California, Colorado etc. I usually get to the M’s and then fall asleep trying to figure out the eighth M state. I always get stuck there – for some reason I can remember 7 of them (and not always the same 7) but the eighth one always eludes me! If I don’t fall asleep then, I skip over it, figure out the others and come back to it but I never actually get to the stage where I recite all 50. Sometimes I get sidetracked thinking of happy travel memories in the states I’ve been to but that’s ok, that helps me sleep too. I’m not sure this method would work for a US citizen but it’s been a big help for me over the last few months.
Someone else might have mentioned this, but several years ago I realized I know when I am falling asleep when I am having a thought, and some random thing pops into my head. So when I wake up at 3:00 am, which happens more and more as I get older-I start to purposely think of random words. Then I found out this is a actually a thing-and there is even an app that you can listen to that does that. I tried it, but the words came way too slow, it didn’t work for me. Plus the whole act of getting the app going-makes me feel more awake.
Sometimes I recite song lyrics to myself-it gets my mind off the hamster wheel that might be keeping me awake.