If you're looking at a computer screen before going to bed and you're finding it difficult to sleep right away (like you said at 11pm) try f.lux: [url]https://justgetflux.com/[/url]
And someone suggested this earlier but I have had good experiences with this in the past: stay up all night and all day. By the end of the day, provided you make it through without sleep, you'll be so tired you'll just fall to sleep whenever you choose. That's the start of your new routine. Make sure you follow it as best as you can.
Avoid all caffeine, even during the day.
Turn down the lighting in your room an hour before you go to bed.
As soon as you wake up, turn on all the lights and open all your curtains. If you can muscle it in the morning, look out the window for just 30 seconds. The sunlight will tell your body that it's time to get up
And, something I've found very important: Sleep with a window open
You need a puzzle alarm clock, You can download them for your phone, it locks the phone and wont turn off until you solve the equation or puzzle, you can set it to a hard difficulty, to force you to really engage your mind whilst a god awful ringtone or song you hate may be blaring out the speaker.
[QUOTE=Wickerman123;46742184]Most of the time, If I attempt an early night, I just lay awake for hours.
I had the same problem last year and fixed in somewhat by staying up for 24 hours and then sleeping at 10pm.
Is this really advisable as a fix though?[/QUOTE]
Absolutely. I have had pretty much the same problem as you and this has been the best way to get my sleeping routine back into shape.
If it's too tough, stay up until noon or later - without taking any caffeine - and then nap somewhere other than your bed, but only for a few hours. I used to catch 2 hours on a chair and then I'd be dog-tired come 10pm, sleep for 8 hours and wake up at 6am.
For the love of god though, limit the caffeine intake so that you don't drink it past noon. You'll be repeating the same cycle, otherwise.
Thanks for the response guys, really appreciate it!
I'll look into these puzzle clocks and continue to save for an alarm clock coffee machine. I have tried flux but I just can't stand the colour change..
I should probably up my water intake, I do admit, I was feeling better when I was drinking more water.
[QUOTE=Wickerman123;46758672]Thanks for the response guys, really appreciate it!
I'll look into these puzzle clocks and continue to save for an alarm clock coffee machine. I have tried flux but I just can't stand the colour change..
I should probably up my water intake, I do admit, I was feeling better when I was drinking more water.[/QUOTE]
your setting for flux should make white on screen look like a white piece of paper under your room lighting
also you have to give flux more than a day to get used to it
You sure you're not suffering from a mild form of sleep paralysis? I used to live with a kid who suffered from it and he would often sleep for hours longer than anyone else I've ever known. Might be worth looking into.
Here's a few things you could try, if any of them work our incorporate them into getting a routine that is right for YOUR schedule:
1. Lay completely still in bed for 15 minutes in a comfortable position. Try not to think and you should fall asleep without noticing.
2. Eat healthier/exert more energy throughout the day. Eating right can really affect your body, as well as doing some sort of physically exhausting activity. You'll want to collapse in your bed because of exhaustion, which will let you fall asleep faster.
3. Sit on the side of your bed, close your eyes, stretch, and take deep breaths. Let your mind drift off, this may make your body more sleepy.
For getting on a routine you need to begin getting your body to feel tired around a certain time. You turn off your alarms sub-consciously because you are not getting enough sleep. Fixing your internal clock does take time, but a couple changes to your daily life would help.
Allowing your body to get a full night rest will also begin setting your internal clock, I wake up around the same time each day without an alarm if I go to bed around the same time each night.
Routine is key. You must force yourself out of bed sometimes, even if it's to get a cup of coffee so you don't fall back asleep. I find getting out of bed is a massive motivation thing for me, so I have to find a good reason to get out of bed in the morning, the night before.
Also it may be worth pointing out that lots of people (I don't know how true it is, but it feels relatively factual) say getting too much sleep will actually make you tireder. I certainly found that reducing my sleep time from 9 to 7 hours gave me a lot more energy throughout the day, even if it made my mornings more groggy at times.
[QUOTE=LordCrypto;46759308]your setting for flux should make white on screen look like a white piece of paper under your room lighting
also you have to give flux more than a day to get used to it[/QUOTE]
My mo it or has pretty poor colour reproduction so that's probably why it goes all yellow. A better monitor is on my "to buy" list next to that coffee machine.
So, I stayed up from 1pm to 7pm the next day because this thread told me to.
I slept for 21 hours and woke up at like 4pm. Thanks alot.
Get a really fucking LOUD alarm clock that sends you jolting out of bed. Hook your phone up to a big-ass speaker and blast some combiation of air-raid sirens, klaxons and god knows what in the morning.
[QUOTE=The Saiko;46744039]Yeah really.
I'm not sure about the bananas but high cortisol levels causes a fuckton of illnesses and reducing your stress should be your primary goal. It's strange that your doctor didn't think of this so maybe you should also think about looking for a better one.[/QUOTE]
This may explain why if I go to bed before midnight I wake up at 4AM and can't get back to sleep, since I've been working a 7-day workweek since my exams finished and my only days off until school starts again are Christmas and New Year's.
This just recently happened to me. What I did was sleep only a few hours during the night so I could actually function the next day, and then didnt sleep until about 9pm. My schedule is mostly fixed besides not really sleeping more than 6 hours at a time.
Exercise on a regular basis and eat healthier foods. Thats what I do, by the time 8pm rolls around I go to sleep and wake up at 0500 to 0530.
[QUOTE=LordCrypto;46744104][url]https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.bitspin.timely&hl=en[/url]
good luck turning this off when you have to solve a math problem, or put the shapes in their boxes, or solve a random pattern[/QUOTE]
I used this once.
I was still turning alarms off in my sleep [I]without[/I] turning off my phone.
If you cut down on caffeine consumption and do workouts that actually make you ultra-tired, you'll go to sleep so easily.
I've been falling asleep at 8PM all this week because I have been skiing every day.
I need to be that guy, but exercise and routine isn't always all. A common reason for not getting up in the morning is the one of an underlying depression, speaking from experience. If you think about it, what do you long for the very first seconds your eyes opens in the morning (the "reason to get up in the morning")? How do you feel otherwise? I suffer from this as well for the last 5 years, now and then. I am seeing a therapist this coming spring in order to sort myself out.
You might be right.. I've had depression before and if I'm honest, I don't think I ever fully recovered. I may need to see a therapist when I get back to my city of study. Helped organise a dance yesterday in the community hall and because of some people that were there I had some of the memories of rough times come back. It was rather traumatic.
I don't exactly know how to approach getting a therapist, last time it was forced upon me after I got caught planning a suicide..
Any tips?
[QUOTE=Wickerman123;46806636]You might be right.. I've had depression before and if I'm honest, I don't think I ever fully recovered. I may need to see a therapist when I get back to my city of study. Helped organise a dance yesterday in the community hall and because of some people that were there I had some of the memories of rough times come back. It was rather traumatic.
I don't exactly know how to approach getting a therapist, last time it was forced upon me after I got caught planning a suicide..
Any tips?[/QUOTE]
I'd say that you should go to a local health center or clinic first, to get in touch with medical personnel who can guide you through the next step - a regular medicine doctor has experience with this. Explain how you feel and be sincere and honest to yourself. I'll root for you, we all will. At first, take comfort in knowing that it'll get better!
[QUOTE=Wickerman123;46806636]You might be right.. I've had depression before and if I'm honest, I don't think I ever fully recovered. I may need to see a therapist when I get back to my city of study. Helped organise a dance yesterday in the community hall and because of some people that were there I had some of the memories of rough times come back. It was rather traumatic.
I don't exactly know how to approach getting a therapist, last time it was forced upon me after I got caught planning a suicide..
Any tips?[/QUOTE]
Having a depression definitely can screw with your sleep schedule. Speaking from personal experience in the past, your body can react in all kinds of funny ways in order to distract you from stuff that is bothering you. If depression and/or repressed stress really is the root cause for your sleep schedule problems I'd suggest the following:
(A) First and foremost, if you are a student definitely go to a student counselor of your school or colledge or university. These people are trained to deal with these kinds of problems and to provide help on a daily basis. There is nothing awkward or shameful about asking for help.
(B) Something that has helped me a lot and was suggested to me by a student counselor in order to overcome stress (exams, breakup and financial problems) in the past was writing a list or narration of all the things that are troubling you or have troubled you in the past.
Just try to be honest and sum up all things with a negative impact (even if only minor) on your happiness and if possible explain why it made or why it still makes you feel bad. You can write it down on paper and throw it away afterwards or keep it in order to remember that there are a lot of things that do affect you even on a subconcious level. Facing the things you might be trying to avoid, understanding yourself and why your body might want to distract and protect you from internal pain can be at least the first step in order to get back on track. Tell yourself that there is no need to hide from feelings and that there is no shame in admitting feeling hurt. Finally, realize that even when bad things happen and after you experienced pain you can choose to not let them dominate your life. A lot of people struggle with horrible problems in their life but yet manage to move on and stay happy.
That being said, if the root cause has nothing to do with depression, another thing that might cause it is your fear of not being able to reset your schedule. During one summer as a child I was not able to sleep properly at night for an extended period of time because I was afraid of not being able to sleep. If you have a strong expectation that you will not be able to fall asleep earlier in the evening you are creating tension and thus a self fulfilling prophecy. Fight down the anxiety and keep telling yourself that the only reason you cannot fall asleep is your anxiety. Reason with yourself that by relaxing and letting go of the irrational fear, sleep will naturally come. Everyone needs sleep. You have slept on the right schedule for countless times in your live before. It will be easy. ;)
I appreciate the help.
One thing I've found that is a lot of these techniques often don't seem to help. At times I can tell what is wrong and how said thing is effecting me yet I don't know how to stop it.
For example, I may have seen a therapist about a breakup (it wasn't just a breakup, there were a lot of things going on at the time) The breakup isn't the root cause of my issues but it played a big roll and despite being nearly 3 years ago, still effects me - hence my previous post about seeing people.
I know all the reasons it affected me badly and despite thinking I'm over it. Not a day has gone by in those passed where I haven't at least thought about her name or any of our experiences.
How does one turn knowing what the problem is into knowing how to [I]fix[/I] the problem?
[QUOTE=Wickerman123;46819097]I appreciate the help.
One thing I've found that is a lot of these techniques often don't seem to help. At times I can tell what is wrong and how said thing is effecting me yet I don't know how to stop it.
For example, I may have seen a therapist about a breakup (it wasn't just a breakup, there were a lot of things going on at the time) The breakup isn't the root cause of my issues but it played a big roll and despite being nearly 3 years ago, still effects me - hence my previous post about seeing people.
I know all the reasons it affected me badly and despite thinking I'm over it. Not a day has gone by in those passed where I haven't at least thought about her name or any of our experiences.
How does one turn knowing what the problem is into knowing how to [I]fix[/I] the problem?[/QUOTE]
Obviously, I am no therapist and this just stems from personal experience as well as reading the book "The Mindbody Prescription" and others. Knowing what exactly is the problem can actually do a lot, IF you happen to struggle with repressed anger/sadness/pain. That may or may not be the case. In my case I experienced a variety of different symptoms that did not seem to be connected at first but that all went away once I figured out that I was repressing a lot of feelings and started dealing with them.
The thing is that repressing feelings is something that can happen without you actually noticing it. It does not even have to be a bad thing. The brain represses stuff all the time in order to protect you from stress and pain, that's one of many natural mechanisms. However, if you happen to deal with a lot of stuff and your default stance is to repress negative emotions this can develop into a problem. Repressed emotions, never completely leave your system and are processed by your brain without you noticing it. If it is too much to handle or ignore, your brain can employ other strategies to distract you: Like making you sleepy, cause sensations or phantom pain, screw with your digestive system and all kinds of crazy stuff.
However, if you manage to figure out what the subconscious part of your brain (meaning the part that you have no direct control over with your consciousness) tries to hide from you, the whole strategy your brain was employing fails and there is no longer a need to distract you from bad emotions because you are now fully aware of them and actively processing them with a conscious effort.
I was just sharing this suggestion because for me it was the root cause and after I sceptically persued the approach to uncover and deal with potentially repressed emotions all my problems vanished. It is amazing how much power the brain can have over your body but at the same time how much you can actively influence the state of your mind and body yourself.
Of course, that does not mean that every depression can be cured by just thinking positively or some bs like that. Sometimes brain chemistry can just be screwed up, too, and medication is needed. Sometimes it can boil down to a simple nutrition deficiency. Depression is a brain problem and since the brain is complex there is a plethora of factors that can play a role in depression. That's why talking to counselor and therapists and trying out different methods is so important.
I just open my blinds before bed so when the sun starts to shine through at 6:30 or so I wake up.
[QUOTE=Dr McNinja;46821672]I just open my blinds before bed so when the sun starts to shine through at 6:30 or so I wake up.[/QUOTE]
Doesn't work for me.
Living in Scotland doesn't help.
This may sound counter intuitive to a lot of people here, but have you tried setting an alarm that starts really quiet and is soothing? I know that on my phone I set it to where it'll start a song that is very soft and it'll very gradually get louder 3 minutes before my actual alarm. I haven't turned off my alarm without noticing ever since I did this about a year ago, nor have I ever gotten to where my actual alarm goes off. I'll sometimes just stay in bed, but that's because I just wanted to sleep a bit more. I recommend trying it, as I found that I'll eventually turn off loud and annoying alarms without realizing it.
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