Poll: Okay body.... Sleep!

[Tortilla the Hun]

Lately the hardest part for me has been getting to sleep. I've tried listening to music, listening to white noise, listening to nothing, taking some ZzzQuil, drinking chamomile, and still find myself having trouble not turning over restlessly as my mind keeps me up 'til midnight. Which in turn makes my mornings rather difficult when I've had less than 5 hours of meaningful sleep. For the specifics of my waking experience, I refer you to the image below...

Spoiler: I feel this perfectly describes my mornings most days

 

[Artina89]

I do have insomnia, so the rare times I do manage to get to sleep I do tend to wake up at around 4 in the morning, no matter where I am. For example, I have recently travelled from London to Montreal, and my body has retained its sleeping patterns of going to sleep at about 1 in the morning, and waking up at 4. It does mean that I don't get jet lag, which is useful, but at the same time it would be nice if I could sleep for more than a couple of hours.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

I don't think it's here so I'll just add it. Sore joints. Seriously, I don't know what my body or brain gets up to after I fall asleep but the sheets are rumpled, blanket and pillows on the ground and I'm curled up in the center, muscles and joints locked up and aching. After I wake up though, I'm awake. 2 hours of sleep, 8 hours, doesn't matter. Brain is awake and it won't shut up.

 

[Tiger King]

I'm having this right now.
It's just gone 1:30 am and I'm wide awake, been like this all week and it's really frustrating me!!

Tried some melatonin yesterday but I don't think it worked :/
Went for a run today but that also didn't seem to help. I wonder how Obama or a similar country leader manages?
When I'm led awake in the darkness, thinking and thinking and thinking about stupid stuff, I wonder how he manages when he has a whole world of problems?

Sometimes I try a form of meditation to help block out the annoying thinking.
I picture myself on a futuristic starship heading somewhere in deep space. I'm looking out a window and see stars rushing past, it's silent bar the soft hum of whatever engineering wizardry is propelling the ship.
I try to keep that image in my head and think of all the exciting possibilities that could exist in space and sometimes it works and I nod off.
Not lately though I'm afraid.

Pretty sure it's because I was going through my hard drive the other day for portfolio photos for work, and stumbled across some old photos.
Nostalgia hit home a bit and With my 30th coming up, perhaps that's why my mind won't shut up at night.

 

[Vicarious Reality]

I practically never have problems with the act of sleeping, just the rare waking to go to the bathroom or not being able to breathe because it is too dry

However, i frequently am given problems by assholes.


Trying sleeping drugs was the worst thing i have ever done in my life.

 

[Vicarious Reality]

What the hell is going on with this thing? it made three posts and i had to click the checkbox captcha like nine times before it worked

 

[Remus]

That's easy. I'm one of those super annoying people who sleep lightly and wake up instantly alert and bright and ready to do get going. Waking up is never a problem, and provided I got enough sleep I feel good and refreshed right away. Its almost the real life version of fallout's "You wake feeling well rested."

Now falling asleep, that's the hard part. I have to be cool (65 to 71 degrees F) and in complete darkness. If I can see, I can't sleep. And the worst part... I work 3rd shift, I have to achieve those conditions while going to bed about 11 AM.

All of this. Plus I have a dog that just has to be snug up against my back. If he's not with me when I go to bed, I'll hear a jingle at my door from his collar shaking as he's scratching himself. If I don't open the door right away he'll scratch, scratch again. Then the TV comes on as my family wakes up and UGH religious programming, now Billy graham will be running through my head as I force myself to sleep. This is every weekday for me. I've found having a fan for some white noise to block out everyone else helps a ton. otherwise my own movements from trying to get comfortable would keep me awake.

On the plus side, being up all night is perfect for survival horror. I'm finally getting around to beating Alien: Isolation.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I can either be asleep within 10 minutes or I can wind up sitting up after what I guess to be two hours and just say "fuck it, I can either continue laying here and allowing stress to build up or I can take a half-hour to get through a bit of a book." I find this to be my most common night-time problem. Once my alarm goes off in the morning, I can be up then and there...unless I don't HAVE to be up. If I set an alarm for the sake of maintaining my sleep/waking schedule on a day off of work, I tend to ignore it. There is the odd day when my phone decides not to go off though...I don't have much of an internal alarm clock...it sometimes leads to sticky situations but there's a reason I generally make sure I'm getting ready for work earlier than I actually NEED to.