Insomnia Support Group
Insomnia is a symptom, rather than a disease, and is characterized by inadequate quantity or quality of sleep. People with insomnia complain of difficulty falling or staying asleep, which results in significant impairment of daytime functioning. Insomnia is categorized as transient (shorter than one week), short-term (one to three weeks) or chronic (longer than three...
1. Sleeping less helps you avoid sleepless or abysmall nights; you might have bad nights but no awful ones.
2. Sunlight wakes you up decently.
Number one mostly applies to people who think they they have slow body clocks like me. I think if the world revolved around me, it would be about a 30 hour day with being awake for approximately 18 to 20 hours straight and then sleeping 10 to 12 hours. The real world day is 24 hours. I'm not getting enough sleep but I've eliminated the awful nights by reducing the ammount of time I sleep. The way I did it was by using math. Here's some of the basic steps I did.
1-Identify how long you ideal day would be in hours. 2-Identify how many hours you tend to sleep solidly for on your days off/ when you actually sleep good. 3- Write a fraction with the ammount of time you sleep at the top and how long your ideal day woud be on the bottom. 4- Write another fraction; have x be on the top(we are going to solve for x which is the ammount of sleep you need for a 24 hour day) and have 24 be on the bottom(representing the current worlds 24 hour day). 5- Cross multiply your 2 fractions you set up, remember to multiply the numerator of the first fraction by the denominator of the second fraction, and the denominator of the first fraction by the numerator of the second fraction(which is x). Solve for x. Here's a example so visualize what I did. 10 hours(sleep)/ 30 hour day * x/24. This comes out to be 240=30x. Solving this, x=8. So in a 24 hour world I need to get 8 hours or sleep, NOT 10. I'm not sure if this is totally how sleep works but it seems like its eliminated sleepless nights for me.
The second sunlight thing I've noticed because I work for the parks department outside and although I'm exhausted to start, eventually i'm not tired anymore after being in the sun for a while. Unfortunately lots of you guys probably have desk/office jobs.
Like I said before, I'm still not getting enough sleep; I'm having some disruptions like waking up earlier than my alarm(most likely anxiety), staying up late voluntarily, and simply taking a little bit to fall asleep. BUT iI haven't been sleepless for a while so I'm closer to solving this enigma than ever before.
2. Sunlight wakes you up decently.
Number one mostly applies to people who think they they have slow body clocks like me. I think if the world revolved around me, it would be about a 30 hour day with being awake for approximately 18 to 20 hours straight and then sleeping 10 to 12 hours. The real world day is 24 hours. I'm not getting enough sleep but I've eliminated the awful nights by reducing the ammount of time I sleep. The way I did it was by using math. Here's some of the basic steps I did.
1-Identify how long you ideal day would be in hours. 2-Identify how many hours you tend to sleep solidly for on your days off/ when you actually sleep good. 3- Write a fraction with the ammount of time you sleep at the top and how long your ideal day woud be on the bottom. 4- Write another fraction; have x be on the top(we are going to solve for x which is the ammount of sleep you need for a 24 hour day) and have 24 be on the bottom(representing the current worlds 24 hour day). 5- Cross multiply your 2 fractions you set up, remember to multiply the numerator of the first fraction by the denominator of the second fraction, and the denominator of the first fraction by the numerator of the second fraction(which is x). Solve for x. Here's a example so visualize what I did. 10 hours(sleep)/ 30 hour day * x/24. This comes out to be 240=30x. Solving this, x=8. So in a 24 hour world I need to get 8 hours or sleep, NOT 10. I'm not sure if this is totally how sleep works but it seems like its eliminated sleepless nights for me.
The second sunlight thing I've noticed because I work for the parks department outside and although I'm exhausted to start, eventually i'm not tired anymore after being in the sun for a while. Unfortunately lots of you guys probably have desk/office jobs.
Like I said before, I'm still not getting enough sleep; I'm having some disruptions like waking up earlier than my alarm(most likely anxiety), staying up late voluntarily, and simply taking a little bit to fall asleep. BUT iI haven't been sleepless for a while so I'm closer to solving this enigma than ever before.
I know I function well on 7 hours of sleep which I haven't gotten in the last 4 months. I never sleep more than 2 hours at a time...and I figured out that my body clock sets itself...to wake the same EXACT times every night.
My Dr. office called yesterday because Ambien isn't even touching me....I'm going to get something else..they didn't tell me what...but since it is freakin mothers day....I can't go get it because I have to go out with my b/f family.
I also am going to turn my Ambien into police station..that is protocol. Get a receipt for my Dr...of how many were left and that I turned them in....my choice because I feel like he may think I'm drug seeking (I'm an alcoholic)...but I don't think he thinks that because he KEEPS giving me new things to try.
I've only had the Ambien a week...and I'm already telling him it doesn't work. But, it doesn't...so I will feel better getting the receipt from the police station. Normally, I would just throw in trash.
I'm glad your sleep is straightening out for you...you seem like such a good kid..I hate to see you with such angst so young.
Slayer, how is your counseling going? I hope someone can prescribe you something to help you sleep better soon.
Besides that I finally got my anxiety medication refilled. I haven't been on any before this year so I'm not used to filling it; I let it get empty and had to go the whole week without it and wow did I notice a difference without it.
Ambien didn't work for me either, I tried it last year and it actually made me feel worse. I only tried it for a week like you and said fuck this. I would take it and every night I would supposedly sleep from 8 to 10 hours but I didn't believe it. I didn't know it could be poosible to feel worse than I do in thhe morning but when I was taking it, I figured that out really quick.
But insomnia is always a work in progress. Like you pointed out, I'm still young so hopefully I can get it under control one day a live a long life without dealing with insomnia.
1. Start having coffee or candy in the morning/when extremely tired.
2. Make a schedule and actually follow it.
3. Use a planner
4. Get organized(my rooms, car, etc is always a disaster, I'm always missing or losing important things like keys, wallet, phone, etc).
5. See my regular primary care physician for ADD/ADHD if I feel like its interfering to much with my life.
6. Like you said, Exercise.
7. Use my anxiety medication.
There was a couple things I also realized just from talking to him to. Right now my house situation isn't very good; long story short me and my mom are probably going to be in the process of having to get my sister and her boyfriend evicted out of our house. This is something I can't really can't control right now and I just have to accept that no one sleeps perfect unless things are literally perfect.
Last week I was an idiot and wait for the medication to get empty and I never found time to get it refilled. I noticed the difference right away; now its clear and undeniable that I have really bad anxiety, especially social anxiety. Without the medication I noticed my two main things I had extreme anxiety about were a) perfomrance related things(its like I'm scared of learning how to do new things, if I will remember all this stuff someone tells me, etc), and b) waking up on time(kept waking up well before my alarm and even had some nightmares about work.
My Dr. always makes a copy for me because he knows I love RESEARCHING and then going back and telling him what I think...the man has tons of patience....but you can GET a copy....you don't have to sneak.
I agree with the nutrition part...so I guess I will suffer for a while because Im not sacrificing the stuff I like to eat right now because I didn't eat for almost all of April.....just drank beer....I literally had extremely small portions of food maybe 3x a week. Other than that...spoonfuls of peanut butter and beer.
Stinks having to evict family...but it must be necessary.
Ambien does suck...and I wonder what is next. They have a script at the office for me...but it was a voicemail so they didn't tell me what it was.
The anxiety medication should help you a great deal...it always helps me...as a matter of fact that is all I used to use for sleep...I'm just SUPER anxious the last year after QUITTING MY JOB>
And yes you're right about the slower than normal body clock making it seem as if a day is longer than 24 hours. In fact, it's not unusual from about ages 14 to 30 for young people to experience more of a 26 to 30 hour day, as you do. However, most people's body clocks begin to speed up back to more normal 24 hour circadian rhythm by about age 30.
As you've discovered, that doesn't change the underlying fact that 8 hours is still a good number, at least for you (we're all different on this, and 7 to 9 is generally considered the normal range for adults).
Regardless of your body clock, consistently in your sleep schedule will help you re-set your circadian rhythm and synchronize it to your homeostatic sleep drive. These two processes are key to better sleep.
And yes you are also right about the salutary effects of the sun. Exposure to natural sunlight first thing in the morning is one of the very best ways to reset your body clock for a new day.
All this stuff works as you're discovering SE.