[Fen]

I went to bed at 10.30pm and its now 2am and I’m still wide awake. Prompted me to join this forum as I’m tossing and turning and clock watching. I’ve had bouts of insomnia but nothing as bad as it is now. I lost my dog three weeks ago, he was my best friend ?, since then the insomnia is worse. Hoping to read other people’s stories and tips.

[Chee2308]

What time do you get up to start your day? And what was your normal bedtime before you lost your pet? Was it much earlier than 10pm? Don’t make up lost sleep by going to bed earlier! You can go to sleep later but not earlier. The reason behind this is because you need to build up a healthy sleep drive, and this works by amount of continuous time spent awake not what the clock is saying. The healthy amount of wakefulness for a healthy sleep drive is between 16-18 hours, work out yours and then figure out what time you should be in bed. Be prepared to experiment with this because everyone is different but start with 18 hours and slowly decrease that to 17 or 16 depending on your need, you should do fine! Stop overthinking and overdoing it, sleep is quite easy once you understand it well enough. It’s not this black box that’s mysterious and hard to understand, sleep is just sleep, your body is born to do it without much effort, just like eating and breathing.

[Gods_kid]

Great advice. I have centered my life’s activities around the insomnia. I no longer do that, I’m taking back the power I gave it and that has helped my anxious thoughts about lack of sleep

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