[Momup]

Hey Chee,

thank you for your answer. It’s nice to hear that it’s possible to have these shifts and still sleep well. But just as you said, I have to experiment to know, I guess.

And thank you for reinforcing the idea that I should not take sleep as my main consideration and just live my life the way I want to live it. I have to see how I’ll exactly approach my schedule shift but I’ll keep the things you wrote in mind.

Best regards,
Momup

[Momup]

Hey Marisa,

in my case it’s actually quite similar. I lived in a loud neighborhood since just a few weeks ago (and had a wonderful gentleman neighbor who shared his favorite music with the whole neighborhood by using loud loudspeaker boxes) and moved to a quieter neighborhood. When I realized that it’s not as quiet as I hoped (but it’s still not bad at all) I also lied in bed being stressed about the noise. Eventually I just tried to not care about the noise and it worked out but I remember that it didn’t change from one day to the other. At first the noise stressed me but the more nights I slept in my new environment the less I cared about it. So what are my thoughts? First, I try to not care about the noise and just tell myself that I don’t care and that the noise doesn’t matter. Second, when I am stressed and anxious about (potential) noise I am just mindful about my thoughts. So, I don’t combat these thoughts but rather just let them circulate inside my head without actively combating or doing something about them. These two things helped in my case. Maybe they will help you too. I wish you all the best and hope that your sleep gets better over time!

Best regards,
Momup

[Momup]

You guys are right. I am still sleeping with earplugs because I got used to it and like it but now when I hear noise which goes “through” the protection of my earplugs I just don’t care. I guess it was really about the sleep and not the noise. Thank you very much!

[Momup]

Thank you very much for your answers! I feel like I need more days to actually say if gaming actually disrupts my sleep or not. But since I am not sure if gaming is bad for my sleep then it’s quite like that it’s just my worries about not sleeping well. For now I will just keep doing what I did before, meaning that I maintain a consistent sleeping schedule and try to not care too much about sleep. Moreover I am following Martin’s free e-mail course but besides that I try to not invest too much time and effort into my sleeping problems. When it comes to gaming I will just keep allowing myself to play video games and observe whether the video games actually disrupt my sleep.

I wish you a nice weekend!

Best regards,
Momup

[Momup]

Hey thank you guys for your posts. They have really helped me. I just did what you suggested and didn’t let myself bother too much by the noise and I have actually slept decently (about 7 hours). I think that it will get better with time because I’ll get used to the noise. A white noise machine certainly seems to be a good idea because they can be combined with my earplugs which is great. Now when it comes to the noise stressing my subconscious: Now you have turned my living situation from a “Oh my gosh, I have to move out because I won’t be able to sleep!” to “It might not be optimal to live here in the long run but the noise certainly shouldn’t prevent me from getting good sleep.” which has helped me a lot. So just as you said I’ll just try to not be perfectionistic about my sleeping environment and try to just get used to my new sleeping environment.

Best regards,
Momup

[Momup]

Thank you for your post. Yeah, sleep isn’t something that can be really regulated which is good and bad at the same time because there is no certainty but that’s fine. The good aspect of it is that it’s nothing I have to “take care of”.

Best regards,
Momup

[Momup]

Hey, it’s me again. I thought I’d just give a brief update about my sleep pattern. I must say that the last few months have been quite good sleep-wise. I just try to not care too much about sleep and I try to not really regulate this area of life. This does not only make my life simpler because I can shift my focus on other things. It also helps to not care. The only things I actually pay attention to are that I always wake up at the same time and that I always go to sleep at the same time. If I don’t manage to go to sleep at the desired time then I just try to still wake up at the same time and I must say that I have never had such a consistent sleeping pattern like the last few months. So thank you very much for your advise to try to let go of the desire to “control” the sleep and to stick to a constent sleep pattern!

I must say that writing this post right now I am afraid that I might experience sleeping problems again just because it’s going quite well and because I guess I am afraid of losing this. But I try to not pay too much attention to these doubts because more in the past more often than not I have proven to myself that these doubts of not being able to sleep are nothing more than doubts.

Best regards,
Momup

[Momup]

Hello Scott,

thank you very much! To me it feels a bit like cheating because of having taken the medication. But on the other hand I have just experienced what it feels like to be well-rested during exam period which I’ve never had in my life so far and since you guys said that it was mostly due to me believing in the pill I call this a partial success because it has shown me that it’s possible to be well-rested even during more challenging times. I’ll just to try to have the same carelessness I had when I have taken the meds and I will report once in a while about my progress or ask here if I should have questions/problems.

Best regards,
Momoup

[Momup]

Hello! Thank you very much for your explanation. Generally speaking the approach of just not caring fits really well into the way I try to approach things in life. I guess I just can’t expect to completely not care from on day to another since it’s as you said a process. Keeping that in my mind I know how I should mentally deal with the topic of sleep and I thank you a lot for this insight because I didn’t expect that. I thank you a lot for the time and effort that you have invested in order to help me. I wish you all the best!

Best regards,
Momup

[Momup]

Thank you very much for your answer. I didn’t understand what you mean with your first sentence. Could you explain it to me? Honestly, it would be amazing if sleep would just be a topic I can completely not care about and which just takes care of itself. But right now I am at a point where I feel like I tried to not care and I still had sleeping problems (right before I started taking the sleeping pills). So I guess that I still cared after all. So my question is: What does it mean to not care and to give up on sleep? It would be very nice if you could describe it to me because I think that I don’t understand yet what it means to not care about it.

Best regards,
Momup

[Momup]

Hey guys, I just thought that giving a few more infos may give you more insight in order to better understand my situation. The medication I was given was an antidepressant and I am taking a small dose. It is really helping me a ton. I have a really good sleep efficiency (30 minutes of waking time during the whole bedtime). I have always struggled with anxiety in my life so I think that the root of the sleeping problems are of psychological and not organic nature. I just thought that giving you these extra infos might help!

Best regards,
Momup

[Momup]

Hello guys, thank you for your post Martin. So yesterday I had two exams and today I had one exam and sleep-wise it went great but I must say that I cheated. I used prescription drugs for the first time of my life (before it was always non prescription drugs from the pharmacy) and my sleep is really great. I will stop taking them after the exam period at the latest but right now this temporary solution is working really great for in order to get me through the exam period.

Now about your suggestions on how I should approach my sleeping problems: I tried to not care but my problem is that I don’t know how to do this. Unfortunately telling me that I don’t care somehow didn’t work because I was still not able to sleep. The last two days before I started taking the medication I slept for roughly 2-4 hours each night.

So it would be great if you could tell me how I can stop caring. I really want to stop caring about it (in order to sleep). My biggest problem is that sleeping becomes a vicious cyle to me. Once I’ve had problems sleeping I am afraid that next day I will have sleeping problems too and that it’s getting worse and worse with the time.

I thank you a lot for your support so far!

Best regards,
Momup

[Momup]

Hello, thank you very much for your reply and for wishing me good luck for the exams! So I’ll just do try to not care too much about sleep 🙂

Best regards,
Momup

[Momup]

Wow, thank you very much for your answer!

Thinking about your description I can say that I am definitely chasing sleep. I am thinking a lot about how I can improve my sleep but mostly I am worrying and foreshadowing the upcoming sleepless nights. Reflecting about my experience with exam periods I just realized that I have always cared a lot about getting enough sleep during exam period (because I care about the exams I guess). It’s gone so far that I have already taken sleeping pills with mixed results.

Then this time I’ll try a different approach and I guess I’ll just to try to not really care too much about my sleep. So what I am going to do is that I am going to stick with my current bedtime and waking up time which are 0 am and 08:30 am (with an alarm clock). Since the exams are at 8 am and I can get up at 07:45 am (at least one advantage of Corona) I have 7 hours and 45 minutes alloted for sleep the nights before the the exams.

Somehow you telling me that all I have to do is to not really care too much about it is a big relief for me. Thank you very much 🙂

Best regards,
Momup

[Momup]

Hello!

Thank you very much for your answer. Since my exams are at 8am on both days I try to have such a sleeping schedule so that I am able to theoretically be well-rested when I wake up shortly before 8am (assuming I don’t have problems falling asleep of course). In order to have such a sleeping schedule which is quite early for me I wake up and go to bed earlier 15 minutes every day. This way I try to keep my sleeping schedule as consistent as possible but I am still able to slightly adjust it every day for the exam. Today I woke up at 9 o’clock. Do you think that this is fine?

Greetings,
Momup

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