I don't stop thinking? Surprised to see people actively stop thinking in order to fall asleep. Instead I just put the daydreaming neurons on overdrive. At some point I pass out. I rarely notice when it happens, though occasionally I do and become aware that my fantasy is getting mixed up with random images.
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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The key is to occupy your mind with thoughts that are very neutral in emotional content. If you notice you’re thinking of stuff that makes you anxious, scared, worried, excited etc. you need to switch to a different mental channel.
I prefer to watch the channel where I’m directing a fantasy/scifi story. It can involve wild stuff like sword fights with dragons but it has to be emotionally flat. It’s not uncommon for me to continue the story for several weeks until I switch to a different one.
Hm, well my channels have emotional content for sure. But you are right that when real life anxiety inducing thoughts get in the way, it's very hard to fall asleep. Tends to happen when I'm going through some stressful situation.
Then make a completely new channel where you craft exactly the kind of content you want. You can try directing a series about the life of a basket weaver or a fisherman. How about mountain climbing or diving if you want something more interesting. Come up with all the dialogue, plot points and other events and play it out. Make it a full VR experience while you’re at it. If you want space magic and laser samurai, go ahead and make the the story as wild as you want.
Just try to avoid all the emotional stuff like an evil villain doing something unspeakable which makes you hate the character. Emotions like that are guaranteed to keep you awake.
If you notice emotions creeping in regardless, rewind the story back a few minutes and rewrite the emotional bits. You’re the director. You’re in full control.
Yes, that's what I do already. All I'm trying to point is that, unless I'm going through a rough patch, I still fall asleep in spite of deliberate emotional content in my thoughts.
This is me. I spend my days building software and my nights building O'Neill Cylinders.
I use a technique where I play a scene out in my head. Always the same scene, always the same outcomes and the same process.
For example "Walking down a beach, see a small shell, pick it up, turn it over and notice the interesting pattern, put in pocket, go to the sea shell stored a few feet down the beach waving at a people, sell the shell, take the money and buy a small rock statue, take the statue home and place it on the window sill... etc"
The trick is make it memorable and not specifically related to your own life so you can't get side tracked subconsciously ("Oh no! I forgot to buy sea shells!!"). I find a narrative works well, and the whole thing tells a story.
The way to get started is when you are EXHAUSTED and ready to fall asleep anyway, and to repeat the same scene/steps every night from that point on. Eventually the series of images and events will tie to "sleep" in your mind and I rarely get past the first few parts of the sequence.
Essentially counting sheep! same idea really. After a while you may get bored of one story and make up another. I've gone though a half dozen over the years I guess.
This technique works for me also. Sometimes I can't stay focused on it, but when I can, that magical garden where I lay on the soft grass beside the gentle stream puts me out most times.
i smoke a lot of weed
See, that makes my mind race a million miles an hour if I even go just a little bit overboard
Weed, and alcohol. I'm green like that.
Sometimes I get sleepy, but my brain doesn't stop thinking. I listen to storybooks with music to help me sleep. When I try to count sheep, I end up daydreaming. And when I listen to music, I forget about it and start daydreaming again. If the story is super interesting, I stay awake longer. But the most sleepy audiobooks for me are the boring ones or the ones I already know. Today, I'm trying to write my thoughts down, maybe it will help me stop thinking so much and make my head less full!
Daydreaming for me usually leads to nighdreaming if I'm lying in bed.
But my problem is anxiety. I usually only sleep when my exhaustion overcomes my anxiety; similarly, I get up when my anxiety overwhelms my exhaustion. I'm always some combination of exhausted and anxious and it's an ongoing problem. I have no useful advice to give you, I'm just showing you the dark path I myself tread.
Given my druthers, I read novels until I fall asleep.
The only thing that works for me is listening to movies/shows I’ve seen a couple times. That way it’s familiar enough to not keep me up wondering what happens next, but not so familiar that my thoughts take over.
Just curious, do you have ADHD too?
It used to take me up to two hours to fall asleep at night. Long story short, lots of counselling and a few lifestyle changes later I'm usually under in about half an hour. That's still more than average, but pretty good by my standards. What helped me most was:
Limiting caffeine. Not drinking caffeine after midday really helped reduce general anxiousness and racing thoughts.
Learning to meditate. Clearing your mind and defocusing is a life skill. A short meditation in the evening helps wind down, and when you get good enough at it you can kinda just flip into that mode when you need to sleep. Unclench your muscles and focus on breathing.
No screens before bed. I'm not great at sticking to this one, but if I shut down the pc and put my phone down a couple hours before bed and just read or something, I sleep a hell of a lot better.
I would love it if meditation worked for me but ADHD brings a whole other set of barriers. My brain refuses to “meditate” - there’s always 1000 different shiny squirrels demanding to be thought about at any given time. I don’t know how to overcome that.
Trazodone + doxylamine + melotonin. And sometimes whiskey.
Concentrate just at the tip of your nose where the breath touches the tip leaving the body, when your breath in, think "in", when you breath out, think "out". Determine to keep you mind at that, but be relaxed while doing it. Works well when you are already tired, i.e. at the time that you usually go to sleep.
This is like, thought replacement. It's a "Buddhist" technique.
Audiobooks! I listen to The Sleepy Bookshelf, but anything will do, there are lots of free audiobooks on YT etc too.
I use a sleep timer so it'll stop playing after half an hour.
I fantasize about my life. I will become a famous singer/songwriter, or a nation’s leader. And usually i fantasize about what i do with current day’s events.
Nothing like “i can fly through clouds” or anything. Really just “what would i do”.
Sounds stupid maybe, but ive found it works :)
I'm sure it's just autism, but I start taking machines apart in my head, or go through steps of a project I'm in the middle of. I can walk through step by step of how every part interacts, visualize how it moves and where the wear and contact points are, which tool I need for fastener X, Y and Z.... then go farther down, and think about how each part would itself be cast, machined, welded, and packaged for assembly. Somewhere in the rote repetition of it, I'll pass clean out.
- I don't stop thinking, I just do my best to move my thoughts onto something else if I find myself dwelling too long on one thing. Before long, it's an incoherent chain of nonsense, and then sleep.
- If sleep is not coming, I just enjoy that I'm lying down with my eyes closed and getting some rest. I can survive a day or two with just a few hours of sleep, so if sleep comes now or later, I'll be fine. Sleep usually comes.
Alcohol and weed
Don’t go to bed until I’m about to drop dead from tiredness. I’m out before I hit the pillow that way.
I think of my colony on Rinworld and alla thinks goes.
I have the opposite problem. I fall asleep even when I want to be thinking/talking
I listen to audiobooks to dispell my own thought.
Trazodone
I don't stop thinking, it just... gradually gets quieter. Like when you're walking away from someone who's still talking.
I've been practicing meditation for years, it helps tremendously with just regular ol' psychological well-being and it can also put me to sleep in minutes.
There's a good one I use when I'm trying to sleep, where you mindfully relax all your muscles from your head to your toes, and back up again.
I read. And that's still doesn't always work. The trick I've found is to get past your internal monologue. And I've also found it's a pain in the ass to do so.
I watch Futurama at night. It's got to the point I get tired if it comes on.
I’m normally pretty good about falling asleep, but I have a bout of insomnia a while back, I’ll share what worked for me.
Make it a ritual: every day do things in the same order. Don’t make it over complicated, but some 10 minutes to wind down by always performing the same actions in the same order. Example: brush teeth, select clothes for tomorrow, change in your pajamas, go to bed.
Write down your recurring thoughts (this one was particularly useful to me): if there is a thought that you just can’t let go, write it down and assure yourself you’re not going to forget it, you are putting it aside for tomorrow. Then the next morning read what you wrote and consider it a minute.
An a bonus:
The bed is for sleeping: don’t do anything else other than sleeping in bed. If sleeping is not happening, give up, stroll around a minute, and try again in 5 minutes. (honestly, this one didn’t work for me, but maybe it works for you!)
I go through the alphabets and try to come up with a words that starts with each letter, that fits in a specific category. Atm I'm working on fruits, so Apple, Banana, Coconut etc.
I visualize myself playing drums (am actual drummer). Visualization is actually an effective method of practice for me as well. Like I achieve actual progress towards what I am trying to learn. And eventually I get bored and fall asleep. It keeps me from thinking about things that make me anxious.
The 2 main things I use are:
- White noise machine (I used to use an app but now have a dedicated device).
- Note-taking app on phone
The white noise machine drowns out any other noise, and even helps me drown out my own thoughts. I try to use grey-noise specifically when available.
The note-taking app is so that if I suddenly think about something, I can write it down and worry about it the next day. If I don't do that, I spend too much time trying to set a mental reminder to do xyz.
Ideally, I would love to get into a habit of "brain dumping" before going to sleep, but I haven't been able to stick the routine.
I imagine myself in a cave, and listen to the drips while planking on the surface of a deep freshwater pool
As someone who has had the hability to turn any text into images in my mind from the moment I was able to understand words, I learned how to create vivid worlds in my mind to muffle out the outside noise.
Going to sleep implies going to whatever calming scenario it feels like for the day.
I just listen. To the wind, the insects outside etc, but this requires some practice.
I don't. My mind always wanders into all kinds of stories the moment it's slightly disengaged with whatever is happening around me. Whenever I'm cooking, travelling, showering, or whatever my mind always has the urge to come up with stories. When I want to sleep, I just lie down and let it take off wherever it wants to go. Usually it slowly devolves into chaos over the course of 5-30 minutes until I'm asleep. The trick is to not question whatever it comes up with too much, but instead to just let it go.
There are these nights where my thoughts do keep me awake though. Usually when I'm emotional about something. Idk what to do in that case. Usually I either just try to distract myself until the emotion dies down a bit, but I have no good remedy.