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Was on vacation for the week and not having a solid sleep schedule to follow during my vacation has royally fucked up my sleep schedule. I was going to bed and waking up at the most random hours.
I would get gnarly bouts of insomnia five years back where I would get stuck in cycles of not being able to sleep well; it was usually triggered by a couple nights of bad sleep in a row, my mind would get anxious and I would start worrying “damn what if tonight I can’t sleep well again and tomorrow I’m tired again?” Which would in turn cause me to not sleep well cuz I would be too anxious and worried that I wasn’t going to sleep well again; so essentially I wasn’t sleeping well cuz I was worrying too much that I wasn’t going to sleep well; it was a vicious cycle pretty much. It would last for days or weeks at a time before it would get better and slowly go away, but it would still happen here n there quite often if I were to get a couple shitty nights of sleep in a row. This pretty much stopped happening when I got my current job though five years ago; it was my first full time job and I no longer had as much freedom with my sleep schedule; I had to wake up and sleep at the same time every day, but I think this was what helped my sleep out, I think having too much freedom to go to bed and wake up when I wanted contributed a lot to these bouts of insomnia, having a grounded schedule pretty much forced me to have to sleep and wake at a set time every day which helped my sleep hygiene tremendously and this pretty much stopped my bouts of insomnia from happening (except for like one or two short bouts in the last five years that came about when I had to switch my work schedule and had to adapt to a temporary earlier schedule, but those bouts fixed themselves pretty quickly).
Fast forward to now, I’m on a week long vacation, the first time I’ve been off for this long since I started working at my job five years ago, and the insomnia comes back after a couple nights of shitty sleep cuz I was going to bed at the most random times and waking up at random times. Haven’t been sleeping well and been tired for days now, and I’m honestly thinking it’s just due to not having to follow a schedule and having too much freedom to go to bed and wake up when I want. I’m hoping me having to go back to work in a couple days and having to go back to a routine of going to bed and waking at the same time every day will get things back on track again.
I've had the same problem before. Do you take any supplements to help you sleep? I've got a bit of a regimen and it has worked wonders for me - Vitamin D in the morning, magnesium and vitamin C at night before bed. Everyone is different but something similar might work for you if you've never tried it
Nah, haven’t tried any supplements. For me I already know it’s all mental; I get in this weird cycle of getting bad sleep and then psyching myself out with thoughts such as “damn, that’s two nights now where you couldn’t sleep; what if tonight you don’t sleep well again and you’re tired again tomorrow?” and then I end up not sleeping well because I’m too anxious and paranoid that I’m not gonna sleep well; it’s pretty much like a vicious cycle lol: I don’t sleep well because I’m paranoid that I’m not gonna sleep well. Pretty much an irrational fear. I just gotta get my mind to not care or to convince my mind that it’s not that big of a deal to not sleep well and that being tired isn’t going to kill me and that I’ve gone through plenty of sleepless nights before and came out fine and that sleep is easy once you just stop thinking so much. Those thoughts come eventually and then I remember not to be so psyched out and then the insomnia will go away, but sometimes it could take a while to rebuild up those thoughts of not psyching myself out too much, especially when you’re tired and paranoid and anxious that you can’t sleep and all you want to do is just sleep. Used to get in these cycles a lot back in the early 2010s; then in the late 2010s to 2021 they started happening a lot more rarely. From like 2017 til like 2020 I actually didn’t have any of these episodes at all actually. Last episode I had was 2021 and it was the first one I had had in a while, triggered by a couple bad nights of sleep in a row, but it only lasted about half a week to a little under a week from what I remember until I built up the thoughts of not psyching myself out and the insomnia went away. This one now is the first one in a while that is lasting a while and psyching me out more than I thought it would. I’ve beat it before a bunch of times so I know I can do it again, I just got to remind my mind not to be so psyched out, it’s just that it’s just so annoying and a mind fuck sometimes to remind myself not to be so psyched out.
Wow, I don’t think I’ve honestly shared this info with anyone before, or if I have it was only to a few people and they just look at me like “bro, this is such an irrational fear” and I’m just like “you think I don’t know this?” lol. After getting those reactions I just stopped telling people the full details cuz i just don’t want them to look at me like I’m some sort of weirdo for having this, but it honestly feels good to just put this out there for the first time in full detail, pretty liberating feeling actually.
Topic: Things You Are Not Stoked On (Read 1885732 times)