I feel for you, I really do. Only in the last couple of years have I started to fall into a fairly regular sleeping pattern. For most of my life, sleeping was something other people did.

Here’s hoping it gets better for you.

Suggestions:

1. Go to bed at exactly the same time every night.
2. Don’t use your bedroom for anything except sleeping and dressing.
3. Always make your bed as soon as you get out of it.
4. Once you’ve gone to bed, you should read a book if you can’t sleep, but don’t watch TV or use the computer, and definitely don’t potter.
5. Keep a notebook and pen by your bed. If you find yourself being kept awake by thoughts, then write them down. You’ll find it much easier to relax if you know that you have them backed up somewhere.
6. I’m serious about the computer. Don’t take your laptop into the bedroom, under any circumstances.

I hear you! My top tip, I’m afraid, is sport. Most of the time that I can’t sleep it is when I really need it because I am doing lots of brain-work, deadlines, and stuff, but at the same time I am sat in front of a screen, at a desk. The brain is tired, but the body has no idea what it is talking about, as it has hardly moved at all.

As with back pain et al, the only thing that works for me is jogging - possibly cycling. It’s the weather for it at least. Get outside late at night when it is cool and the roads are less crowded and run or cycle.

It might make you tired when you get back into bed, or it might not, but at least the endorphins are sloshing about and you have had some fresh air. Best of luck…

My suggestions pretty much mirror Petes’, with the addition of drinking and class B drugs.

As I work hours which could be described as “odd”, I don’t really have a regular sleep pattern of any sort. Getting up at the same time every day isn’t really an option when you finish work at 6pm on day and 12am the next.

The only way I’ve found of definitely sleeping is not going to bed until I’m very tired, and yawning a lot. Then I read in bed until my eyes start drooping and I find I’ve read the same paragraph 10 times in a row without comprehending what it is, and then I go to sleep. Usually.

Umm, I think you might be very, very tired, Sevitz. That was a rather difficult comment to understand, but as you are suffering from insomina, fair enough, I assume you are jiggered.

If I struggle to get to sleep, I try to sleep with my head at the foot of the bed, and my feet at where my head should be. For some reason, this works.

Also, opening a window so I’m only just too cold without a duvet, but just warm enough with the duvet on, makes me snuggle in and gets me to sleep quicker.

Good luck Sev - it can be hell, I know.

I wouldn’t recommend drinking until you’re unconscious as a method for encouraging sleep, but a quick night-cap at bedtime never did anyone any harm. Well not me anyway.

Ooooh, Pete’s #5 is huge. Highly recommended. Amazing how helpful it is.

As for your passing reference to sex, I know it’s a bit cliche, but isn’t that exactly what puts men to sleep? Surely you can, um, find a related substitute activity?

The thing is, as you freely admit, you are generating your own problem when you do things like get up, like reading, blogging, pottering, etc. Of course you’re not going to sleep when you’re doing these things, and you’re throwing your patterns off to boot. What you need to remember is that sleep is two things:

1. Rest for your mind.
2. Rest for your body.

Now, with insomnia, you are not going to get 1, and it’s terrrible, it’s really terrible not to get that. But you can still get 2, by just lying there. And you know that buzzing of thoughts in your head that’s stopping you from sleeping? That’s your brain trying to wind down. And by getting up and reading or watching tv anything else for that matter, you’re stopping it from winding down. So the solution is: Just lie there. Yes, it’s horrible, and I know the pain. But you know what’s worse? EVERYTHING ELSE YOU CAN THINK OF TO DO. Just lie there. Think about things, or don’t think about things if you’re able. But just lie there. Stay in that bed. Stay there all night, but stay there. Let your body have it’s rest. Let your mind have its time to just buzz. Eventually, the buzzing stops. You run out of things to think. You fall asleep. You don’t fall asleep by reading or writing or anything else. Just lie there. It’s tough, but it’s the least bad of all the options.

Pete’s advice was good too (I would add: start exercising regularly), but ultimately: Just lie there. That’s not sleeping, but it’s as close as you can get, and it’s an important intermediary step.

Actually, ‘just lying there’ is the last thing you should do. It will just exacerbate the problem by turning bed into a place you associate with being tense and worried. The more you do that, the less you will want to be in bed or go there in the first place, because you’ll subconsiously think that it’s a place that makes you feel bad. If you lie there for more than half an hour without sleeping it’s better to get up and do something else (something relaxing) for a short period of time, then try again.

Some things that have worked for me:

1. Pete’s suggestion of writing down thoughts that are bothering you - it can serve to ‘transplant’ them into another place so they’re not in your head anymore. As a kid I had these tiny Guatemalan worry dolls that you told your worries to and then put under your pillow as you slept. Same principle, and it really works.

2. Nat’s suggestion of sleeping with your head at the foot of the bed - a change of scenery that you don’t associate with insomnia. If you have a spare bed you could sleep there too. Lots of people who can’t sleep in bed end up falling asleep on the couch instead.

3. Listen to music - something quiet, slow and soothing.

4. Those guided mediation CDs can actually be quite good, or you can learn to do it yourself. It’s a valuable skill to learn to turn your brain off.

Also, have a look at the REASONS that you can’t sleep. If you find yourself worrying about the same things a lot, maybe these need to be addressed.

Good luck!

I recommend whisky.

I think the biggest problem I’m having is that I am working and fixing my blog too late into night. I need to leave work earlier and do less on the computer after 8pm.

This can be coupled with my original #5 comment. Set a threshold time (for example, 8pm) after which you avoid the computer (except in cases of emergency, obviously). After that time, you’ll inevitably find yourself coming up with ideas for things to do with the site. Write them down in your notebook, with as much detail as necessary, and do them in the morning.

Even if it’s just a five-minute fix, you should still avoid the computer, as in the process of carrying out that five-minute fix you will almost certainly stumble across a very interesting two-hour task.

Oh, and thanks for enabling OpenID on this site. You rock.