I have a weird sleep schedule and I have such a hard time falling asleep. I’m usually up until 2:00 – 3:00 – 4:00 – 5:00 AM and I toss and turn for hours trying to get my brain to slow down enough to let me doze off. More often than not I’m starting to nod off on the couch while watching a program and when I either catch myself starting to fall asleep or wake from having fallen asleep and then head to bed, so often I can’t fall back to sleep.
With my work schedule, I don’t have to wake until 9:00 AM to get ready, so I usually manage to get 4-6 hours, but I almost never feel rested and my head is often really foggy for the first few hours that I’m awake. So I’m certainly not feeling optimized in anything I do first thing after waking. Not only am I getting an average of 5 hours a night, but every 1-2 weeks on my first day off, my body tells me that it’s had enough lack of sleep and I crash super early and wake way late… getting 11-12 hours of sleep. My body literally forces me to stop and rest. This means that a lot of the time, my Tuesday turns into a pajama day of just rest and self care… which feels like such a waste of a day!
I’ve added some supplements. A friend suggested looking into Magnesium and Gaba. I did a little research and found that they really work well together and complement each other. No only can they help with relaxing and calming, they are also known to possibly help with anxiety too. You know already that I have issues there, so if taking these will help with both sleep and anxiety, I’m all in. I’ve been taking them for a few weeks so far and they do seem to be helping with how rested I feel in the morning. I hope with prolonged use I’ll see more results in the anxiety department.
On days that I have a lot of racing thoughts that are keeping me tossing and turning and unable to fall asleep, I’ve also started listening to calming sleep music of slow instrumental or environmental noises to help. Sometimes I even find a guided meditation that helps me focus on calm breathing and taking me through a relaxation sequence from my toes up to my head. I’m usually asleep by the shoulders. There are some really good ones with lots of variety on both YouTube and in Spotify.
What do you do to help you when you have trouble falling asleep? Any other suggestions of things I can add or try to help more?
Until next time,
xoxo