About 5. Lots of tossing turning and listening to the wind.

I like falling asleep to ocean waves and going through an alphabetical list helps me fall back asleep when I wake up. This weeks lists are movies.

I might get another couple hours of sleep before getting up for the day.

Seven. I was going to take a nap after breakfast, but I started puttering around and just finished. Now it's too late - guest arriving any minute!

Seven but it was broken so it feels like three.

I think I got about 9 hours of sleep. :moonstars:

Felt so good to not be disturbed or woken up on accident due to noisy neighbors.

About 5. Oddly, I'm having trouble falling asleep for a nap this afternoon.

7 and it feels like more. Feeling well rested. Didn’t need any lists to fall back asleep through the night. The Smart-Technology Goddess suggested I try the jungle sounds but I passed on that. Ocean waves and rain storms are my speed.

Bits and parts of pieces of hours here and there put together added up, I'd say about 3 ½. I'm on a medication right now that I have to take four times a day so to make sure I start my day off right J wakes me up every morning at 7:30 – let the games begin! Then she'll call the other three times to make I've taken it/remind me to take it. In between all that, at least once or twice she'll call or text to remind me about something she forgot to tell me or ask me to help her remember something she forgot. Then at least once a day my grandson will want to speak to me and if he doesn't remember to during one of our calls then later J will agree to let him call me so long as he agrees directly after he will, without struggle or complaint, go down for a nap or bed for the night. I'm grateful to have medication, family members who care and plenty of time to just relax and take it easy till these drugs start kicking in but it will be so nice to finally get some unbroken, uninterrupted sleep!

A lot. 8 hours. I was tired and went to bed early. Didn't take an edible nor melatonin because I was achy and used a lot of canna-salve for my arthritis. Unfortunately, I was awake at 3 am. I'll need to work on having a better schedule, but it's all good for now.

8 hours. Have been getting 8 hours most nights. I wake up, do a bit of tossing and turning, but easily fall back asleep. I no longer need the knee pillow and that helps a lot.

Down sometime @ 2 a.m. Up @ 9 a.m.
7.

Being massively in love really messes with our sleep life.
There is just never enough time for us.
I feel drunk all the time, lol.


I need some sleep, though. :balloon:

9 but i need more

Six. I've started taking 5 mg of Melatonin along with my other nighttime meds, and I haven't quite figured out how to do that yet. I'd hoped I was going to be able to give up one of my prescription sleeping meds, but no. When I get the combination with Melatonin right, I have lovely, peaceful sleep; unlike the dozing and vague awareness of the room around me and night sounds like I've been having. My doc has done all he can with my prescription meds, so I thought I'd give Melatonin a try.

Does anyone else take Melatonin along with Ambien and/or Klonopin or any other sleeping or anti-anxiety meds? I'd be really interested in your experience and results.

I am on tizanidine ( a muscle relaxer) 2 tabs at night, as my rheumo says if your muscles can't relax, your body can't. I do NOT do any social media the last 3 hrs prior to sleep!

I do a puzzle game! I have taken to taking my Tizanidine, a 25 mg Diphenhydramine (Benadryl), and my pain med (Dilaudid for severe pain) & Tramaol for less severe pain! It has worked. I was just "dozing" then awake for a few hours, dozing......I am not much help on your own regimen, but the Melatonin BiLayer works well for me. It has some benadryl in it, is a 5 mg tabs. Best of luck!!

Thanks for the info - I will try Benadryl next. I have taken 10 mg Melatonin, 5 mg Ambien, 1 mg Klonopin and I have not gotten one single minute of sleep, and it is almost 5 am! Actually, I'm pretty sure I can't sleep because I can't get comfortable - thunderstorms are supposed to start in a few hours. I've already taken everything I can for pain - 75 mg Diclofenac plus Diclofenac gel for my knees, and 2 extra strength Tylenol. I'm plenty sleepy.

On second thought, Benadryl will just make me sleepier and not do anything for the discomfort in my joints. I might as well go ahead and get up. I have to take a Synthroid and wait an hour for anything else except water, but then I can have a couple of BC powders. Maybe after that and breakfast and taking care of the doggo I can get a nap.

About two hours. Waiting for the Tylenol to kick in.

Three, hurt hand making sleep difficult but things are improving. I can now bend middle finger well enough to flip people off.

Who knows? 4 or maybe 5 or maybe 3. Nighttime sleep is a mutha for me these days. That's the worst part of the knee replacement surgery. I stay tossin' and turnin'.

At its worst, the knees are numb, hurting, stiff, twinging (that's the best way to describe it), and itching—all at the same time and it happens the most at night. It's healing and I get it, but it ain't easy.

Still, I feel a gazillion times better than I did before surgery.

And I take a nap on most days. That helps.

7 good hours. Took 5 mg of melatonin and it did the trick. Haven't been taking any sleeping aid while I'm on a new medication for a slowly degenerating spine. The meds make me a little tired and I thought they may help me sleep. Nope. Not at all. Was waking up at 1 am and falling back asleep at 3 am.

I prefer the cannabis more than the melatonin, but I need to make a new canna oil batch. Will get to that soon.

Hoping everyone is getting a good night's rest.

17, with a break for breakfast somewhere in there. I must have been exhausted. I haven't been sleeping over about 10 for awhile.

Not much lately …. But at least 6 and a half hours. :moonstars:

Overthinking at night? 6 strategies for better sleep.
 

Overthinking at night? 6 strategies for better sleep.

Use a soothing distractor, schedule worry time and examine buried feelings — these and other tools can help settle your mind

Advice by Lisa Strauss
August 18, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-ap...NTWE.jpg&w=916
(Celia Jacobs for The Washington Post)

Overthinking at night — about insomnia and other matters — is a common problem for many of my patients with sleep disorders. It interferes with falling asleep or going back to sleep, and prevents peaceful rest when they can’t sleep anyway.

Overthinking usually refers to thought processes such as racing thoughts or perseveration. The content — such as worries or the next day’s demands — may also be maladaptive. It may be fueled by a diagnosable condition such as depression, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or hypomania. It can also be stimulated by intense experiences such as stress, exciting plans, perfectionism, insecurity, caffeine use or a painful or worrisome life event.

There are many psychological tools to help with overthinking, but two people with comparable struggles may not benefit from or prefer the same tools. We insomnia specialists try to have available sizable and diverse tool kits that address cause or manifestation without sacrificing specificity.

Irrespective of tools, there are some general principles that may help with overthinking:

• Suppressing unwanted thoughts may make them more determined, and they can come roaring back. Good techniques allow us to coexist peaceably with our thoughts.
• At night, it is best to use simple, calming techniques that do not re-litigate the content of our concerns.
• Issues that inflame overthinking — such as overwork, too little support, isolation, guilt, mental health concerns and insufficient exercise — matter. Why are you overthinking? What do you need more or less of in your life? These questions are best addressed during the day or early evening.
• Engaging in abundant negative or anxious thinking can condition unwanted habits of mind. The Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh cautions us to be careful which plants we water over and over in our minds. These are the plants that will grow big and strong and, in turn, demand more care and feeding.

One of my patients was a caring partner, mother and friend, and successful in a meaningful and demanding career. She had a child with mental health challenges and would lie awake at night worrying, questioning her own actions and gaming out possible scenarios.

The thinking was unconstructive and interfered with rest and sleep. Talking through her feelings of helplessness and fear was important. I also offered her some strategies that helped. Here are some of them:

Use a soothing distractor

During periods of insomnia, turn to more soothing thoughts to compete with your default thoughts. The human mind cannot entertain two narratives simultaneously.

Listen to peaceful audio books, podcasts or conversational radio programs, or read calming stories or books (with the light very dim and blue-blocked). Each time the unwanted thoughts arise, don’t push them away. Let them recede into the background and gently return your attention to your soothing distractor.

If interior techniques such as visualizations last long enough for you (they don’t for many people), walk through a calming and pleasant memory such as a vacation or the rooms of your grandmother’s house. Don’t choose a distractor that would keep you up, and don’t focus on sleep as a goal while using it.

Schedule worry time

This is, at most, a 30-minute technique that should be used in the early evening, after the stressful part of the day but hours before sleep in case it leaves some residue of stress or worry.

By facing problems constructively, they are less likely to plague us at night. This technique also teaches us to tolerate not acting or ruminating when it isn’t time.

List all your worries and stressors. For each one, ask yourself: Is there anything I can do about this in the next two weeks (even if I can’t completely resolve the issue)? If yes, what can you do and precisely when will you do it? Action steps should mitigate either the problem itself, such as working out a payment plan for an overdue bill, or its emotional effect, such as reminding oneself that more income-generating work is forthcoming.

Update the list each evening and continue with the action steps until you no longer need the technique.

Give yourself a few optional minutes each evening to think any way you’d like about the items on the list. The rest of the day and night, when the thoughts arise, say, “Not now; I’ll get to you during my scheduled worry time.” If you have determined that there is nothing to be done about a certain problem, when thoughts about it arise, remind yourself that there is nothing to do.

Try exposure therapy for thoughts

This is a daytime technique. Variants are used for the thoughts that can accompany OCD, but I teach it for preoccupying thoughts more generally.

• Take a few days to list your recurrent negative and anxious thoughts.
• Record them into the audio recorder on your phone or computer three times in a singular long recording.
• The first time, recite the thoughts in the tone in which they naturally pop into your head.
• The second time, exaggerate that tone.
• The third time, make the tone absurd.
• Listen to the recording on a loop for an hour a day while you are doing something else such as playing a computer game that doesn’t involve words or sound, or cleaning up.

You may feel a bit worse at first (and you can always abandon the technique if you need to). After several days, though, the recording should become boring and repetitive background noise such that when the thoughts arise in the privacy of your head, they are easily relegated to the background.

Examine overlooked feelings

This is a technique for getting in touch with buried feelings. I suggest it especially to those who are preternaturally competent and stoical, rarely letting themselves feel vulnerable. The feelings may catch up with them at night in the form of distress and overthinking.

Early morning is a nice, quiet time for getting in touch with underattended feelings. It is a listening task, not a thinking task.

Prompt yourself with half sentences such as: “What I’m scared of is” or “What I’m sad about is” or “What I’m disappointed by is” or “What I feel ashamed about is” or “What I regret is” or “What I’ve been most traumatized by is.” Pick a few half-sentences per sitting. Commit to thoughtfully addressing what arises at a later time (not at night).

Think rationally

Cognitive-therapy techniques invite us to bring rational thinking — for instance, evidence for and against, and correction of cognitive distortions — to bear on our assumptions.

These can be excellent tools during the day for reappraising our worries and other upsetting thoughts. For example, if you are worrying about something, ask yourself what are the worst, best and most likely outcomes, in that order.

Self-soothe

Underneath the rational layer, there can be a primally frightened part of us. Children don’t ask their parents for proof of their soothing assertions or ask what qualifies them to make those assertions; they bask in the soothing.

Cultivate more soothing language and a kinder tone toward yourself (day and night), and try to believe yourself. There are many other strategies for self-soothing as well.

I have written previously about repeatedly observing one’s own overthinking to cultivate self-awareness and establish a competing habit of mind. There are many other useful techniques — from meditation to journaling to wind-down time to relaxation techniques such as breathing to slow your thoughts and Yoga Nidra to keeping a pad of paper bedside (to be used very sparingly) for jotting down things you want to remember tomorrow to worry exposure.

I hope some of my suggested techniques offer you a great start and help you reduce or eliminate overthinking and get restful sleep.

Lisa Strauss, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in private practice in the Boston area. She specializes in sleep disorders.

We welcome your comments on this column at OnYourMind@washpost.com.

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Eight hours

Fourteen. I was so tired when I woke up at the regular time, I couldn't keep my eyes open and fell back asleep.

Crazy thing...I won a fitbit a few weeks ago. At this point the most valuable thing on it is my sleep patterns and times. I average 4.5 to 5 hrs a night.