It’s Day 22 in this weird and surreal experience.
I’ve spent the last hour completing my pre-bedtime routine, and I’m getting in bed even earlier than usual.
And yet if the last 3 weeks are anything to go by, I know I’ll be willing myself out of bed in an hour and into the kitchen to read. This will probably be followed by lying in bed a state of semi-relaxation for 2-4 hours.
Some time will be spent scouring the internet for tips to sleep that I haven’t read 10 times already. Other hours will be spent wondering just why I can’t seem to complete this most simple of bodily functions, and actually drift off.
Especially when I’ve been tired enough to feel the walls of sleep closing in, but still not been able to just let go… and in the back of my mind, wondering how this sleep deprivation will affect my mental health.
So how did I fix my sleep, and regain the ability to drift off within 10 minutes of my head hitting the pillow?
Short answer: A focus on relaxation, and a decision to do less.
Long answer: 3 weeks of intense trial and error, lifestyle changes, learning and mindfulness, with an absolute focus on calm and curiosity.
Everyone’s relationship with sleep is different, and if it doesn’t come easily all you can do is try different things.
This is what worked for me – I hope my experience also helps if you are also having your own sleep trouble.
The Long Answer
We’ve all had periods where we can’t drift off. For me, these times would almost always surface before a job interview or a super stressful event like an exam.
However, the fact I couldn’t pinpoint any obvious cause for my sleeplessness this time injected its own anxiety.
All of this just fanned the feelings of anxiety and confusion.
I was, by all standards, really quite happy. I’d spent the last 12 months practising mindfulness and gratitude and taking many steps to look after my mental health.
While the Covid situation is incredibly shitty, I thought I was making the most of a difficult time and being pretty positive. I was investing in relationships and challenging myself at work and with this website.
So what the hell was wrong?
This mindset of confusion and panic was the first thing I realised I could control, and focus to improve.
By day 4, I figured if I was going to go through this for however long… I’d rather be relaxed and calm than tearing my hair out and crying each night.
After all, I’d tried that approach before and found the experience really miserable all round.
It also doesn’t help that I have a terrible tendency to overthink things. I knew if I let myself enter this cycle every night, I was going to be making sleep even harder.
If these weren’t enough reasons, a calm mindset would help me to think logically and find a solution.
Win-win, right?
These are the actions and resources which helped me stay calm:
First-off, meditating with the Calm and Waking Up apps were a big help in just being able to find peace and focus that bit easier. Mindfulness is also incredible for recognising when your mind is moving in a direction that doesn’t benefit you, and just taking a step back.
Mindfulness and these meditation apps helped me avoid tossing and turning in bed for hours on end.
Listening to white noise or nature sounds also helped my mind to stop running relentlessly.
Another thing which really helped me was reading about sleep and changing the way I thought about the things I was trying.
For example, when I read in Ariana Huffington’s book that it’s not about whether X or Y works and gets you to sleep… It’s about X and Y improving the conditions for sleep and making sleep more likely.
When I read this, a light bulb went off.
This allowed me to stop thinking about it as trial and fail, and getting dispirited because the 100 things I tried just hadn’t worked.
I started to just think about the things I tried which left me relaxed and in a good frame of mind.
No, the breathing technique the military uses that supposedly gets you to sleep in 2 minutes hasn’t just flicked a switch and sent you to sleep.
But it HAS helped you to relax and therefore make sleep more likely. That’s a win.
Once I was in a calm state of mind, there were two things left to do:
- To look at my lifestyle and routine before bed to make sleep more likely.
- To understand the reasons why I wasn’t sleeping
This is the trial and error approach I took…
- When should I get out of bed?
One of the biggest questions I faced was when to get out of bed when sleep isn’t coming easy. I noticed that when I would toss and turn for hours, I’d end up needing to get out of bed anyway, just later. Maybe if I could get out of bed earlier, I could get to sleep sooner?
Test: Get out of bed within 1 hour
Result: I noticed a big difference here, getting to sleep earlier when I got out of bed to read and reset. This became a new unofficial rule for me.
- Re-adjust Circadian rhythm
I read about circadian rhythms, and finally understood why blue light is so bad for you before bed and how your body needs to know it’s time for bed if you want to make sleep more likely.
Test: I committed to reading 1 hour before bed, and installed a blue light app on my phone because my current setting wasn’t dim enough. I also started to avoid turning bright lights on, i.e when brushing my teeth in the bathroom.
Result: All this definitely left me feeling more sleepy… but still awake. I kept it as part of my routine (at least until I found something more effective later on).
- Not enough… Chamomile?
I tried chamomile tea and lavender pillow spray next, convinced by all the reviews and references in articles to their potency.
Result: They both left me feeling so relaxed and chilled… but ultimately still awake. Scrapping this idea, I moved onto the next test!
- Not enough exercise
Next I looked at the amount of regular exercise I was getting. Pre-Pandemic, I was in the weights room 3 days a week, lifting as heavy as I could. Now I was limited to home workouts with apps, body weight and some light dumbbells… and to be honest, I hadn’t been the most disciplined with it.
Don’t even get me started with how bad I was at getting out the house and going for walks either.
Test: Work out and go for more walks more, even when tired.
Result: Felt sore and more energised… but still no sleep. I decided to be more regular with exercise.
- Drill down into potential reasons
At this point, I was confident that my routine was pretty optimal. Realistically, I was doing plenty to make sleep more likely and so it was time to really nail down why I might not be sleeping.
Test: I listed out all the potential reasons why I might not be sleeping. I then wrote why each one wasn’t actually that big of an issue.
Result: Still no luck – if one of these reasons was the culprit, it was really buried in my subconscious.
- Track that (lack of) sleep
For one of my final tests, I decided to really engage my analytical-self. And this is when things started to get really interesting.
Test: Download and use a sleep tracker
Result: Somehow, it looked like I was sleeping for a few minutes in the first hour, and then waking up.
The sleep tracker showed me that I was actually asleep for minutes during that first hour… at which point my body was apparently waking itself up. I had it on good authority that this was nothing to do with my partner either (although she would say that I suppose).
Were those few minutes of sleep convincing my body that it was time to wake up immediately, and making sleep that much more difficult?
The Short Answer
I did some research and discovered that muscle twitches and spasms can play a big part in waking up.
Even though I didn’t even notice falling asleep and wasn’t being jerked awake, I was cautiously optimistic that this was on the right track.
Especially because during lockdown I’d suffered for a while with such spasms (particularly in my arms). I decided to test really tiring out and relaxing my muscles before bed.
How was I going to do this?
Yoga before bed!
I thought that the combination of relaxing music, focus on breathing and difficult stretches would provide my body with a perfect balance of activity and relaxation. After yoga, I also massaged my arms to really get any knots out.
When I went to bed that evening, after 22 nights averaging 5 hours nights sleep, I didn’t really know what to expect. I was hopeful it would work, but at peace with the fact it may not.
Instead of focusing on my breathing, I also tried to find that state of relaxation often encouraged in yoga and meditation – a kind of mindless decompressing.
When I woke up the next morning, it took a moment for me to realise it wasn’t actually 2 or 3am but that I could actually start my day.
That moment when recognition did hit though was such a moment of pure joy and relief.
(Weirdly, I also had a moment after where I almost felt I’d missed out on that extra time I would have spent awake, reading or just being relaxed. Surreal right?)
Unfortunately, yoga only worked for so long. Eventually my sleeplessness returned, and it was hard to start again and stay calm.
But I kept testing and trying new things. I stopped drinking coffee earlier, went to bed a bit later, and isolated 1.5 hours before bed for reading and audiobooks.
I also tried to do LESS in bed. I would remind myself of one phrase in particular:
“Relax and sink into right now… then just let go of everything”.
Over time, the sleepless nights got rarer and rarer.
Now I’m quite happy where my sleep is at. 6 out of 7 nights I’ll drift straight off, and when I don’t I fall back on my old resources.
It took a while, but I got there in the end.
I learnt a hell of a lot during the 3 months I had sleep issues.
At times it really sucked and I was pretty down, don’t get me wrong. But I felt I also gained a lot and came across some really important truths.
I’d rather not go through a streak quite like that again… but if I do, I’ll be ready.
If you are having your own sleep troubles I’d leave you with 5 things I’ve learnt:
- Keeping a calm and curious mindset is most beneficial.
- It’s all about trial and error, but each thing you try is helping.
- Don’t internalise, talk with others – a problem shared is a problem halved.
- Think about the potential causes of your sleeplessness.
- Relax and just let go of everything.
Wishing you all many nights of calm and relaxation!
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