A trick to help to fall sleep - anyone tried anything like this?

SuZir

Well-Known Member
My difficult child's team (difficult child is basically minimum wage pro athlete) has hired a professional to help the team handle difficult child's issues and work with difficult child in certain problem areas as well as work as his mental coach. difficult child shared one interesting trick this mental coach has been teaching him to help with his sleep issues. I too tend to have issues on getting sleep and found this interesting and have decided to try it. Have any of you tried anything like this before and has it worked?

Idea is to manipulate state of mind (or what would be better word, I can't come up with a good English word for what I'm looking for.) Basically you purposely build mental triggers to get you to desired state of mind. For difficult child they are working for example on him learning to dress the 'just right' emotional state for the game and practice simultaneously with dressing up his gear and also undressing it with the gear. With sleep it goes something like this:

-First you either pick a memory or create an image of perfect falling the sleep situation. From that moment there you are just about to fall sleep.
-Next you start to make it livelier. You think about details, if it is memory and you can't remember, you just make them up. Think it through every sense. How it smells, feels on your skin, what you hear etc. Just to make it very lifelike.
-Make a connection between this image and falling sleep stronger. Think it when you are peacefully in your bed and already starting to fall asleep. First don't think about it at times you have trouble falling sleep, just when you are actually very near to succeed in getting sleep.
-When connection between falling a sleep and this image is strong enough, you can start to use it. It should work like a trigger. I think most of us here are very familiar to small triggers that can rise an awful anxiety in us and this should work a same way. Just starting to think about this image should trigger a sleepiness and getting to that state there you are just about to fall asleep.

No idea if this work, but to me it sounds something that can not do any harm at least, so I'm going to start building this kind of image. I can then tell you month from here, if I have had any success.
 

keista

New Member
Good luck. I won't try anything like that only because it involves thinking. For me, thinking and sleep don't mix. I am forever trying to STOP thinking to try and fall asleep.

Logically, though, it makes perfect sense. Like you mentioned, kind of the opposite of an anxiety trigger.
 

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
I've always done something similar. Usually it works, but when I'm in chronic insomnia mode "thinking" only makes it impossible to sleep.

I do the "happy place" thing. I think up a really nice place that would make me happy to be there in reality, but it doesn't have to be a real place, as I get into details........I usually fall asleep.

For those horrid bouts of insomnia, I totally wipe my mind and refuse to allow myself to think of anything. Think *blank screen*.....eventually it's boring enough it works. LOL
 
S

Signorina

Guest
hmmmm, I am with Keista on this.

Also, I got rid of the clock on my nightstand. Awakening at 2:00 and then checking the clock when I couldn't fall back to sleep always seemed to make things worse. (Now it's 2:15, why can't I sleep. 3:22? I have to get up in 2 hours. How can I function on 3 hours sleep? **** it's 4:50 now, lah blah blah)

When my mind is overwrought and I haven't been sleeping for nights on end, I take 1/2 of 1 tylenol PM which knocks me out for 8-10 hours. If I am really desperate and in pain I will take 1 whole tablet! (Yes, I know I should take the "Simply Sleep" without the tylenol, but at 1/2 of 1 tablet, it takes me a while to finish the bottle! I'll buy it next time) Sometimes, if I haven't been sleeping, i get worried that I won't sleep and the worry keeps me up.
 

SuZir

Well-Known Member
Hope it works for him (and you.)

So do I. Sleep issues contribute to his other issues especially irritability and sensory stuff. And i really don't like how often he needs to use Ambien just to get some sleep and be able to function. Of course it works, it will be difficult to say, what works, this or sleep hygiene things or weighted blanket or what.

And I wouldn't mind if it would work for me too. Just now I have all of three hours left before my alarm goes off and i have not yet slept a second. Of course it is one of the years shortest nights and light and beautifulness of nature is so unbelievable that sleeping would be a huge waste. There will be those long, long winter nights to sleep all the hours I miss now ;)
 
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