your discussion about sleep and the improvements Sabrina found about it were actually really comforting for me. one of my biggest sources of underlying anxiety is the perpetual awareness that biologically speaking, i would be classified as "sleep deprived" due to not getting my recommended hours, and being sleep deprived is associated with... you know, dying by any conceivable cause. sometimes it just helps to be told that i'm probably doing okay.
Man this video showed up at a good time. My wife just started an evening shift job and I've got a lower back injury that has destroyed my normal sleep pattern. I'm looking forward to checking out the rest of your content.
Well in case you are offering to answer questions I do have one xD One of my friend said that in his family, sleep is "laying in bed for 3-4h while waiting to fall unconscious" everyone in is family live sleep like that. While for my family, it is "Get in bed, then actively decide to sleep and then fall asleep in 30s" I heard both are abnormal ? Is there anything as normal sleep ?
There are some products that contain melatonin on the market that anyone can buy. They claim to help to get to sleep quicker. Are there Infos about those? Do they actually help? Is it placebo? Can these lead to some kind of "dependency"?
For me my problem is revenge procrastination. It means you procrastinate sleeping to take control of your schedule because you feel like you were robbed of doing the things you want because you did things you didn’t want to do, like work.
I had this issue a lot in high school and uni. In hs I was constantly at school, doing homework at home, and had no time for anything else, so I purposefully stayed up late. It was harmful for me during the day, because I was exhausted and had less energy, therefore taking MORE time to do the things I needed to do. Then in college, it was my job rather than my schooling taking up all of my time, and I thought I could compensate by banning myself from doing anything I enjoy doing for a week so I could get everything I needed to do done, and then hypothetically I'd have more time to do things I enjoy while still getting enough sleep. But this just made me depressed! It took me a long time to find a balance between "I am staying up just late enough to do the things I want to do to avoid depression" and "I am staying up way too late doing things I want to do which will negatively impact my energy the next day". I had to learn to be okay with not finishing a drawing or a movie, while still feeling in control of my time. Sometimes you can't avoid that feeling, due to outside forces. But I think you'll get there someday. Sleep also takes *time*, literally, to get a routine going, so don't feel down on yourself for revenge procrastination - even one or two nights a week of adequate sleep is enough to heal
I stay at my workplace too much and this comment represent exactly my situation and i just cannot avoid going to bed at 3 or 4 AM. I even managed to do worse but i can't help it, i literally feel robbed.
This is my problem too. I do stuff I don¿t want to do aaall day, the only chance I think I get to relax and procrastinate on my phone is when I'm about to sleep, so I take too much time just doing that to feel better about not feeling good all day
When Covid first hit, I ended up switching to split sleep schedule, sleep for 4-5 hours, awake for 4-5 hours, sleep for 4-5 hours, awake for 10-12 hours. I felt amazing, it really worked well for me, the problem being that there is no way to make that work with the societally expected awake & sleep times, and now that I'm back to work and school, that sleep schedule can't work between all my responsibilities. I feel worse than before, and I wish that I could go back to that schedule.
@@WARnTEA I knew that, but huh that makes so much more since why I like to take a 3-4 nap once the sun goes down and then stay up for a bit before finishing sleeping.
@@WARnTEAWhat you said doesn’t make any sense…sleep cycles aren’t ever “4 hours,” sleep is seen in 4 stages over 8 hours. REM is usually 20% of sleep, stage 2 is the majority of sleep in adults…if you don’t study sleep, don’t parrot “facts” you found online that aren’t recognized in modern sleep science.
"You should try and make your sleep work for you, instead of trying to conform to society's idea of when you should sleep and when you should wake up" Work and society: "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that"
An interesting thing I noticed when Covid shut everything down and I was unemployed is that once I didn't have rigid scheduling and was able to pretty much just sleep and wake when I wanted to the symptoms of my sleep disorder that I had to take stimulant medication for improved greatly... I went from 7-9 hours of sleep, multiple naps, and constantly feeling like I was ready to just pass out even with my meds to just a background level of tired that felt more manageable. Curious.
@@comrade-jellyfish-pizzaMe too!! I actually felt happy and well rested waking up… It was the first time I could enjoy a normal and peaceful 9am with a hot cooked breakfast while the sun shined in my face in 10 years instead of a grey bleak school building eating cold food in class… I was so much more productive and ready to work than usual, and I had enough rest during the week to wake up before 1pm on weekends! Fortunately and unfortunately lockdown is over and I’m back to my horrible sleep… I still continue wake up after 1pm and can’t sleep at night lol
The wildest thing I’ve found is that if I suddenly feel mentally tired but not physically, and then I go “what was I thinking about right before I felt tired all of a sudden?”, the answer is always “trying to plan something”. It’s like how if you think about climbing a mountain, the task and details and time and effort etc all overwhelm you and you instantly feel daunted, and your brain tells you “well clearly we need more energy for this shit, get some rest”. So if I want to get shit done I have to like, short circuit the process, and focus on one step at a time in the present and try to pivot when I notice myself thinking about future steps even while performing a current one (which also happens to be the conditions for interruptions to freak me tf out, if I think “what was going on in my head when I got startled” it’s *always* something to do with not being fully present and focused on future expectations). Like if I’m making coffee, and my mind is wandering *while* making coffee and someone interrupts it feels like a lightning bolt to the soul or moments before a car accident like aaahhh, but if I was *just* making coffee and only thinking about my physical performance and the current step I’m on then other sudden stimulus doesn’t bother me nearly as much!!
I find myself with almost the same problem. I can't focus *absolutely* on a task or just on the present without being overwhelmed or constantly reminded with the obligations I have pending. So commutes, meals, going for a drink with friends or simply sitting at the cafe having a drink always have those thoughts present. And it's tiring because it wasn't like this before. I used to have a extremely good and involuntary connection with the present and that brought me joy. I don't know how I could regain that. To sum it up, the biggest example of this issue is that I get tired when I'm existing because I'm planning and going through my next day or the closest task, instead of just letting it happen as it always does and enjoy what's happening around me, what I'm doing or my feelings
All i can say is thanks for sharing. I dont currently need to organize every single aspect of my life and plan ahead, but i think when that time in my life does come, i will take your advice snd put it to good use. I struggle with the same overall problem, but with different distractions, and my brain REALLY has a tendency to fly ahead once i get a grasp of one thought. Maybe this could help me get better control of the the traffic jam inside my head. Thank you so much!
This. It's sounds so simple, but we often take it for granted. I did this a lot, not being present at the moment. My mind always wanders elsewhere, worrying about things that are not yet happening. Small steps at a time indeed as they say. Noticing this phenomenon takes practice really and the "noticing" applies even to other stuff (like how you react to certain things, feedback or criticisms for example). When it comes to sleep, this affects a LOT. Your mind doesn't want to you to drift off. You're constantly in a loop of mentally awake despite both mentally and physically you need to rest. Then there comes the morning. You're tired from waking up, really ironic.
@@gabrielborges551learn to use exocortex and relax your brain from stress of keeping up, i think this can help. This way it's easier to let physiological brain to focus on specific task, not about global stuff or planning (unless you actively plan, but it's fine then)
I personally find sunrise imitating alarm clock very useful in that part of the year when I need to get up when it's still dark. Opening my eyes to a small amount of light feels less depressing than waking up in darkness which only makes me think how early it is and how cold it is outside. It doesn't make me extremely energetic and it doesn't trick me into thinking it's noon already, it simply makes my morning tolerable, so I do recommend it.
Ohhhh wow I didn't know that's a thing! I need to look into this considering I sleep in a room with no windows so it's a real challenge for me to wake up early even on weekends when I *want* to wake up early
It can be particularly useful for those poor bastards that start a 6am shift at the factory and have to wake up before sunrise most if not all of the year.
I started thinking about aspects of my D&D campaign to go to sleep. By allowing my brain to wander on topics that are "safe" (in that I'm not going to stumble into something I'm worried about), I can naturally wind down my thought process without getting "bored" and keeping myself awake trying to force myself to go to sleep. I'm essentially recreating the aspect of reading a book to a child so they go to sleep, except I'm the child, book, and parent reading all in one.
Interesting, I think that I slightly disagree. I think that what the video was referring as "Doom-thinking" is actually just plain old regular "thinking"! What do I mean? Well, most people don't actually give much of their time in the day to just self-reflect and contemplating about their day/life. There's just too many distractions in life, especially smart devices and the internet. Thusly, I argue it's actually better that before you're going to bed, you ought to go over all your worries and concerns that are on your mind that day, about the present and the near future, and to just think through it (writing it down in a journal helps!). Get those thoughts out right away, and you'll see that you can much more easily relax and go to sleep calmly, as opposed to ruminating incessantly until 3 in the morning. By the way, often people will call this type of self-reflection as "mediation" or "prayer". It's important to let yourself help feel like you can resolve your issues that are constantly worrying you, about the future or whatever. Set aside time before bed, and you'll see how it helps.
I used to do the exact same thing! But a few times it happened to me that a great idea would come up that would make me excited, running for paper or for my phone to write it down, and then I would get even less sleep haha
I had adhd if I did this it would frick with my head ;-;. If I think about something intresting then I won’t stop thinking about it and it might to the exact opposite,thinking about something boring might work, but chances are my brain wont stay on that to long. So when I can’t sleep what I try to do is closest to meditation, where I focus on relaxing every muscle in my body one by one.
I also do that, looking inside of my eyelids. Just focusing on the darkness. It feels a lot like meditation to me since I'm just trying to see one thing and one thing alone - darkness.
As someone who has super severe obstructive sleep apnea, I can attest to the fact that sleep is inextricably linked to quality of life. My CPAP very literally changed my life.
Upping this!! A LOT of people have undiagnosed sleep apnea and it is both making them constantly tired even with lots of sleep AND increasing their risk of clots and heart attacks… My doctor (who also has sleep apnea) almost died from a clot caused by his -then undiagnosed- sleep apnea. CPAP devices are a godsend
@@sharpieman2035 mhm! my mum got a clot in her eye that was due to undiagnosed sleep apnea and she ended up becoming blind. her machine has probably saved her life.
I have anxiety and sleeping with my significant other has helped me fall asleep so quickly without doom scrolling. Just hugs and cuddles. As long as the room is dark and silent with him in it, I’ll fall asleep 😊
Wow, for the short period of time when I did sleep with someone. There was this weird sense of anxiety that would just leave me all of a sudden. No longer though, back to scrolling through phone rip
I used to be tired 24/7 to the point where it was just normal to feel completely drained 90% of the time. I was pretty physically healthy with a good daily routine, loved going out, moving my body so never could figure out why I wad always so tired and unmotivated. Then a few months ago I got an ADHD diagnosis and started taking ritalin and it has changed my life really. No amount of coffee or energy drinks make me this awake and motivated, so it was so nice to not be so lethargic and tired. It didn't change my skeep but instead changed how much energy I had when I was awake. So those sort of medical factors, that seem unimportant can have big effects as well.
I'm the exact same, except I actually can't afford the final stage of diagnosis in which they prescribe medication or treatment going forward. It's also €80 per month, which, with the cost of living, is unaffordable.
my psychologist recommended I count backward from 100 and restart at 100 every time I had a thought unrelated to counting. Then she recommended switching to counting back by 3s to help make it use a bit more brain power since regular counting back wasn't enough to occupy my brain. Often I didn't get very far because I kept having unrelated thoughts, but I refocused quick to starting again from 100 and before long I'd be asleep.The idea is to keep your brain engaged with a task that requires it to be engaged without being stimulating. This helped me drift off without the thoughts keeping me awake for hours. If counting back from 100 is too easy then people can replace it with any other engaging but uninteresting mental task. Genuinely helped me so it might help others.
Sometimes what I do is pick a random word, and then for every letter of that word I think of a word that starts with that letter. When I get to the end of a word, I start with the word I came up for the last letter. So like if I thought of red, I’d say ramification, ember, darkness, and then I’d start on darkness by going denial, apple, and so on.
Can confirm, before I used to have an office job and I got mentally tired, but my body was not, so sleeping was crap. I’ve worked as a flight attendant for around 3 years now and the change in physical exhaustion has helped me a LOT. Jet lag and weird shifts are hell, but after a 17 hour flight, I sleep like a rock and my blood pressure has been at a more normal level since I made the switch
@@davenordquist4663my brother, flight attendents spend basically the entire flight on their feet. then after helping all the customers with their luggage and devices and prams, checking for litter or lost things, and generally setting the plane to rights, they need to walk to a different plane and do it all over again. any kind of service work is exhausting. be a little more considerate.
This video is actually so helpful 😭 when I say I wanna get up earlier people just respond with "oh then go to bed earlier" but I can't 😭 the fact that this video covers suggestions for that is so helpful. Thank you 🫶🏻
One of my favorite things of Answer in Progress videos is the readily accessible full-length interviews where I can really dig into the ethos and thoughts of the scientific guests. All three of you are also wonderful interviewers. Thank you for the content!!
Hard of Hearing right here!! I love my vibrating alarm. It also has a plug in for a lamp that will blink with the alarm and turn on with the snooze button when the alarm is off. It is far better at waking me up than even my phone that flashes with the alarm, because I get a stronger jolt of adrenaline when I open my eyes.
big change for me was not to drink coffee first thing in the morning. I wait 1-1.5h after I wake up to have my first cup and now I don't crash at 3-4pm (before I needed a nap/ another cup of coffee)
also want to add that if you've tried to fix your sleep hygiene and all of these other tips and still find yourself excessively sleepy during the day, it's definitely worth getting a sleep study done to rule out some possible sleep disorders. I was diagnosed with narcolepsy so it turns out it really truly especially wasn't my fault and explained why even when I had near-perfect sleep hygiene it never seemed to make a difference. They'll also test for sleep apnea which also greatly disrupts your sleep
+1 to this! i got tested and apparently do not have narcolepsy but was also recommended that i could take narcolepsy medication? i just tell people i have the "tired sleepy disease" and do my best to schedule things at times that are less likely to be difficult for me, and have the medication available as an option
@@therideneverends1697 came down here to add this - especially as I found that all of the usual sleep hygiene things that get suggested are absolutely awful for helping me sleep because of it. I used to drink coffee late, watch videos until I passed out, occasionally be a bit groggy the next day; Eventually I was pressured into stopping doing this, which only made my sleep worse, which was only met with being told to cut back further (eventually I was saying "no coffee after midday and no screens for 2 hours before bed"). It actually wasn't until I had a few bad cycles of this *after* I was diagnosed, where I noticed I was pretty regularly falling asleep about an hour after I gave up on trying to sleep and having a coffee, intending to just get on with the day on zombie mode. Now, I still do have issues with keeping to a good schedule, but I am nothing like how I used to be, and I find it especially maddening that this was all down to one of the earlier points in the video - people thinking there was some magical perfect sleep and uncritically repeating first-line advice.
I feel like my main issue with using my phone in bed right before sleep is that it almost became a routine. My body would be like "oh we're horizontal and using the phone, sleep time", and it took a few weeks to condition myself out of that so I could fall asleep normally.
I was so afraid my own theory of anxiety scrolling would fall apart, when you mentioned scrolling until unable to hold your eyes open! Because I've been experiencing the very same thing! When I tried letting go of the phone it felt literally felt unbearable, and it seems the "not being able to keep your eyes open" part is very much key, in order to fall asleep as soon as possible after dropping your phone and have the best chances at escaping the monsters lurking under your bed while you are AWAKE.
ADHD + GAD means if my brain isnt occupied it goes on insane stressful tangents. What usually helps me is finding spmething that is the perfect balance of interesting and boring. It needs to be interesting enough that my brain doesn't go on its own tangent, but boring enough that its not going to interest me to the point of staying up to finish it. Then I turn it down so that i can just barely make out the words so that its kind of mumbly and it occupies me just enough to keep my inner voice quiet, but allows me to drift off.
I kept reading online that you HAVE to get rid of your phone, and every time I did, I would just get stressed out because of the unstoppable forward march of time and death. So, I'm kinda glad I don't absolutely have to get rid of my phone if I want to sleep now, and it was helpful to know why I'm feeling tired all the time, along with some strategies to feel less tired, and to fall asleep. Great video, as always!
I’ve stopped having caffeine for about a week now due to anxiety issues and I haven’t been as tired. So basically having caffeine is what led to my more than normal tiredness throughout the day. Wild!
The whole phone gone, anxiety still blaring for hours is real. Like, I've tried to put away my phone, but I couldn't bare it for more than an hour when I needed a distraction so my mind would stop bullying me.
OMG I can't believe I've never thought of filling a mug with water then using that to fill the kettle. You get the PERFECT amount every time!!! I know that's not the revelation I should have got from this video lmao but I did enjoy the whole thing
the whole "do what works for you, not what society deems acceptable and effective" means so much to me as an audhder who always struggles keeping a routine, but has certain rituals I do every morning and night. I can't force myself not to do my nightly ritual (usually writing or revising my stories), but I can chose to add things or slightly differ how I do it. I've switched to my phone instead of my laptop bc I find the bigger the screen the more likely it'll keep my awake, and I also lower my lights to help set the mood an hour prior (along with other things I'd incorporated before watching this video, that were specific to my adhd/autistic needs). maybe i can work up to adding a walk during the day to get sunlight as well, since my room doesn't have a window, but with the winters here in illinois (and also executive dysfunction) i'm not sure how successful that'll be. it gives me a clearer idea of how to shift my "routines" for somewhat better sleep though, and also have a better mindset around how I view my sleep patterns and daily structures. long-winded way to say thank you for this video and research you've done, but I was never one for simplicity either so! lol, thank you :) edit: 9 months later, I moved to a different apartment with a window, and wayyy better walking areas. just better area in general. im abt to move again to my grt gmas house since she died, but it's abt the same as my apartment now. the window in my room has helped SO MUCH with energy and my sleep. i still do most of the things i mentioned in the paragraph above, but i still think abt this video a lot!!!
Struggled with sleep for many years and can totally relate to all the stuff Sabrina did to attain "good sleep". Only recently discovered I had PCOS and hormonal imbalance might be the cause for the daily fatigue and difficulty sleeping. Sleep still eludes me on bad days (day before yesterday was one of those nights!). However, routines I've made and attempts to lower daily cortisol levels (plus all the stuff I need to regulate PCOS) have been helping. I like the idea of taking daily walks in the morning for the sun. Will definitely add that to my daily to-dos! Thank you, Answer in Progress team!
Everyone’s sleep situation is different, but this is what I’ve learned so far. I started watching things on my phone before bed about four or five years ago, it definitely took more than a year for my brain to start taking notice of that activity before and after sleep, it’s likely going to take even longer to no longer be wired that way. I have a mild case of sleep apnea, which means my airway collapses when I’m sleeping on my back. Weight loss helps mitigate this, which I’m working on. The rest is what you’ve likely heard already, tight sleep schedule, chilled room, hot bath before bed, etc. there’s a cornucopia of different aspects to consider when trying to get a good nights sleep, but we need to consider them all, because besides drinking water, sleeping well is the healthiest thing we can do for ourselves. Hope what I’ve said helped, cheers.
For ten years, I suffered from chronic Lyme disease, arthritis, gallbladder issues and constant chronic pain. The doctors said I would not recover. I was in agony daily, and I watched others die around me with late stage diseases. Prayer healed me when medicine failed me. God fully healed my disease. When Jesus found me I got baptized and started following the bible. God gave me a new family. My life is full of meaning. My heart is full of gratitude. I want to love others and share his work. You are unique to God and you are special to Him. Today I am free from disease! Don't listen to the people who hate and talk negatively. God is kind, patient and he loves you with an everlasting love. Seek the Lord while he may be found (Isaiah 55:6-9) Psalm 41:3 “The Lord sustains them on their sickbed and restores them from their bed of illness.” Matthew 24:14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
this was very useful, I am feeling tired in the day, and yesterday when I walked for few minutes outside I felt energetic, now I know the reason, it was interesting, this is probably most useful video I have seen in your channel and about sleep in general, thanks
For me it's that your alarm is going off at 7 am lol! Chronotype also plays a BIG part in sleep (+ things like DSPD which are often connected to GAD and ADHD). I tried to be a morning person for a while and go to bed at 10:30/11 pm but my body just naturally WANTS to sleep at 12-1am and get up at 9 am... so with working from home I don't deny it that and falling asleep and waking up are so much better... I have been bad at the doomscrolling lately and need to get back into only passive use of my phone though.
In Finland, there is a specific instruction for the phone that it should preferably be left entirely some other room than the one where you sleep. This instruction works well in an apartment with several rooms, but the problem becomes one-room apartments where this instruction is impossible to apply because the only other room is the bathroom. I live in a single-room apartment myself and I don't know what to do because it doesn't make sense to leave the phone in the bathroom either.
My best sleep reccomendation is to learn to accept "bad sleep". Being in bed with closed eyes are ALWAYS better than not doing anything. Accept sleep will come, and if not; you have rested your body. To add to try not to complain to much to others about your sleep - the less you think about it the less it will affect your daily life. also i guess read before bed instead of looking at your phone
God, I do all of that, just read a bit before sleeping normally, walk a lot during the day, eat well enough BUT IM STILL SO TIRED 😩 I feel like falling asleep at any given time
I got rid of the RU-vid app. Why is this relevant? RU-vid is the only social media app I use. I can turn off shorts if I use RU-vid in the phone browser, and I can only watch a video if I have the browser open. So if I want to watch RU-vid I have to be just watching RU-vid There's not enough content on RU-vid to keep me entertained this way, so I inevitably look for something else to do before sleep. Now I get to sleep faster
It's amazingly hard to find programmable alarms that are not phones. I wanted different alarm regimes throughout the week which cannot be done on a regular clock so I chose a dumb phone from 2010. It does the job.
My problem with fancy alarm clocks is that their purpose is to make sure you're fully awake by the timeyou turn them on, so you don't make a half asleep decision to go to bed aaaaand, well, in my case, I am fully awake, I just loose a battle to myself, every time
I have made binaural audio with background music. two of them with different purpose. the first is one hour duration end with 30 minutes 6.5 hz to get more REM, and the second is 20 minutes duration, start with natural awake state going down over time and end with delta wave. I use it when I need more deep sleep but usually I also get better REM. so far it's working good. I feel better and more regenerative when sleeping. I use it everyday when sleeping with TWS. I just set the volume to the level that I can barely hear it, it's less distracting and also protect my hearing.
interesting long read here: the reason there is that high expectation is because i had days where i reached that insanely optimal sleep and i could jump out of bed and scream suiii. Additionally you are more productive in the morning, because thats when you have the most time. Imagine yourself as a car. When you are tired your engine is getting low oxygen and the fuel air mixture is too rich and risks engine damage, so you slap on a turbo and once it spins up you have high energy, but it has an insane lag and takes hours to spin up (the turbo represents a good diet a variant of animal based by paul saladino. no seed oils, processed foods etc), now if you find a way to put on anti lag then you will win the drag race because the start of drag races are the most important. You should never settle for less unless there is a reason. The time when i had very good sleep was when i was using sleep cycle and i recommend you guys give it a go as well
This is so helpful!!! Thank you! I also felt like im a bad sleeper and your video brought so much light on that perspective. I would try different things now
Wonder how much sleep gets messed up by making everyone live on the same schedule, and if it would be healthier for us to have more flexible lives around our natural sleep times.
life secrets are: eat (exactly what you need), sleep (exactly how much you need), exercise and try not to be coach potato, who doesn't speak with other ppl at all.
I physically cannot sleep without some sort of medical sleep aid (usually just over the counter. But a medication not a supplement) and it’s been this way since I was a teen. I want to just sleep like a normal person
I have a song which helps me sleep, it's a collaboration between a singer and a rapper, only the rapper put me to sleep and the sing did not so much but I learned to like it,I know the singer's lyrics but not the rapper cause I'm knocked out as soon as he opens his mouth. this worked for a while but I got tired of hearing it all the time, so I added other songs I always fall asleep, but accepting help from the songs is hard. To wake up I only use one alarm preferentially because if I have more I will tell myself I'll wake up at the next one. So having one more alarm helps you keep your body remembering it's not or never. I also used my favourite hyped songs
To help me sleep early i really need my phone. I always watch video about since, history or sometimes random video in english or other languages like Malaysian that i understand it but it need more time to understand the language. Thinking harder make me tired and make me sleep early
It sounds really weird but when I need to calm my brain down to sleep, I make up a story in my head and play out the story in my head, and I just somehow drift off.
I do that too! Sometimes it's about original characters, sometimes fanfic, sometimes just analysis of a series I like. At one point I knew how to mentally recite the entire script of some kids' movie.
Honestly, I go back and forth between the two sometimes. So I understand both sides. I feel like sometimes I take forever to fall asleep or want to just spend extra time staring at my phone before bed, other times I really do fall asleep quickly. I think the times I tend to stay up later staring at my phone have to do with either not taking as good care of myself (not keeping up an exercising routine, for example) and/or subconsciously or consciously trying to avoid thinking about stressors in my life (e.g. anxiety about problems that either I can't solve, or are maybe solvable but fairly complex to try). Turns out staring at my phone before bed lets me sleep better than if I fall asleep worrying over things I can't do much about, at least in the middle of the night!
M Boyfriend is like that. He can sleep in any situation, even when we're fighting, he just dozed off as soon as his head hits the pillow. Meanwhile, I just need ONE wrong thought and my brain is filled with adrenaline and I cannot think about sleeping for the next 3 hours
Same here, but it's not the only video from them that does that and I always find it crazy how it *perfectly* lands on what's happening in my life right now. I love it xD
I'm always going back and forth between "sleep is a waste of time, if I didn't have to sleep I could get so much more done" and "I just want to go to sleep forever and never have to wake up"!
.........You need to re assess this. What about thinking it as, Sleep is good for the body, it gives you more energy later to get more stuff done quicker with Efficiency and Accuracy. If you did not sleep, your work won't be done, because people around you won't be there to help and give you guidance when you need it.
I learned this in a psychiatric hospital, but it works wonders for sleep. Progressive muscle relaxation: you start at your toes and tense up each muscle group going up your body until you end with your face, taking 1-2 deep breaths each time. It's never failed me. It also helps with anxiety.
I do this abt once a week and it's a game changer. More ppl need to practice this! There are many variations but all similar: tense an isolated part of the body, hold for abt 5-15 seconds, then gently release, feel the difference between the tense and relaxed part, then move to next body part. Be gentle on feet and toes so you don't get a cramp. :) different people have different body regions with lots of tension.
This video was soooo validating. Another thing I think people don’t acknowledge enough is when you actually don’t want to sleep because you don’t want to fast forward to the next day. I know I used to use my phone to distract myself from that stress before I finally talked to my doctor about it.
@@Ethertrogg I didn’t talk to my Dr. about this specifically-I just wanted to keep my first comment short-But basically things got a lot better when I started taking anxiety meds and made progress in therapy
Anxiety also causes this Being anxious for long periods of time is tiring, but when u have to sleep anxiety can get worse because there’s less to distract u from it
I used mindful meditation for this. I had tried it before, and didn’t think much of it. It didn’t seem to do anything. But then, a friend told me to push through and don’t give up for at least a month. That’s when I finally understood why it works, and why it had not worked before. The trick is the breathing patterns it tells you to use while meditating. The exact pattern is unimportant, it just needs to be significantly different from normal breathing (ie-slowly breathe in for 7-seconds, hold it for 5-seconds, breathe out for 10-seconds, repeat) and it needs to be consistent during daily sessions for at least a month. What you’re doing is sort of rewiring your brain. With daily 10-15 min meditation over the course of weeks, your mind will slowly associate your breathing pattern with your general mental state during meditation-mainly calm and relaxed. Once it has done this, you can start employing your breathing pattern whenever you start to feel anxious, and in my experience it produces nearly instant relief, as if I had taken medication but without the grogginess, side effects, or addictive mechanisms. The only caveat is that it requires maintaining, as it’s effectively a new habit that can be lost if neglected. But that’s not the worst thing, because maintaining simply requires taking a 10-15 minute daily relaxation break.
@@silverXnoiseThat breathing pattern (specifically breathing out for longer than you breathed in) stimulates your vagus nerve and kicks your body out of the sympathetic nervous system (the "fight or flight" bit) and into the parasympathetic nervous system (the "feed and breed" but). Extremely useful skill to have for anyone who suffers from panic attacks, with practice it can fend them off very nicely. This only works if youre breathing deep enough to stretch your diaphragm, which happens to be easier to do when you're lying down.
Ive just been listening to music whrn i sleep, or like 24/7 music but i eh, now i dont feel anxious since its been years but i still sleep with music on.
Personally I find listening to music works decently as a distraction, to keep my mind from wandering and stuff, although of course for some people that may make it harder to fall asleep.
@@silverXnoise and also it requires keeping a calm state during the association when even achieving it seems impossible. Also, the slight hypoxia I get makes my anxiety attacks even worse. So, I actually alternate between having long inhales + short exhales and shorter inhales with longer exhales. That way I can actually sometimes (not always) calm myself down
Honestly I think the problem is our rigid schedules that require us to torture ourselves awake to clock time rather than light time, as opposed to us being terrible people for not perfectly optimising our sleep 🙃
@@mucicafrajerbut what if modern life didn’t suck yknow? Non-modern life did suck more, but they also worked fewer hours and got less done, and with all the technology we have we should be able to work fewer hours for more pay and live all-around better
@@mucicafrajer you’d think so but surprisingly that’s not the case for much of history. Medieval European sources, of which there are hundreds, tell us that peasants and city laborers worked roughly 6 hour shifts, lots of which was spent eating and socializing, and on an alternating cycle of “fast” days and “slow” days. Workers were also not even expected to show up on time, they were given a roughly 30 minute grace period to arrive and have a meal provided by the employer before the day started. I’m not saying these peasants had better lives than us, they didn’t have money or healthcare, and the work was literally back-breaking, but they _did_ have more time than us. Work became sunrise to sundown during the industrial revolution when employers found out they could earn much higher profits by having people work longer hours due to the new technology. My point is that we can sacrifice some material excess and live happier by fighting for shorter hours, higher pay, and more flexibility
Huge shout out to the podcast "nothing much happens" where she tells lovely bedtime stories for grown-ups that give your brain something to focus on and stop you from sitting and dwelling in doom/anxiety.
naps are underrated - a lot of the time when I have more chill days I find myself struggling to keep my eyes open in the afternoon so I started to just let myself sleep for 10-15mins and it makes a huge difference. Also the walking outside thing, really gives you an emotional and energetic boost.
How the heck do you stay asleep for only 10-15 minutes? If I go to "take a nap" I basically have to accept the sacrifice of my afternoon and my bedtime that night.
@@peeblekitty5780 i'm a very, very light sleeper so my body is like 'huh there are daytime noises around you shouldn't be sleeping!', also sometimes set a 20min alarm if I know I'll be completely out of it
@@peeblekitty5780it's really annoying. Happens to me quite often. After sleeping at 3 pm and when the alarm hits at 4 I will be like, it's so comfy let's do a small round again and waking up at 6 sacrificing my night
I used to have an old wind up alarm clock. Pro: The heart attack it gives you in the morning will immediately wake you up. Con: It will also wake up everyone in your household, as well as your neighbours.
Immediately wake me up on auto-pilot with a clear mission: turn it off. I proceed to do it with a machine-like efficiency (even if it's on another room or has some kind of implement my naive past-day self thought could deter my zombie-self) and then focus on my secondary mission: getting back to bed, which I also succeed with flying colors most of the time. I end up waking up late and confused, wondering why my alarm-clock never rang.
Having anxiety is my biggest issue with sleeping. I need a distraction so desperately because if I dont have it my mind wanders to all of my current problems, regrets and trauma memories too. I get woken up from how awful it makes me feel. So I really need a youtube video or something playing to distract my mind to help me fall asleep.
I'm not sure how it will work for you, but for my whole life it always took me from 40 mintues to 2 h to fall asleep every night. My main problem was that my brain kept working, analyzing, imaging instead of slowing down when I tried to rest. So I had to find something to keep my mind busy and getting it relaxed at the same time. Podcasts, audiobooks, music - it worked from time to time, sometimes better, sometimes worse, but they didin't reach the core of the problem, sometimes i got stucked in the plot of the book, or music didn't fit my mental state. Guided meditations - yoga nidra especially - was my life changer. (Ally Boothroyd works best for me ) It lets you do "tasks" for your brain, gets you to full body relaxation, keeps you from wandering around with your toughts at the same time. No pressure, just worth trying :) Have a good sleep ^^
I was very nervous clicking on this video, fearing I was gonna be told off for my sleep hygiene. But what Vanessa said, especially that it's ok to watch a RU-vid video to wind down (that's what I do) rather than be given a generic Phone Bad And You Should Feed Bad was super comforting! It's amazing how so much of health-related communication is all about shame, rather than finding a system that works for an individual and letting them use that system
