Land of the Sleepless

I have a bit of a problem with insomnia. For the past week I've had trouble getting any sleep at all at night and then yesterday I spent 16 hours in bed and slept for much of that, a new record for me. I've always had trouble sleeping even since I was a little kid. The sleeping tablets my parents made me take when I was young may have made it worse. They made me sleepy all the time so I had to become good at automatically fighting sleepiness. I've even considered that my problem is that I might actually need less sleep than I think I do and so might find life easier if I don't have so much of it.

I know there are several things I can do to help prevent insomnia: Avoid stimulants. Have a regular set time to go to sleep and to wake up and stick to it. Learn to relax more. Make sure that I eat food that will slowly digest at night so I won't end up feeling hungry in bed. Possibly expose myself to sunlight when I wake up to try to set my biological clock.

I know these things but so far I have had a bad habit of not doing them. So I'll have to change my bad habits. To do this I'll just need to have a little talk to myself. Everyday. For example, often I'll buy a caffinated drink without thinking about the conseqences it might have on my sleep that night, but if I spend five minutes of everyday forcefully reminding myself of those conseqences then I'm going to think twice when I reach for that Pepsi Max. I won't be able to get away with buying it as an automatic process anymore. I'll bust up that bad habit of mine.

I'll let you know how my struggle to stop struggling when it comes to getting to sleep goes in the hope that it might help other insomniacs out there. Wish me luck.