struggling to sleep

[Larry]

I have always had a hard time sleeping.  It takes so long to fall asleep,  then i wake up between 2 and 3 am every night.  I usually fall asleep again around  6 am.  then the alarm goes off at 7.  I like to sleep with 2 heavy blankets,  gets hot but i can not sleep with anything less.  I sometimes moan very loud and kick my legs violently when sleeping.  If i drink alot,  i go to sleep faster,  but still wake up in the middle of the night,  and the moaning and leg kicking is worse.  I really do not want to take meds,  but i might have to try something. 

[Armee]

Drinking always makes it very difficult for me to sleep with that exact same pattern and it is terrible. Fall asleep easy wake up at 2 or 3 and then fall back asleep essentially when it is time to get up. It's awful. 

If you haven't tried it yet give a weighted blanket a try. It is heavy like having a bunch of blankets on, would help with the thrashing, but it is not overly hot. Life saver for me and insomnia.

[Larry]

thank you,  i have been looking at weighted blankets.   i want to find one that does not have any un natural fibers or filler stuff. 

[Armee]

Here's the one i use...might fit the bill.

https://gnowellbeing.com/

[Larry]

thank you !  i see it comes in 15, 17 and 20 pounds,  which weight do you have ?

[Armee]

I think it is 15. Spread across the bed it feels light but lifting it or pulling it up is very heavy so if you have any joint or muscle issues maybe go as light as you can.  If you don't maybe try 17 for a happy medium.

[Bach]

I have found meditations from the Tapping Solution app to be very helpful for sleeping.

https://www.thetappingsolutionapp.com/

[Blueberry]

I have always had a hard time sleeping.  It takes so long to fall asleep,  then i wake up between 2 and 3 am every night.  I usually fall asleep again around  6 am.  then the alarm goes off at 7.

I went through a long phase of waking up in the middle of the night (3-ish) and being wide awake and then finally falling asleep an hour before the alarm. What I started doing was getting up at 3-ish and doing an hour or two of light physical and quiet work e.g. tidying, folding clean laundry, dusting. If there weren't thin walls in our building I might have washed the dishes too. Doing that helps me feel sleepy again and when I feel that, I then go back to bed and fall asleep earlier than I would have done just lying in bed.

According to some experts, sleeping right through the night is just what we expect of ourselves, but is not actually what happened for thousands of years (they suppose) so a rather recent phenomenon. Whether true or not, this idea helps me. Acceptance of current circumstances (as hard as that may be) can be helpful, as opposed to fighting against. Depends what the circumstances are obviously, but you can't set your sleeplessness a boundary

Before waking up at 3-ish started I developed problems falling asleep. It's better now, but for a good few years as soon as I turned the light off, I was wide awake and I mean wide awake, raring to go. I could only fall asleep with the light on, sometimes reading, sometimes not! Totally against my environmental concerns, but I decided my own psychological health took priority.

[Dante]

I also have trouble sleeping through the night, and for awhile now have been relying on sleeping pills.  I'm trying to break the cycle of that, but I'm trying to find a balance where I can use it if I need to but only when I need to (I'm kind of black or white, either I'm not doing it or I'm doing it - balance is a place I'm working).  Like Armee said, I do have an extra blanket that's kind of warm, so I don't use it often, but it adds the weight that helps me sleep.  And the one positive with the sleeping pills is that I don't drink that day, so it has in a strange way helped me cut down on my drinking somewhat).

I know not sleeping is a huge trigger for me for everything else, so I hope you find a solution that helps you!

[Larry]

thank you guys !