Insomnia Cure with 80%+ Success Rate for Me

[ItDontMeanAThing]

When I try to sleep too much thinking leads to insomnia. Also prevents falling back to sleep in the morning. Been like that most of my life. Some comedian on a podcast talking about life on the road mentioned what works for him. Started using it 3 months and it works for me.

The technique is simple. When a persistent thought, that is one that lasts for more than a few seconds, appears I convert from thinking about it in words to using visual images. Soon the though fades away. I have no idea how I do the conversion, but it was easy the first time I tried it and most times since then.

 

[Lancelot]

How did you first think to replace thoughts to images?

Opps! I see now

 

[a]

Pretty amazing. So it's been working for three months? How many more hours of sleep a night do you get, on average, with this technique?

 

[ItDontMeanAThing]

Pretty amazing. So it's been working for three months? How many more hours of sleep a night do you get, on average, with this technique?

Can't say because I got rid of a bedside clock when I RE. Feels longer because I have fewer fuzzy-headed days or desperate urges to nap in the afternoon. I do know that it is now routine to be able to go back to sleep after waking in the morning.

 

[TromboneAl]

I'll try that. What I do, if I'm thinking too much, is concentrate on how comfortable the bed is, or, for example how my left elbow feels. Also deep breathing, and muscle relaxation helps.

For the first half of this year, I was sleeping great. I'd fall asleep right away, and not wake up until morning, feeling refreshed.

Then a month or two ago I started getting into a pattern of waking up around 4 AM, and struggling to get back to sleep. The full pattern was: feel drowsy around 8 PM, barely staying awake while watching TV, go to bed at 9:30, wake up once or twice in the night, and then waken at 4:30.

I attacked it by eliminating all naps, and having plenty of light on until bed time. If I feel drowsy in the evening, I get up and walk around. I very quickly got back to the desired pattern.

Check out these:

Sleep Disorders - Circadian Rhythms and Light Therapy

Amazon.com: The Insomnia Answer: A Personalized Program for Identifying and Overcoming the Three Types ofInsomnia (9780399532979): Paul Glovinsky, Art Spielman: Books

 

[braumeister]

That's interesting, because I have a somewhat similar experience.
When I have trouble getting to sleep (which isn't very often), my foolproof solution is to think about something physically complex. It might be a new piece of equipment I want to build for one of my hobbies, or maybe a modification to something around the house, or even just a theoretical machine that might be built.

Trying to come up with an optimal design for whatever it is (thinking visually) works every time. It takes no more than a couple of minutes of this and the next thing I know, it's morning.

 

[a]

I'm currently trying the Spielman technique (sleep restriction), and it is helping, but I'm still tired all day because I'm currently on a very restricted window (6 hrs.). But I'm afraid to bump up the size because last time I did I started getting insomnia again.

If this thought conversion technique helps, it'd be an effective side-trick to use with sleep restriction.

I have been waking up early too from time to time in my restricted window - even when I was exhausted all day!

 

[W2R]

Cutting back on caffeine, especially caffeine after noon, seems to work pretty well for me. But sometimes that diet Coke or coffee is worth a little insomnia, and caffeine always seems to creep back into my routine.

 

[GregLee]

I'll try that disengaging-the-left-brain technique. Last night I tried something more traditional: a neighborhood Jehovah's Witness insisted a few days ago on lending me a book that supposedly proves the existence of God, and I started reading that. Not a bad book, but it did put me right to sleep.

 

[haha]

I attacked it by eliminating all naps, and having plenty of light on until bed time. If I feel drowsy in the evening, I get up and walk around. I very quickly got back to the desired pattern.

Check out these:

Sleep Disorders - Circadian Rhythms and Light Therapy

Amazon.com: The Insomnia Answer: A Personalized Program for Identifying and Overcoming the Three Types ofInsomnia (9780399532979): Paul Glovinsky, Art Spielman: Books

Thanks for posting this. This is my pattern also, after sleeping well most of my life. Mostly I just read classics on my Kindle when I wake up at 3 or 4, and then go back to sleep after 1-11/2 hours, but I would prefer aother solution.

Ha

 

[a]

Reading works well for speeding me to tiredness too, but rooting out the root cause is better I think, to avoid building the habit of being awake at 3 in the morning.

Being on a diet for a while, I got in the habit of waking up hungry and getting a snack. My brain adopted this as a habit frighteningly quickly and powerfully.

 

[Tiger]

When I can't fall asleep I play computer solitare. Sometimes it may take an hour but eventually my eyes start to cross and I go to bed and to sleep. Another trick that I have is to put on a boring news show turn the sound down to where I can just about hear it and I seem to fall asleep quickly.

 

[Mulligan]

When I can't fall asleep I play computer solitare. Sometimes it may take an hour but eventually my eyes start to cross and I go to bed and to sleep. Another trick that I have is to put on a boring news show turn the sound down to where I can just about hear it and I seem to fall asleep quickly.

That's exactly what I do. The key is boring like you said. I also set the timer on so tv goes off in 45 min. If I forget to use the timer the tv noise will actually wake me up. Anyone turn their tv on in their bedroom after waking up and thinking how loud it is? It seems like I slowly become deaf during the day and my hearing becomes very sensitive in the morning to noise.

 

[TromboneAl]

The technique is simple. When a persistent thought, that is one that lasts for more than a few seconds, appears I convert from thinking about it in words to using visual images.

Can you give an example? Let's say I'm thinking "OMG, I'm going to lose all my money in the stock market, and have to go back to work!" Do I then picture some distraught traders? A chart of the market?

 

[haha]

Can you give an example? Let's say I'm thinking "OMG, I'm going to lose all my money in the stock market, and have to go back to work!" Do I then picture some distraught traders? A chart of the market?

Guys jumping out windows.

 

[powerplay]

Guys jumping out windows.

Yeah, that visual would do it for me and I'd be fast asleep.

 

[tmm99]

My sleep aid is this..
http://www.amazon.com/Theta-Meditat...sr_1_2?s=dmusic&ie=UTF8&qid=1314995531&sr=1-2
Theta Meditation System - It's a CD - I like the CD called Renewal and the 2nd song I think (I don't like the other one because it sounds kind of sad.)

The song I like starts out like something out of 2001: A Space Oddyssey and changes to a music (with flute) that the hobbits might enjoy listening to (or dancing to) and then goes back and forth between the space type of music and light flute music.

This music was supposedly made as an attempt to put the listerner in Theta brain wave. They actually have Delta wave CD's (which we get into when we are having sleepless dreams) specifically made, I think, as a sleep aid, but I don't have them.

I don't know if any of you are meditators (I used to mediate, but I haven't in any formal way for years), but this CD gets you in that trace like meditative state without any effort. This music makes my mind - brain - numb, so to speak, and really really relaxed. If you are having a hard time sleeping because your mind is racing or you keep on thinking about stuff that is preventing you to fall asleep, this CD may do the trick for you. It probably won't work if you took a long nap in the afternoon, though, but I don't know.

This isn't relating to sleep at all, but a few years ago, a friend of mine dragged me to this drumming thing where everyone sat around this room with eyes closed while this woman beat on this hand held drum (I'm sure there is a name for this type of drum, but I cannot even remember what the drum looked like at this point.) and I remember it didn't even take me one minute to get into this trace like meditative zone (and I wasn't even trying to - it's all the affect of this repetitive sound/vibration that caused me to get into this state). (Just so you know, it takes some or a lot - of practice to be able to get to this state on your own without external stimuli.) This CD music does the same thing as the drum beating did (although it takes longer to get to the brain numbing zone), and this zone is very sleep friendly.

 

[TromboneAl]

I'm listening to the sample tracks now. I think you could just record them and put them in a ... into a .... .

 

[ItDontMeanAThing]

Can you give an example? Let's say I'm thinking "OMG, I'm going to lose all my money in the stock market, and have to go back to work!" Do I then picture some distraught traders? A chart of the market?

When I can't convert from thinking in words to thinking in pictures the method doesn't work, and I can't give you examples. When it works I fall asleep quickly. Next morning I can't remember what I was thinking about, let alone how I converted it into pictures. So again, no examples. Sorry.

 

[TromboneAl]

How about a hypothetical example?

 

[lizh]

When I can't sleep I listen to podcasts or books on tape on my ipod. I just use one earplug and have the sound down really low.

At one point, I purchased a little pillow that has speakers in it so I didn't have to use the earplug but I like the earplug better.

Something about "spoken word" puts me right to sleep and if it doesn't, I figure I can learn something.

If you are bored, check out the selection of podcasts in iTunes ...the variety of subjects is amazing! ..something for everyone and they are practically all free.
Liz

 

[ItDontMeanAThing]

How about a hypothetical example?

Would you settle for a real example? ;-)

This morning I rolled over to go back to sleep. Started thinking about the checklist I'd made last night for todays elephant polo photo shoot. I was thinking in words 'Gotta have a hat, sunscreen, sunglasses' then caught myself and switched to images. Then I thought about what those images were and this thread. Let that go and imagined myself in the sun wearing hat, sunglasses and holding sunscreen. Imagined my legs with cargo shorts and sandals. Looked at the right cargo pocket and saw my camera bulge ... That's as far as I can remember.

To emphasize the process I'll quote Yoda: "Do or do not ... there is no try. The only conscious part (i.e., the the 'try') of my shift from thinking in words to thinking in images is to stop the words and generate the first 1 - 3 images. For me, at that point the images continue to generate on their own and sleep soon follows, or my mind is filled with thinking about being unable to generate images and sleep eludes me.

 

[TromboneAl]

OK, thanks. Perhaps my problem is that I always seem to think in pictures. If I worry that our upcoming camping trip in Nevada/Utah will be too hot, I have a clear picture of setting up the tent in 100 degree heat and no shade.

 

[W2R]

Perhaps my problem is that I always seem to think in pictures.

Me too, Al. It was very helpful in engineering school.

 

[SteveR]

I have had chronic insomnia since I was in my early teens. The family MD put me on Secobarbatol (sleeping pill) when I was 14 or so. It did nothing other than make my drowsy all day so they stopped it. Since then I have been through every sleep aid you can think of...my current one is Lunesta 3mg. which helps me fall asleep most nights. I usually try to go to sleep around midnight but am awake again around 3 AM and then only doze until I get up at 7 ish. I don't every nap...never have. I do have sleep apnea and have used a CPAP full mask for several years. I also went to sleep counseling for almost a year and after going through all the Doc's suggestions, reading several books on the subject and even moving to a different room from my wife for a while...nothing worked and she fired me.

It seems my mother has a similar issue so it may be genetic. My brother sleeps like a rock and takes naps frequently. Most of my life has been functioning on 4-5 hours of sleep per night...the rest is lying there resting.

One key from the books etc. is don't fight it. If you are not sleepy trying to make yourself sleep only makes matters worse. Get up and do something boring...don't stimulate your mind (or anything else) so your brain does not get revved up. Don't expect your brain to shut down if you try to make it work. One thing I have found somewhat useful is to do what Braeumiester suggests with visual images of ideas rather than words. I used to "see" the digit 1 in various changing colors on a hazy black background. I tried to focus only on that and push out any other thoughts. Sounds sort of Zen but it does on occasion help me calm down and even fall asleep sometimes.

I guess my mind just does not want to miss anything so it keeps me wake for entertainment.