[manicdepressive07]

I'm just curious if anyone else suffers with insomnia and was wondering what you do to get through it?

I've been kind of depressed lately and spend the majority of my time sleeping during the day (which I know doesn't help), but once I "want" to go to sleep... I find it very hard. I take .5mg klonopin to help me fall asleep (which works wonders) but I don't want to become dependent on it. For the last week and a half I've had to take it every night, otherwise I'll literally stay up until 4-6am.

Just wondering if there's anything I can do "naturally" to make it easier to fall asleep at night.

Thanks!

[Nessa213]

Me and sleep have a very bad relationship with each other. But it goes on and off so its never been constanty bad. Ever since I was a kid, really. Over the years there's a couple of things I've done to cope:

I get very intense voices at night. Always have. And I used to try to shut them off. But the effort of trying to control something I couldn't was just frustrating and actually kept me awake MORE. So eventually I learned to just "let them talk". And it helped quite a bit actually. It kind of made a soundtrack to fall asleep to, and every once in a while I can hear something good. Not sure if you experience that as well, but thought I'd mention it.

I've worn earplugs to bed and that helps if your trying to block out ALL ambient noise as I sometimes find it distracting. However, this DOES tend to make the voices from the previous example much worse.

I've most recently downloaded an app that plays rain, waterfall, ocean sounds things like that and it REALLY helps. But I find it doesn't help keep me from waking up in the middle of the night.

In severe cases I've taken nyquil. But my go to was tylpnol PM. (pdoc recently prescribed Trazodone but I haven't tried it yet.)

If you can, try to force yourself to stay away during the day or at least from 1 or 2 in the afternoon until bedtime. This might help also.

[A Red Panda]

Sleep is for the weak! LOL. I tend to say that to myself to make myself laugh when sleep and I aren't getting along.

Which is frequently. I go through all sorts of different sleep cycles.

- not being able to fall asleep
- not STAYING asleep and having constant wake-ups
- waking up mega early
- vivid dreams/nightmares
- sleeping and waking up feeling like I hadn't slept a wink

Sometimes those may join up with each other (currently I'm getting to deal with not falling asleep, waking up frequently, waking up mega early, AND lots of vivid dreams! What luck...). Sometimes the bad sleep is joined with loads of energy (yay ups...) and sometimes I will be exhausted no matter how much or little sleep I get (booo downs).

I try to keep a strict sleep routine - go to bed at the same time, read for a bit. no eating or drinking before hand as I get fidgety and think I need to use the washroom constantly. when I wake up NO GETTING OUT OF BED... have to wait for the alarm. If I wake up in the midle of the night I MUST attempt to lay there with my eyes closed. If nothing else... this lets me rest a bit even if it's not actual sleep. Unfortunately during my ups... I'm likely to just hop on out of bed and get doing something.

Also, my bedroom I stay out of except for when I am getting changed, doing my hair, putting away laundry, sleeping, or having sex. I do not lay in my bed to read unless it's right before I plan to go to sleep.

[middlepath]

to add to the suggestions already...(just started this a month ago so no long-term results available) this has been effective so far: i do a 1,2,3 meditation where I breath in for three slow seconds and breathe out for three slow seconds. This has helped me go to sleep and it has also helped when I wake up at 2am and have trouble just mindlessly getting back to sleep. I just focus on breathing : ). Also, I NEVER let myself sleep during the day unless i am in the worst part of my depressive phases. Otherwise, it wrecks my sleep for days.

[A Red Panda]

Oh!

There's been a few times where I've actually counted myself to sleep. I can tell when I'm getting tired with it because I'll start doing things like forgetting what number I'd just thought, or all of a sudden counting by twos or threes, or start counting backwards... yeah. Unfortunately that can potentially cause me to crack up laughing at my inability to do the most basic of math... but eventually it will knock me out.

[catsrhelm]

Try taking a suppliment call melatonin. It works wonders for regulating the sleep/wake cycle.

[EternalWinter]

When I would only sleep during the day, or very late at night. I would just stay up all night/day until the next night and going to sleep is much easier then.

Other nights when I just want to sleep a little earleir I take Valerian extract with melatonin. Or a big chamomile/lavender tea.

[wotchermuggle]

I take sleeping pills and take my full dose of Seroquel at bedtime. No napping during the day and getting out for exercise (even just a walk) helps.