Insomnia - suggestions please

[josiejo]

Could you all please make suggestions about how to get a good nights sleep naturally. Doesn't matter what you've tried or how you manage it I'm interested in your suggestions

[pinkdove]

when i could'nt sleep i was lucky enough to be given a relaxation cd, which did help to calm me down, also listening to some soothing music helped.

[josiejo]

Music makes me hear the tune over and over again in my head all night so I avoid listening to anything before bed. I can't find the off button. Thanks for your suggestion though

[josiejo]

Not a wink last night. Tight chest, anxiety running riot and now a full day at work.

[simple44]

Pay attention to your breathing, the up and down of your abdomen.
Count each breath 1 to 10, then back to 1 ....
The breath counting will calm you down a lot.
Good luck

[NeedSleep]

I suffered from really bad insomnia and was on sleep medication for a couple of years. This year though I've had a major breakthrough and managed to get myself completely off the sleep pills, I can't tell you how much this has helped my general feeling and mood!

The way I went about it is I was incredibly strict about when I went to bed and got up. No matter how much sleep I'd got the night before I made sure to always get up at the same time, even if I'd barely slept. Then made sure I didn't go back to bed during the day, as tempting as it was.

I started by going to bed late and getting up early, then gradually worked the bed times back to more normal times. These days I'm in bed about 12:30am and up at 8:30 am and I sleep well most nights. This is a massive improvement from when I was barely sleeping,

I had to be so strict at first though and it meant weeks of feeling utterly knackered a lot of the time. It was definitely short time term pain for long term gain though.