Sleeping Problems
Is this you? You get in bed, toss and turn, rearrange your pillow, look at the clock and do math in your head, trying to determine how many hours you have if you fall asleep right now. I would look at my husband and feel so jealous that he could fall asleep before his head even hit the pillow. I hated this! This was my every night.
My sleeping problems lasted for almost 2 years and it literally made me feel like s#*t every day. By the time morning came around, I felt like I had a brick on my head and that feeling stayed with me all day long.
When you have chronic loss of sleep like me, it has a tremendous impact on you, your family, and your ability to really enjoy your day. So after two years of being on ambien, which by the way, you should never be on this sleeping pill for this long, I decided to finally get some help.
Step one, was to see a sleep psychologist. I spent over two hours with him giving him every detail of my nightly routine. I then had to keep a sleep journal for one week. After I returned for my second visit, he read my journal, and had a plan for me. I went from never sleeping on my own, to finally being able to fall asleep by myself, no ambien, in about 5 days, no joke. It was amazing!
So, I wanted to share with you a few of the things that I learned. Just keep in mind, these worked for me, and if you have a chronic problem like I did, you should think about seeing a doctor too.
Here is what I learned…..
*If you feel like you are tired, lets say around 10pm, then you need to make that your nightly routine and get in bed at the same time, every night.
*DO NOT have a TV in your bedroom. This was a big mistake that I was making. I would climb into bed every night and watch TV into the wee hours of the night. Did you know that when you try to fall asleep with the TV on, your brain has a hard time shutting down.
*If you get into bed, and do not fall asleep within 15 minutes, get out of bed. I hated this the first few nights of trying this because it was annoying and exhausting. The reason you want to do this is because you want to train your brain that bed is for sleep, and not for just resting. Sounds silly right? But this works. My Dr. told me to do something low key, like read a book or watch TV, then get back in bed if I felt I could fall asleep.
*Turn your clock around so you can’t see it. I was very guilty of looking at the clock over and over again, doing my math equations, trying to figure out how much sleep I was loosing.
*Don’t take naps. I have heard others say that this shouldn’t be an issue, but for me, I was laying in bed during the day, using it as a place to relax. Wrong thing to do! So I now go on the couch to take a little break.
*This one is key…. Workout! When I started to workout regularly, my sleeping greatly improved. I would workout in the mornings, and I feel like I was getting better quality of sleep.(My workout were also so much better after I sleeping regularly too.)
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