I often have to remind myself
that even if you're rightfully stressed
about a lot of things going on in the world,
you're gonna be a lot more helpful
if you get some sleep,
so put your damn head on the pillow
That's what I tell myself at 4am
I'm Daniel Howell
and welcome to Forever Scrolling,
an Attitude series about mental health, social media
and getting through the night
where every week you will hear stories from me
and other LGBTQ creators
This week, we are talking about getting through the night
Getting through the night
when you're feeling your worst can suck
But do not worry, you are not alone
Insomnia to me feels like so much pressure
Sometimes I actually found myself just awake
till like 3 am,
even though I've been in bed since 10, ready to sleep
And then I'll just be mindlessly scrolling on my phone
Like you drank a really strong cup of coffee
right before bed,
and now every thought you've ever had
has come back to say hello
I'm the kind of person
that like fixates on one bad thing that happened in the day
and then thinks about it for about 16 hours
So I'll be awake at 3am going,
I went to shake that person's hand,
and then I spilled a drink on them
And is that something
that's worth literally losing my entire sleep over?
No, but hey, that's the kind of important stuff
that my brain thinks of at 3am
There's a lot of things
that keep me up at night personally
I have anxiety induced insomnia,
so, I struggle a lot with all sorts of things
when it comes to trying to sleep at night
I'm the sort of person who's like
playing a conversation 500 times in my head
as I try to fall asleep but I'm like,
God, Bradley, that was such a stupid thing to say,
and then I'm just there unable to sleep,
and it's great
A lot of my insomnia actually comes around the anxiety
that I won't get enough sleep to perform well
in whatever I'm doing the next day
And sometimes I'm not doing anything the next day,
but as I'm trying to fall asleep, I tell myself,
you're not gonna get enough sleep,
and you're gonna be miserable,
and then I can't sleep
because I'm so stressed about getting enough sleep
If I'm awake in the middle of the night,
usually I'm fixated on one thing,
and I'm just panicking about it in circles for half an hour
So I usually just go,
what's the worst case scenario?
And then I go, oh, it doesn't really matter that much,
guess I'll just go to bed now
I think what keeps me up at night
is worrying about what's coming in the future,
and if I'm actually progressing
how someone should at my age
I think we always compare ourselves
to other people in our society
We have Instagram, we have Twitter,
we have all these things
and we see people doing this,
buying houses, getting married, having kids.
And for me that scares the crap out of me
I don't know where I wanna be in my life,
and I don't know what I'm doing right now
is what I wanna be doing in the future
or if it'll still make me happy in the future
And the biggest thought what affected me in the past
is my sexuality
I am a bisexual male and for a long time
I was worried about what people would think of it
and how society will react to it,
and I was so scared because of the horror stories
that you hear about online,
that that literally scared everything that I did,
I didn't wanna act like I was different
because I didn't want people knowing that I was different
So through my whole life,
I've always struggled with insomnia,
and the two things which have always helped me is one,
making sure that I exercise
and be a bit more physical,
try and work my body into physical exhaustion
because I noticed I struggled a lot more sleeping
when I used to sit at a computer all day
or I didn't really go out and do much,
and you have to kind of work your body down
till it feels like it needs some rest
I actually have insomnia
so I don't sleep very well at night
I mean, I have always had trouble sleeping
because my brain is just overactive,
and I tend to think very quickly
And it's great for helping me lip read, I'm deaf,
because I can run through
all of the possible combinations of words
incredibly quickly
But it is awful at 3 am in the morning
The uncomfortable truth that I never like to accept
is that if you do a bit of exercise during the day,
you're probably gonna sleep a lot better,
whereas if you have a pizza at 12 o'clock,
then those calories gonna keep you up at night
These are the hard truths
that I have to confront every single day
Most smartphones have a setting
where you can adjust your phone's light temperature
Blue light will keep you awake,
but warm light personally doesn't really affect me,
and so, sometimes I just read
Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan fiction
for hours until my brain is finally defeated
Honestly, for me the best piece of advice
I ever got about sleeping
is being really cold
And I never believed a friend of mine
who was like, look if you are really hot and sweaty
you're just going to roll around
thinking it is acceptable
but if you open that window
and you're freezing to death
you can just become this like burrito of warmth
and then you'll just ceate your own little cocoon
and fall asleep
So, try to make your room
below freezing and then you'll sleep really well
One of the things that I've started to do
is listen to,
I think it's like sounds of nature on Spotify
There's loads of like playlists of like rain,
nature, rainforest, countryside, all that kind of stuff,
all that kind of really natural sounds
that you get from just being outside,
outside of the hustle and bustle
Sometimes I've listened to those, they seem to help
Sometimes I've listened to somebody's voice
which is quite monotone
So, there's this really interesting YouTube channel
which talks about like,
past criminal cases that have been solved
Have it on my phone next to my head,
and the person's voice is usually quite monotone
So I'll just listen to that and usually,
on the times where I'm not super wired, that helps,
and that helps me get to sleep eventually
So some of the things that I do during the day
to help me sleep at night is I wake up early
Like I know if I wake up at eight, nine o'clock,
even if I'm not really doing something,
my body is getting used to being up that early
So it's gonna be when nine, 10 o'clock come,
she go like, "Okay Justin, it's time to go to bed,
girl, like it's, we getting tired,
and we need to rest"
So even if I'm not going to sleep, I'm in the bed
and I'm getting to that relaxing point of,
oh girl, it's time to go to bed
Sometimes you might feel tempted to get out of bed
and go make yourself a slice of toast
and hey, that might work for some people,
but honestly, just closing your eyes
and lying still can give you rest
And even if you don't manage
to successfully get a night of sleep,
if you don't just get up at 3am
and just watch an entire season of The Simpsons,
I promise you'll feel better
So, close your eyes, think positive thoughts
and you'll feel better in six hours
Often at night is when your mental health
can feel at its lowest
because the world kind of falls away
and then you're just left alone with the thoughts
that you've been pushing into the back of your mind,
but the one thing I'd say is,
you always feel better in the morning
If you're ever laying awake in the darkness
thinking everything is really bad,
honestly, sometimes you get a good night's sleep
and you'll have a totally different outlook in the morning
So, it's the toughest time to get through,
but if you do, I promise you'll feel better
Thanks for watching this Attitude video
with me Daniel Howell
and remember you will get through this night,
you are gonna be okay
Leave a comment down below sharing your stories
if you're happy to do so
and give us a like if you enjoyed it,
and if you are interested in laughing at my pain
and me going bit too deep into the dark hole
of my own sorry state
and learning some stuff about mental health,
you can pre-order my book, You Will Get Through This Night
So thank you very much to Attitude,
and thank you for watching, bye