so i've always considered myself a really good sleeper as in like i sleep like eight to nine
plus hours every single day in my entire life never pulled an all-nighter in college
never pulled an online or in high school and then suddenly there was like a period of time in which
i just suddenly got really severe insomnia and then for two weeks straight i slept maybe
an hour to like a few hours every night and i turned into a zombie of a person and when
you're in that situation you will understand how desperate you get um and so i wanted to make this
fairly comprehensive list as a resource of all of things you can possibly try and then also the
thing like talk a little bit about what actually did and did not work in terms of helping me
be able to get back onto a healthy sleep routine so after searching up many late nights like what
are all the possible things that you can do to help improve your sleep i have compiled what is
hopefully the ultimate list going from cheapest to most expensive solution okay so in terms of
like beginning to end first solution having a routine where you are not on your phone or
not thinking about work for at least an hour before bed is super important and very useful
um something i tried was switching beds which actually was somewhat useful i think the reason
why switching beds can help somewhat um is because when you cannot sleep in your bed you have all
this psychological stress about and anxiety around the fact that you can't sleep and so
if you change an environment and hopefully you can move remove some of that anxiety that will
actually help you go to sleep so i would just like sleep on the couch sometimes next we have
drinking chamomile tea um i think this is actually mostly useful useful insofar as it's part of your
bedtime routine and it just you know as you drink chamomile tea it essentially triggers your body
to want to go to sleep but if it's not part of your routine then drinking chamomile tea by itself
will not necessarily save you but it is kind of calming and nice taking a bath also similarly
if it's part of your routine can be really useful some of the nice qualities of a bath is obviously
that it's relaxing but it's also relaxing for like a long period of time and so if while you're in
the bath for 30 minutes you don't use your phone that is one of the ways you can just start resting
your mind and getting your body ready to fall asleep earplugs if you are sensitive to noise
or you're living in a really noisy environment wearing earplugs can totally save the day however
you'll notice that um when you wear earplugs sometimes you can like hear your heartbeat or you
can really hear your thoughts so if anxiety is the core issue in your head then earplugs aren't going
to save the day but if you're less anxious because you can hear less noise then it's awesome wearing
an eye mask can be super useful for your sleep because you may be really sensitive to light in
fact most people are really sensitive to light if you read books on sleep they've done experiments
where like if you have a little bit of green light that shines onto like the back of your thigh
something you don't even think about it hurts the quality of your sleep and so getting as dark of
a room and as quiet of a room and a cool room to sleep in is actually super useful for good sleep
sql um i'm happy as equal exists but it is definitely sort of a last resort you're pretty
desperate when you're taking sleeping pills sort of thing uh there's some not great qualities to it
right so it has side effects often you wake up feeling groggy for me actually the worst thing
about sequel is that every time i've tried to use it i've been really really desperate to sleep
and because i'm in that state of desperation it works like 50 of the time so sometimes it knocks
me out but sometimes i'm just so anxious even with the sequel i can't fall asleep and that just makes
me feel so bad so as a whole we're getting towards the end of like try to avoid it if you can but it
is an option that's over the counter if you need it so headspace is an app that is for meditation
but also has a sleeping section it's 70 a year or 13 a month i've tried to use the meditation
many times i actually don't love it for a lot of reasons but in terms of the sleep cast they're
awesome there are these 45 minutes um essentially like stories are kind of like a lullaby there are
a lot of them they add new ones frequently what's cool is the story changes every time so your brain
can't keep track of the time which is very useful you can change how much ambience there's there
is versus how much of the storytelling you can actually hear um and so it's very customizable
and also you can just keep playing like hours and hours worth of sleep cast if you are having
a hard time falling asleep uh so overall i would actually recommend getting headspace if you can
afford it just for the sleeping feature or a similar sleep story time thing like that
in terms of melatonin i just personally am trying not to get like reliant or addicted not
addicted but reliant on you know drugs that people produce and stuff and also there are some studies
that show or some things that i've read about how melatonin can be bad for you if you get reliant on
it also i do have friends that have definitely become reliant on melatonin to the point where
they have to keep increasing the dose in order to feel the same effect so for myself what i do is
one i buy melatonin that's in one milligram pills and so that's pretty much as small of an amount
as you can get and then i will randomly take it zero one two or sometimes three milligrams a night
and so most nights i take zero everyone smiles i take one sometimes i take two et cetera and i
think that randomness helps me at least feel like i'm not reliant on them so a cortisol manager
is actually a pretty common part of holistic medicine or holistic approach to sleeping better
from what i understand it's like a flower that's part of a lot of eastern medicine
a lot of cultures have known about this you can get it at like herbal shops or online and i found
that it's actually fairly useful for reducing your stress the issues if you have too much cortisol
in your body because you are too stressed you will have a really hard time sleeping but similar to
melatonin i don't want to become reliant on it and so i take zero to one a night if i feel like
i really want it and then i just do it for half an hour before i go to bed a weighted blanket um
is something that a lot of people have suggested i tried it and it doesn't really work for me but i
think it can be comforting for a lot of people so test out if you've gotten to this far on this list
blackout shades if you are sensitive to light which again everybody is then combining blackout
shades plus an eye mask is great because you do want as dark of a room as possible um what's i
think a little bit nice about uh an eye mask compared to blackout shades is that the weight
on your eyes i think is actually very comforting as well going to a hotel so obviously this is
a very extreme and also quite expensive very expensive thing to try but what's nice about it is
hotels have very controlled environments so you can go to a hotel where it's very dark very quiet
et cetera and then you can figure out sort of what is the root cause of your problem is it because
you're an environment that's loud and dirty and whatever or do you have some underlying issues i'm
not gonna lie you would probably do around stress and anxiety that's causing your sleep but it's
just good to have it's good it's good if you can to kind of run away to a controlled environment um
if you're in that desperate state and you're just trying to figure out what's going on
finally there's an app called bloom which does cbt therapy or little doses of cbt therapy
and they have a sleep section that i found actually really useful
um so they do have a sleep program it is i assume cheaper than if you were to go to like actual
sleep therapy and what's also nice is they have tons of programming that's about 10 minutes a day
or 10 minutes and if you do 10 minutes a day of it then you're taking a little dose of
this therapy which i think is actually a very great wind down for falling asleep
so some things i did not try but i know have worked for other people is one
having a white noise machine um similar idea if you can't get to be completely quiet then
try and use white noise to distract from the distracting noises around you that's
definitely an option the other is actually going to real sleep therapy or like going in person
and spending weeks at a facility or spending days or hours at a facility getting treated
um i just didn't luckily need to get to that point plus you always have to wait like a couple
weeks or even longer for an appointment and i was just really really desperate
um but that is definitely an option and if you're in a worse state like that's always an option
and then also i know people who've taken like prescribed drugs for sleep these are stronger than
the ones that you can get over the counter they should totally knock you out but obviously they
have side effects and obviously you should try and avoid getting reliant on them as much as possible
okay now we are going to talk about what actually worked for me and the routine that i have now so
first i do have a routine and sleep hygiene which i think is very important if you're struggling
with sleep every single time i try to deviate deviate from it because i'm like i think i'm good
i often get in trouble and so maintaining that routine is really important um the
important mindset shift that has changed the way i sleep is essentially i've learned to just like
give up on sleep i find that when i'm stressed about sleep that is the worst for actually getting
sleep which is very ironic and so when i feel very anxious i just tell myself like essentially i give
up i'm like it's okay if i never sleep again in my life and then guess what you end up falling asleep
um it's also really important to tell yourself that this is not forever there's nothing wrong
with you you do not have anxiety around sleep there may be phases in which you have better or
worse sleep in your life essentially you need to remove the anxiety around it as much as you
possibly can because the more anxiety around it the and the more you try the worse it's going to
be if you're in a very desperate state um and i know this is coming from a big place of privilege
but if you can go somewhere for a while where it's just quiet and calm like you know your
family's home or with a friend or like camping or something like that like somewhere where you
can actually get removed from the world for a little bit if you're in a desperate state
that is not a bad thing to do that's not a shameful thing to do that's something i did
and now on to the routine that i set up so i like to take a bath and this is part of the routine in
which like within an hour of me falling asleep i won't look at my work phone i won't really talk to
anyone i try to avoid electronics altogether and one of the great things for doing that is just
taking a bath and like listening to music and lighting a candle or something like that then
i will take melatonin and cortisol manager like i said sometimes so for melatonin i'll take between
0 and 3 if i'm really desperate and then cortisol manager i'll take between 0 and 1 on any given day
then every night as i'm brushing my teeth and i'm doing you know my skincare and stuff i will listen
to 10 minutes of bloom which like i said is a cbt therapy app it's actually great instead of doing
one really long session every week to do these 10 minute sessions every day even though some of
them are not about sleep i find that just that having someone talk to you and getting outside
of your own head because you're trying to do the exercise that they're walking you through
really really helps me wind down and then once in my i'm in bed and i'm wearing my eye mask and i've
turned off the shades and i've turned i've put down the shades so that it's as dark as possible
um i will also put on uh headspaces sleep casts which are these like 45 minute sleep stories
i find that getting outside of your own head and dedicating your mind to listening to this story
really really helps me because essentially just gets me out of my mouth ahead and that's
like the number one piece of advice and like most important thing to do in order to be able to sleep
now unfortunately the truth of the matter is sleep is one of those very rare things where like the
harder you try somehow the worse it is and the thing is you can't hide from how your body feels
so if your body is internally in turmoil and you're under a lot of stress
sleep like any amount of these tips are not really going to help you they might capture the symptoms
but they're not going to fundamentally change your sleep which is why primarily calming your anxiety
managing your anxiety and managing your stress is without a doubt the number one reason as to
why you're having trouble falling asleep and will be the number one thing to fix in order to fall
asleep so hopefully this was somewhat useful um i hope that if you are struggling to fall asleep
just know that it is okay you are going to fall asleep at some point in your life even if it feels
like you'll never fall asleep again um i would really suggest trying all of these things but
also really starting with looking internally at what are some of the fundamental reasons as to why
you're struggling with sleep and i promise it's going to happen and then i promise you're going
to feel great again and not like a zombie and if you have any comments or questions or other tips
on ways that you have been able to manage sleep please leave them in the comment section below