A Bad Buzz

I love coffee; it’s smooth and bitter and delicious. It’s my breakfast beverage of choice, and I look forward to that cup of coffee in the morning to wake me up. Rarely will I have a second cup of coffee in the day, but if I do it’s in the afternoon so my body has enough time to process that caffeine. Well, recently I had a cup of coffee after dinner and while it was a fine decision in the moment, I paid for it later that night when I couldn’t fall asleep.

Perhaps my body was confused and thought it was morning so it wanted to be up. It was quite frustrating because that caffeine wouldn’t let me sleep even though I was tired and I wanted to sleep. I tried multiple times to make myself relax. I tried reading. I tried counting to ten repeatedly. I tried thinking of nothing. And I repeated most of these fruitless relaxation attempts numerous times over at least a four-hour period and nothing really worked.

I guess eventually I sort of fell asleep but it wasn’t good sleep. It wasn’t refreshing sleep. And I still woke up about the same time as I normally do, so I didn’t sleep for that long either. Of course, once I woke up I had my cup of coffee because I knew I needed that caffeine buzz to stay awake during the day. [Sigh.] Caffeine: a great friend and a great enemy.

Ten Sheep Limit

While I may have trouble falling asleep at times, I recently I had a different sleep trouble that disrupted my slumber. I had fallen asleep well enough, but then in the middle of the night I was aware of being in that half-conscious state and somehow a stray thought about a project crept into my mind and nested there. All of a sudden I was groggily thinking about this project and then other thoughts decided to join in and my mind just didn’t want to turn off. I’m not sure how long my cluttered mind was distracted for, but when I started to hear birds chirping I knew I’d been half-awake too long and desperately wanted to get back to sleep.

So I did one of my simple tricks to clear my mind: I counted to ten. I count really slowly. One. [Pause.] [Pause.] [Pause.] [Pause.] Two. [Pause.] [Pause.] [Pause.] [Pause.] Three. (And so on.) The slowness of counting helps me to breath more slowly (which makes my heart rate decrease) and thus relaxes me.

Once I count to ten, I start counting from one again. It’s like counting sheep, but with a sheep limitation. I can’t count endlessly because then I’d start doing math. I’d get to a number (e.g. 242) and then divide it by sixty (seconds) and think of how many minutes I’d been trying to get to sleep by counting. And then my frustration would build because I still wasn’t asleep yet and irritation always makes me more alert. So by counting to ten repeatedly, I lose track of what total number I’m at and am therefore less apt to get distracted by unnecessary thoughts. And luckily this trick worked well enough for me to get a couple more hours of actual sleep before I had to wake up. 

Think Less. Sleep More.

Sleep is awesome. A good night’s rest can invigorate you and help start your day off feeling refreshed. Yet sometimes sleep is an elusive goal. Every so often I’ll have trouble falling asleep; it’s usually because I feel anxious or excited about something I have to do or a new project I’m working on. My brain doesn’t want to turn off and I can’t help but think thoughts that distract me from sleep.

There’s a time and place for everything, and while problem-solving thoughts do need to be processed, I know that bedtime is not the time to be doing it. But sometimes I can’t help myself and then I have to actively try and stop my thinking; I’ll tell myself, “Figure it out tomorrow. Relax. Go to sleep. Think of nothing.” And of course this thinking perpetuates more thinking, and I’ll tell myself, “Stop thinking. You’re still thinking. Stop thinking already.” It’s a vicious cycle and ultimately a losing battle, as once I start thinking it’s difficult to stop.

So then I have to make myself relax (which sounds like an oxymoron because it is one). If my mind doesn’t want to stop thinking, then I try to think of unimportant things that I don’t care about, like reciting the plot of a movie. Yet sometimes I still can’t fall asleep and then I have that moment (usually an hour or two after my initial attempt to sleep), when I have to decide to either continue to toss and turn and hope for sleep or to wake up and read a book. The smart choice for me is the latter, because reading almost always helps relax me since I’m filling my head with a story and clearing my mind of personal thoughts.

And this is what I did the other night when I couldn’t sleep, and I eventually fell asleep about an hour and a half later than usual. [Half-hearted: yay.] But for whatever reason, I then woke up a good hour before I normally do and couldn’t go back to sleep. This did not start my morning right, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. [Sigh.] The only upside after a poor night’s sleep is hoping that my sleep-deprived state will lead me to falling asleep more quickly the following night. That’s what usually happens. [Pause.] Usually.