When the night closes in

[AoTFan]

Nights are the worse.

I've always been a bit of a night owl, true, but often as the hours tick by and I'm still awake, I think I've passed that status and far into insomniac terrority.  Far too many times I spend the whole day tired, wanting desperately just to stay/go back to bed but then late night rolls around and suddenly, I'm awake.  Worse than that, my mind won't shut the hell up.  It's when all the thoughts come rolling in... old regrets, old pains, old hates, the past, stuff I try not to think about and so on.   Not to mention the ever-present feeling that I could have spent the day in a lot better a fashion than I actually did, no matter what (if anything) I actually accomplished.  

Dunno, just curious if anyone can relate and what they do to combat it.

[ER]

Uh, yeeeeeeah!

Lately instead of reading or playing PS4 with my husband I been burning off energy at night, running at least a mile on the treadmill and finishing off with yoga and outer meditation before I go upstairs. It seems to help but I do think a lot of insomnia comes from DNA, like there is an insomniac type.

I was thinking the other night I didn't have insomnia before my thirties, though I used to have night terrors from time to time, and I started wondering if there was a connection, like I traded one condition for another.

Then something else occurred to me, I was infamous in my college years and twenties for being able to "skip sleep" simply stay up all night and the next day go on and be absolutely fine and not groggy. I used to just think it was a talent of mine but when it went away I wrote it off as the energy of youth, but now I'm wondering if it wasn't an early version of the insomnia that plagues me at least a night a week anymore?

Maybe not everyone is biologically designed to be able to sleep on demand. Maybe evolution programmed a certain percentage of us to be the night's watch to get everyone else through when they're most vulnerable.

[ER]

Also that was kind of a lovely-worded post you wrote up there.

[LilCerberus]

Sometimes, I go for a drive. I discovered that Wawa is the best place to get a hoagie & soup.

The last few years, I've been taking a lot of pills to help me sleep. It's mostly PTSD that wakes me up, sometimes this painful rash on my left arm. A quart of water, maybe piddle with the thermostat helps.

It's been a discouraging year for me, like you, I haven't gotten much done, and I've broken down by one or two things that just need some patience...

[Alex]

Modern life has somewhat messed up our sleep schedules. Traditionally people would sleep some in the evening, get up for a few hours in the early hours and then go back to bed for a few hours more.

Perhaps your body is just telling you this is the sleep pattern it wants?

[RCMerchant]

I dunno. I think folks have been having problems sleeping and get lost in they're minds since always.
That's when I process things the best. I think our brain is busy computing things-that's why we can' sleep.
I learn when I can't sleep. I think things over.

I'm a very light sleeper. I drift in and out of dreams. I can't recall when I slept dreamless when I was sober.