Please Help Me Sleep?

[Leisel]

I need to wake up in about 2-2.5 hours and I'm in a totally safe place but I cant sleep because if I put my phone down for even a moment I feel so afraid and I'm worried I'll have another flashback (mine are often the physical feeling and I had one earlier and I get them when I'm stressed out like this) and I don't know what to do. How do you distract yourself when you're trying to sleep? How do you sleep??? Also, if you read this later when it's already the morning for me, a reply would still be helpful because this happens more than I would prefer it to.
Tbh I was planning to stay up all night reading fanfic but the fic I was reading started to cover issues such as abuse and eating disorders and that was far from a helpful distraction and I really need sleep anyway

 

[Virtues]

I don't sleep well at all. I have been through a barrage of medications before I finally found one that worked for me. Ask your doctor about Lunesta. I still get nightmares (I'm working on that), but I get a solid 4-6 hours of sleep every night now, compared to before where I would go some nights without any sleep in between other nights of broken sleep for only a couple of hours. I hope this helps; I wish I had a non medicated answer to give you, but none of the holistic approaches worked for me.

 

[Ocean5]

Sometimes a hot shower will help to relax your body.

 

[barefoot]

When I can't sleep, I find that getting up is more useful that staying in bed "trying to sleep".

So, I get up....watch a bit of tv, listen to some music or read for a bit. Some people get up and clean the house or bake a cake etc but for me, doing an activity like that sounds too stimulating.

Sometimes, if I get up, move to another room and just read for 10 mins, that's enough.

Also, sometimes just getting out of my bed and moving to the bed in the spare room works and I pretty much fall asleep straight away. Don't know if that 'shift' of place is all it is? The spare room is also much cooler than my room and I find that helps too - if. Get too hot in bed...far more likely to not fall asleep and to have bad dreams or night terrors.

If all else fails, I try to just lay and rest (eyes, body, mind) even if I don't actually sleep. If you can manage to do that, you'll still get some restorative benefits and will likely feel a bit better than if you'd laid and got really frustrated thinking about how you can't sleep.

Sleep problems are such a debilitating thing...I feel for you and wish I had a magic answer for all of us. Hope you managed to get some rest in the end...