I’ve always struggled with sleep. A few things that helped me (in order of importance)

- go to bed and get up at the same time every day. Getting up is more important than going to bed.

- no phone in bed, and limit stimulating activities (intense video games, programming, planning the vacation etc) to 90 minutes before bed. I read during that time but TV, cleaning, music, whatever works.

- a bad nights sleep will happen, often a few nights in a row. Be ok with that (easier said than done, I did CBT for this). Instead of lying in bed restless get up and watch TV, or read.

- leave the house for 30 minutes every day.

- journal as often as possible. Ideally daily, but a few times a eeek. Don’t ever read it back but just write down your feelings and the things on your mind. Do good and bad.

- exercise every other day.

- no coffee after lunch, and never more than 3 in a morning.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint and overall I have way less bad nights than I did before, and I don’t beat myself up as much for the bad nights.

▲ PyWoody 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

  - a bad nights sleep will happen, often a few nights in a row. Be ok with that (easier said than done, I did CBT for this). Instead of lying in bed restless get up and watch TV, or read.

This is the hardest one for me. I'm currently working on about 20 minutes of sleep and I know tonight will probably be the same. I'll lie in bed knowing I should get up and do something to shake the cobwebs out but I'm stuck in a purgatory between exhaustion and restlessness.

Do you have any advice for getting over the initial hump?

	▲	DougN7 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not the above poster but lookup “sleep hygiene”. A lot of the recommendations are solid and have helped me too, especially about fixing a regular sleep schedule.

▲ toasty228 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A 30-60min walk around the block before bed does wonders too

	▲	esseph 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Very much depends on the person. If I went for an hour walk late at night I'm going to be up for hours and hours and hours.

▲ tigerlily 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Huh, this'll probably do more than just improve sleep.

	▲	maccard an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I won’t claim to have any qualifications but generally the more I look after myself the better I sleep. The better I sleep the more I can look after myself.