When I can’t sleep, I turn around and sleep “upside down” - moving my pillows to where my feet were beforehand, and my feet to where my head was beforehand - and I stick with that for a week or so. It gives me a week or so without insomnia and then wears off, so I have to turn myself back around for the next 7-12 day period.
Admittedly this could just be a me thing, but let’s put our faith in this method and let the power of placebo effect take hold. Boom, minor bouts of sleeplessness are cured.
What are your own examples of this?
Here’s how I quit smoking about 15 years ago.
Step one: for about a month, every time I smoked I told myself I’m ready to quit. Every cigarette, every time.
Step two: the next month, every cigarette, every time, I told myself they stink and taste like shit.
Took about 3 weeks into the second month and I never picked up another. Oh and I can be around other smokers and don’t crave them. They still fucking stink.
YMMV
If you can’t sleep. Get up. Get out of your bed for a while.
Staying awake while laying in bed often changes the association of sleep with the bed. Removing sleep conditioning effects.
Also as someone who has had insomnia since I was a child. I can tell you if I lay in bed. Unable to sleep. And Stay there. Rolling around. I won’t ever fall asleep.
But if I force myself to get up. Maybe have something to drink. Walk around a bit. Stare out the window for a bit. Then go back , I’m more likely to fall asleep.
And if I’m having really bad insomnia. I go for a walk. At this point I’m my life I can tell if it’s going to require a walk or just getting up and moving around the apartment/house for a bit.
Even a 15-20 min walk can do wonders. But I typically do 30 to 1 hour walk. It depends on how I’m feeling.
You would think exercising in the middle of the night would wake you up more. But nope.
9/10 times I go for a short walk. I get back and fall to sleep almost immediately.
It’s hard to force yourself to get up when you are exhausted and just want to sleep. But it’s do the walk or not sleep at all.
Also. Going out at 2 or 3 am on a week day is kinda of an interesting experience. Depending where you live, you might be the only person around.
It’s eirie and surreal. Subliminal spaces.
I quite like it. That also helps motivate me to do the insomnia walk. (Sometimes I ride my bike instead which is really nice as there are minimum cars. -make sure you are in light clothes and have lights and reflectors on your bike).
Yep. Doctors and randos alike will keep telling you to just try harder. Fuck that.
Read a book. Work some more on your project. Go for a run. Don’t try to sleep.
Years of reading in bed late at night while exhausted have conditioned me to associate reading with falling asleep. I don’t have insomnia much anymore, often the opposite. Any time I want to lay down and read my book before bed, I’m out like a light before I finish a single chapter. It could be a super power, but it also means it takes me months to finish a single novel. Also not ideal when I occasionally need to read reports or training materials at work and get to the end and my head is on the desk and I can’t keep my eyes open.
Hah, you swapped insomnia for reading-induced narcolepsy. Neat!
The suggestion would be to not read in bed
If you feel like you are about to sneeze, but you don’t want to (maybe you are on a video call, or trying to be quiet, whatever), tickle the roof of your mouth with your tongue. It works surprisingly well.
If you feel like you are about to sneeze but can’t quite manage it (and do want to), tilt your head upwards and look into a bright light.
Works if you’re photosensitive to any degree, which most people are.
If you’re experiencing brainfreeze, press your tongue to the roof of your mouth. Works for me every time.
This has never worked for me
You could also try drinking some warm water, that could help. I’m sorry it didn’t work for you. 😕
Staying warm actually does ward off illness. Specifically, you need to keep your nose warm or else its local immune response becomes surprisingly ineffective.
I wanna make a nose-hat now to keep warm
Nose warmers is a thing, a silly thing, but a thing.
In a financial negotiation, avoid saying a number first, even if it seems like you’re being rude, just say stuff like “what’s your budget” instead. This trick sounds really stupid but somehow it is extremely effective.
Absolutely. And in a more general sense, whenever negotiating with businessmen, tell yourself they’re nasty rotten pirates beforehand and throughout the process. Visualise them having peglegs, hooks, eyepatches and battered old sea hats. Do NOT give in, do NOT name that number before they do.
I prefer to think of it like a competitive game; you’re trying to win and you aren’t going to go easy on anyone, but you still treat your adversaries with as much empathy and respect as that allows.
When you sprain your ankle, DON’T MOVE. I used to try and walk it off because that’s what everyone does and even coaches recommend it, but that’s when the actual damage is done.
Spraining is usually just your tendons/ligaments going into emergency mode (getting very short/tight). So if you try to walk while they are still tight, they will actually tear, doing damage that takes weeks to heal. If you instead just keep that ankle perfectly still for like 30 seconds to 2 min, the ankle will be completely fine.
Trick is, you have to overcome the social pressure to hurry it along (i.e. on a hike at work, or on a sport field).
I sprained my ankle once trying to dodge out of the way of a classmate I was trying to avoid when i saw them at a park 😂 What you say is correct. Kind pf wish I’d gotten it checked at the time but it could’ve been worse and I rested soon after hobbling out of view
If you have a song stuck in your head, and it’s driving you a bit mad: listen to it. Something about your mind trying to fill things in (it’s been many years since I’ve read this bit of advice, and unsure entirely on why).
Basically songs stick in our head when we can’t finish them, so songs with really subtle endings or heavily repeated phrases will stick the most.
Or try to rememberr how the song ends.
If you’re clumsy, do a grappling martial art like wrestling or Jiu-Jitsu. After 6 months even if you still suck at that martial art (e.g., me) your nerves and muscles will know how to move shockingly efficiently.
Ballet or other dance classes can also help agility.
I flip around when I can’t sleep as well. It only works sometimes for me.
This probably isn’t very useful to most but you’d be surprised how much info you can get from paying attention to the smells around you. I use odor for navigating places like malls.
I have insomnia and I’m just here posting this shit.
I think that’s good advice! We should all try and be a bit more attuned to our senses.
Helps with personal hygiene, too 🤫😅. But - at least for me - a disconnect with our sense of smell largrly comes from living in a city, spending too much time indoors, and spending too much time in our own space which smells like us. So having bad hygiene makes it harder to smell which makes it harder to identify that we have bad hygiene!!
But yeah, I follow my nose a lot more than other people and it makes the world a much more interesting place. People who’ve been to a lot of food markets, perhaps at christmas, understand this.
Don’t be a cunt.
Simple advice that works. More people should try it.
But that doesn’t sound counter-intuitive my dear fellow
don’t be a cunt.
In your head, change the name of a food you wish to avoid. I’ve done this with McD’s.
In my head, it’s been called McDicks since high school. I, personally, don’t enjoy eating dicks. So, when I see the sign, and I feel like a Big Mac would go down easy, I say to myself, “I don’t eat dicks.”
It works.
For those who enjoy eating dicks, well, you’ll have to choose another association. Also, I didn’t think the phrase “feel like a Big Mac would go down easy” would be so overtly sexual.
I honestly hate mcdonalds anyway, but the range of stuff I’ve tried there is very limited - maybe if i had a big mac I’d succumb to the MiccyD.
For me it just feels like food designed to make you sick, either because you’re compelled to eat too much or because it’s sooooo unnatural.
There was this movie on Netflix called Spiderhead where they’re testing drugs including one that makes people overeat until they hurl, and watching it reminded me exactly how i felt whenever I went there as a kid. I steer clear now. Trauma!
For me it just feels like food designed to make you sick, either because you’re compelled to eat too much or because it’s sooooo unnatural.
McDonald’s has been specifically engineered for over half a century to be as pleasing and addictive as possible, by a huge corporation who hires legions of scientists in various disciplines to achieve that singular goal.
In my mind, it’s akin to smoking: the first few times you try it, it’s gross; after that, it’s a dopamine hit that’s easy to become reliant upon.
If you’re stuck on a creative project or out of ideas on how to approach a problem, and you feel a little fatigued mentally, have a cup of coffee or something with caffeine and lie down for a short nap.
It’ll take some time for the caffeine to kick in, so you might even drift off, and this way it seems to stimulate the mind in a way that produces insights and ideas more than just keeping you from feeling tired.
It puts you in a hypnagogic state (between asleep and awake), where your brain’s filter is switched off.
Taking LSD has a similar effect, but is frowned upon in most work environments.Nappucino! Works every time
You are the first person I have ever met (other than my mom, who I learned it from) who does the “sleep upside down” thing. It totally works!
Thanks, i was worried it would be too widespread and nobody would find it remarkable 😂
Erin in The Office does it too.
So if you ever get a random headache that is just a pinching pain in a random spot then try breathing there. I don’t mean breathe deep or breathe into that spot but actually concentrate super hard into that spot and imagine this is where your lungs are. Concentrate when you breathe and think about how the air goes exactly into that spot directly from your mouth cause this is where your lungs are now, and how you breathe out from there. Keep concentrating and breathing there.
I don’t know why it doesn’t work if I just take deep breaths but this is legit the only way I can stop the pulsating stabs until they are gone. Concentrate hard tho because once you stop the pain returns unless the attack is over.
I’ve harvested so much knowledge from this thread, lol. Saved for later. Thanks
