When I had an acute bout of insomnia, one of the things I found most helpful was listening to sleep-focused bedtime stories. The key part wasn’t the sleepy imagery, but rather just having something boring and inconsequential that my mind could latch onto, to replace the busy inner dialog.
I particularly like the stories from the Headspace app—they’re slightly randomized each night, which prevents you from using the story progress as a timer (“Oh no, we’re up to the skunk already and I’m still not asleep!”)
Related: I also found it extremely helpful to get rid of my bedside clock and to use a smart watch for sleep tracking rather than keeping track of my sleep manually. Worrying about sleep makes your sleep worse, and keeping track of how you’re doing tends to feed the sleep anxiety.
When I had an acute bout of insomnia, one of the things I found most helpful was listening to sleep-focused bedtime stories. The key part wasn’t the sleepy imagery, but rather just having something boring and inconsequential that my mind could latch onto, to replace the busy inner dialog.
I particularly like the stories from the Headspace app—they’re slightly randomized each night, which prevents you from using the story progress as a timer (“Oh no, we’re up to the skunk already and I’m still not asleep!”)
Related: I also found it extremely helpful to get rid of my bedside clock and to use a smart watch for sleep tracking rather than keeping track of my sleep manually. Worrying about sleep makes your sleep worse, and keeping track of how you’re doing tends to feed the sleep anxiety.