Help Sleepless Nights
Another (near) month without a post. I’ll start by saying my life has been busy. My wife gave birth to our second daughter. She’s a wonderful blessing even though it’s been quite an adjustment. I took 2 weeks of (unpaid) paternity leave time in order to help Cindy adjust to having two at once all day long, which was a pleasure. All of this comes in the wake of my acceptance of a part time job as Youth Minister at my Church and of my Father’s passing, which has weighed heavily on my work, life and heart.
Last night was particularly difficult to endure for some reason. I laid in bed for what seemed like hours: grieving, being afraid of what is unknown and really just thinking too much. I don’t know what finally led me to slumber, but this isn’t a problem I wish to continue having. I’m not a fan of chemical sleep aids because they tend to keep me down for longer than I like to be asleep (and they’re chemicals) and I don’t really have any reason that I just layed awake for so long - so it’s hard to come up with a probable solution.
So my call for help now is, how do you all (assuming some of you are still there) get over whatever you’re thinking about and fall asleep on those particularly thoughtful nights?
September 21st, 2005 at 6:38 pm
I have the exact same problem. It almost always takes me much more than an hour of laying in bed before I get to sleep, many times more than two hours. I honestly thought that GTD would help with that by clearing my mind of a lot of things, but that hasn’t been the case. The thought has even crossed my mind (while laying in bed trying to sleep) that GTD may have had the reverse effect by allowing my mind to think of new things!
I have taken to watching a lot of TV while trying to fall asleep, but that often seems unfair for my wife. It seems that she notices when I finally turn it off which leads me to believe that she hasn’t been sleeping really soundly while I had it on.
I wish that I could help with this matter, but instead I’ll just let you know that you aren’t the only one out there. And I’ll keep checking to see if anyone else has a good solution.
September 21st, 2005 at 10:27 pm
This type of thing used to happen a lot when I was in school, and it often resulted in me just staying awake for as long as possible until I was so tired that I had to go to sleep. I would then skip school the next day. I know this isn’t the best solution, but it is what I did. Eventually, I would get out of my slump and realize I need to do better things with my time and I would go back to school revitalized.