Sleep Deprived
Having the students back on campus has left me exhausted. Too exhausted for many things, but mostly just too tired to sleep. When my head starts to hurt from the exhaustion is usually right about the time that my body finds it impossible to relax enough to close my eyes and drift away. I tried a bunch of different things all week to to strike the right balance: chamomille tea, soft music, light reading, a long bath, a Tylenol PM and finally two Tylenol PM tablets. By Thursday, when I got home from work around seven, my mother just looks at me and says, "Wow, you look tired. I guess work is kicking your ass." She was right, on both counts.
I am open for any and all suggestions.
Having the students back on campus has left me exhausted. Too exhausted for many things, but mostly just too tired to sleep. When my head starts to hurt from the exhaustion is usually right about the time that my body finds it impossible to relax enough to close my eyes and drift away. I tried a bunch of different things all week to to strike the right balance: chamomille tea, soft music, light reading, a long bath, a Tylenol PM and finally two Tylenol PM tablets. By Thursday, when I got home from work around seven, my mother just looks at me and says, "Wow, you look tired. I guess work is kicking your ass." She was right, on both counts.
I am open for any and all suggestions.
posted by Ebony @ 2:03 PM
6 Comments:
At 8:32 PM,
Corrie said…
I have two suggestions. One is for physical relaxation and the other is for mental. Use them in combination if necessary.
Physical: Lay down and tense up every part of your body. Then concentrate on relaxing slowly from your toes up to your neck. Take a deep breath and hold it for a few seconds and release.
Mental: Do the alphabet backwards in your mind. Concentrating on doing that will clear away any other thought.
Sweet dreams!
At 8:45 AM,
Rachel said…
I think you should try to take a yoga or pilates class or similar. De-stress both your muscles and your mind :).
At 4:12 PM,
Barbara said…
Happy Hour!
At 4:35 PM,
timothy said…
When I was little, I could never get to sleep on Christmas eve because I was so excited.
So I would close my eyes and picture a dark stage. Everytime I thought of something other than sleep, it would show up on the dark stage and an old vaudeville cane would reach out and pull that thing off the "stage". As I kept "pulling" things out of mind, I would eventually run out of things keeping me pre-occupied.
Of course you can also just concentrate on your breathing, "breathe in" "breathe out", just think that over and over as you breathe, if you catch yourself thinking about something else, go back to thinking about breathing. Long slow breaths, try and imitate how you breathe when asleep. Eventually you will relax enough to sleep.
That or try medidation, its not just for Buddhists anymore.
At 10:07 PM,
Anonymous said…
I think you should sing. I've seen it relax you. Take a five minute spin in your car and put in a favorite CD and belt a couple of tunes at the top of your lungs. Or, sing in the shower and don't get out until you've content with your performance or nice and pruned. Or, put on your headphones and lie in bed singing. Close your eyes and pretend it's your singing...on a stage...to a sold out audience...
At 8:47 AM,
Stephanie said…
I had insomnia as a kid. I was told to have a routine, say contractions, and i got a prize everytime I slept more. Although, either picturing black and seeing it get blacker and blacker or horses running is usually what put me to sleep. It's really about making yourself not think too. I used to try to figure out where we - what makes us us - goes when you go to sleep.
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