“I Struggle to Sleep at Night” #wait

Cognitive shuffling is a technique that has shown promise in helping individuals with insomnia by disrupting the thought patterns that can keep them awake. This method involves mentally shifting through random, neutral words or images, which can distract the mind from stress or anxiety and promote relaxation, facilitating the transition to sleep.

Mechanism of Cognitive Shuffling:

Breaking the Cycle of Rumination: Insomnia is often exacerbated by persistent, racing thoughts or worries. Cognitive shuffling helps interrupt these negative thought loops by engaging the mind in a simple, non-stressful task.
Inducing Relaxation: By focusing on random, unrelated words or images, cognitive shuffling reduces mental engagement and emotional arousal, creating a state more conducive to sleep.
Engaging Working Memory: The technique keeps the working memory occupied with benign content, preventing it from dwelling on stressful or stimulating thoughts that can interfere with falling asleep.

#insomnia #sleep #anxiety

[kmc]

Instead of thinking of it as "going to bed" I think of it as "going 𝒃𝒂𝒄𝒌 to bed". Because in the morning I always want to go back to bed. I just try to re-create that mindset.

[NormadYT]

The random thoughts are what make me unable to concentrate on sleeping

[NutmegBGB]

Yay, a new thing to do for 2 hrs in the middle of the night

[milksteak-]

what helps me is replaying past dreams in my head and trying to remember little details in the dreams

[librakels]

“Make sure to picture it in your head as you go…” people with aphantasia, cry with me 😭😭

[jamiehendrix]

I've always found that listening to a show or podcast ive listened to a lot is just enough to distract my brain from The Bad Thoughts, but not stimulating enough to keep me awake

[ANautyMoose]

Imagine yourself in a movie or story. Helps me tons.

[chicho._.]

I feel so validated right now that I always make a really stupid stories in my head before I go to sleep. But it works cuz I'm not thinking about other stuff

[MadTawnyOwlet]

I listen to rain sounds every night. Focusing on the sound of the rain falling helps block out the cacophony of thoughts racing through my mind.

I'm so used to hitting play on the rain effects video, I sometimes overlook that it's already raining outside and I could just listen to the real thing 😅

[CatzAndCrowz]

I have had insomnia my whole life. Even hypnotics rarely do the trick for more than 4hrs. I read about this about 2 weeks ago and decided it was worth a shot. It is a game changer. Works every time. I don’t even notice myself falling asleep. What’s more is that if I wake up during the night, I just do it again and it puts me back to sleep in (what feels comparatively like) seconds.

[imgay]

My dyslexia would turn this into one heck of a brain workout

[hm]

This would keep me up. I appreciate that it’s like counting sheep but this literal example would distract me from sleeping lol

[Teknikah]

My tried and tested technique is "telling myself a story". Like, pretending I'm dreaming.

I rarely struggle to sleep. I'm one of the lucky ones that can just drift off in moments. But, if I do struggle, since I was young I've just imagined stories.
Like as a kid I would pretend I had super powers and fly around. I never got far into the stories before I fell asleep

[cynthiaa]

Tried this technique for the past couple nights. It is helpful.

[tempestniamhwoulfe]

That's cool. When I was suffering from severe insomnia, I started choosing what I would like to dream about, or at least where, and I would build it in my mind a piece at a time. Like Mindcraft, if you will. Always works, every time. Paired with progressive muscle relaxation it's amazing!

[thefluffyaj]

I struggle so much with insomnia I began to actually notice this, that my thoughts where behaving in a certain way before I fell asleep but I could never manually maje my brain that way when trying to fall asleep

[nisharaut]

I never comment on videos. Last night I was struggling to sleep so much but I came across this short and I tried it and I woke up the next morning. Worked like literal magic for me. Thank you

[Rang]

I learned that not actively "trying" or thinking about falling asleep, does wonders for me. Also just thinking about something random helps me. I struggle to get comfortable sometimes, so I also learned that getting up, making my bed anew and retrying, can help trick myself into feeling like there was no failure to get comfortable in the first place hehe.

[princesskaguya]

It's grounding! The same thing they recommend for extreme anxiety and similar mental health struggles. Super neat.

[StarWonder]

Or also, you're naturally a person more active at night & sleep just fine during the day & don't actually have insomnia but rather don't work with how society has structured things to be day-orientated 😀👍💙