Britta's Letters from her life divided between city-life in German's capital Berlin and life in a Bavarian village

Friday 8 July 2022

Sleeplessness

 



Since my private Tsunami my sleep is mega-bad. I am healthy (everything was checked with stunning good results, only my melatonin level was very low, as I had suspected - now that is ok too), I eat well, move a lot, am optimistic, thankful and financially secure, have many friends and the Flying Dutchman, and call myself happy. 

So why do I sleep so very bad? I fall easily asleep (I established a routine), then I sleep till 3:30 or four o'clock a.m. (round about) - then I wake up, pulse racing, and my mind starts to rattle, about things that look like piffle in the morning. And that I know at night too - yet I can't stop.(That cock in Bavaria either, and the dear sun tries without success to peek around the very, very darkening curtains).   

No sleeping pills for me, there I am adamant. My flawed way to cope: 
I go to the kitchen (in the dark), heat a cup of milk and add some honey, (I am convinced that my blood-sugar dives when I am asleep - maybe that wakes me up? I do not have diabetes), then I walk back, lie down - and the CD-player above starts to play his role as knight in shining armour. 
I put the ear-plugs in and listen to the soothing voice of a German actress, for half an hour she is speaking a meditation, I listen, slack...and if I am lucky, often doze away. Otherwise I have done a very fine meditation - but am tired the next day. 
 
Now I test naps at midday (together with that meditation). I am still not sure if that helps.  

What do you do when you can't sleep? 
Any suggestions? 

(Our Grandmothers cross-stitched a German proverb on pillows: 
"A clean conscience / makes a fine pillow" - but THAT I have, honestly.) 


  

16 comments:

  1. Temperature? Ventilation? Dehydration? Need wee? Hungry? Mattress too hard/soft?

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    1. Dear Tasker, thank you. Only the two first can be a reason - I will have a look on that. At the moment it is very hot, and that might be a reason. I will (in daytime :-) make notes, to observe if there is a causality.

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  2. My uncle used to say as we age, we require less sleep. He also claimed 3 AM is the witching hour and he often awakened at this hour. Oddly enough, like you, I do as well. I usually turn over in bed and go right back to sleep while thinking about my lovely long passed uncle.

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    1. Dear Susan, normally I slept sound 8 hours.
      "Witching hour" sounds highly interesting to me. Often I turn over and sometimes then it is ok - but sometimes an irrelevant (!) question pops up and then I rattle off. I honestly do not have real problems at the moment.
      I discovered a tip in your comment: I will try to build up "a dream" which is very friendly and beautiful to think about, but which also demands attention, sort of, not too much :-) - that is a bit like my meditation...

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  3. I often wake in the middle of the night. It may sound funny but I switch positions to the foot of the bed and go right back to sleep.

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    1. Dear Mimmylynn, I did that some month ago - and then forgot about it. I will try again - and when I take notes (in daytime), as I told Tasker, I will note down that too.

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  4. I would re-define it and not view it as a problem or something not right. I used to be an 8 hour per night sleeper, now I am down to 5 or 6. If I wake at the 3.30 or 4 hour then I will curl up and tell myself to go back to sleep. I then wake again at 6am. I don't have bad thoughts or worries in the night though. Perhaps something is worrying you and you need to look into what it is and why. If I am very wide awake then I will read my book but that is very rare.

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  5. Dear Rachel,thank you - "re-defining" might be a way, as it helped me at another habit I wanted to change.

    I read that in the Middle-Ages people had quite another rhythm for sleep than nowadays - when they woke up at around three o'clock the started to work for hours and then went to sleep again.

    In another article I read one should not worry whether the hours one sleeps are enough sleep. I will thus put my fitness-watch (which shows me exactly how much I have slept till that moment) away.

    Telling myself to go back to sleep doesn't help - and the worries, as I wrote, really are "piffles" (as I wrote dairy since decades I know quite well what worries me).

    I started to take a very boring book in another language (which I still am learning) - sometimes that worked. I will try again.

    What I found out: when I do not sleep alone in my beautiful bed, I feel "safe" (a psychologist might call it return of "basic trust") - and sleep through.
    Maybe it is best not to expect a certain amount of sleep - as I do not have to fly a plane next day it will not be so very important :-)

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  6. Sleep. What an interesting topic. I've also read about the two-sleep nights of times past which I feel must put paid to the notion that midnight snacking is a bad thing, it'd have to be a primal urge! Not that I have ever been swayed by such urges.

    There's a fantastic book 'Why We Sleep' by Matthew Walker which talks about the biology behind it, a truly fascinating and mildly unsettling read if you feel you're not getting enough. Not in any way a How-To book for ladies who seem to have lost the knack, though. Does it matter in the end? Who knows, but I do "feel" a bit better for more sleep than less, and I know the "best" sleep comes to me when I do far more exercise than I do at present, so that's an easy fix. As for fixing three I do's in one sentence, that's just as elusive!

    I've a post coming on my Counting Sheep variation, I call mine Animal Vegetable Mineral; all favourite variants have the same meditative effect of focussing the busy mind and quieting the noise. I had to employ a bit of AVM last night and always start with the same mantra: I must write about this in my blog, hahahah! (My blog had been in the naughty corner for a week now so this wish has been a moot point.)

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    1. Yes, Pip: sleep is very interesting, and dreams are too.

      No - I am not hungry at night either, never walked to a fridge to eat something - the soothing milk with honey might be a remain of old times too? (Though I think it is the honey - if I take a grape-sugar it works to - brain gets placid).

      I read some wise words by brain researchers and neurologists, and that made me wide awake - if you don't get enough sleep the brain cannot get rid of deposits, and what follows then you can imagine. So I do care - but that is the wrong approach.

      I do not suffer from depression, nevertheless REM sleep is important (so the University of Bern) to the dendrites to differentiate between security and danger - and at the same time it blocks emotions - thus helping to fight PTBS.

      As you I do feel better when I sleep at least 7 hours. Normally I wouldn't mind how much I sleep - but here in Bavaria in the evening I am so often very tired (though that might have very natural explanations too - also a "three" as in your three "Do"s - but mine are almost three year old :-)
      If it is ok I will copy your mantra "I must write about this in my blog" - though: when I start with these ideas at midnight all those sweet sheeps might bleat in very demanding noisy chorus :-)

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  7. I sleep far less than of old. I simply get up and get on with my day and take an afternoon nap.

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    1. And does an afternoon nap help, Joanne? When I do (with an alarm clock, so not longer than half an hour, otherwise I get grumpy) I have the feeling that it takes a long time till I am "as fresh as a daisy" again.

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  8. Britta, you have my total sympathies. For the 45 years I was at work, the weekdays had a fixed routine that required sleeping from midnight to 7.30 AM and then a full day's activities. But retirement took away all the routines that had served so well, and nowadays I cannot fall asleep until 5 AM :( It is exhausting.

    Since using Melatonin, I still cannot fall asleep easily, but at least I don't get up every night at 3AM to watch tv, eat challah toast and cheese and turn on the computer.

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    1. Dear Helen, thank you for bringing in the link between work and retirement.
      I had the same feeling: though I know what to do with my time I missed my job where I had structure, appreciation, the joy of fair combat, etc.
      I used melatonin for a while (after that tedious test to find out if one really needs it) - and it helped. But later I read that melatonin might lead to a sort of depression - thus I changed to harmless milk&honey.
      If you turn on the computer at night: do you wear those special orange glasses that are said to screen out blue rays?

      Sleep reminds me of another mystery: when I was a child, I thought about the tons of candy I would be able to buy when I were earning money as a grown-up - and now I don't.
      And sleep: I thought when I stop working I could sleep as much as I want - and now I can't.

      Sometimes I think that there might be a psychological trick to outwit myself: if I have to rise for a journey or so, I sleep much better and longer, cling to dear sleep as in the olden days...

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  9. It's an age related thing Britta - I used to sleep like a felled log all night long, but no longer. When our habits suddenly change its annoying, and it isn't a comfort to know that others too are suffering at 4.00 am either. I peer out of the window - all is quiet, peaceful, and there isn't a light or any life to be seen, and then return to bed, hoping I will be in slumberland soon, which luckily, I usually tend to do.

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    1. Dear Rosemary, yes, age-related it may be.
      One can only accept it, it seems, and try to get a cup of "Horlicks traditional" - as so many women in Barbara Pym's soothing novels drink :-)
      Here in rural Bavaria people go astonishingly early to bed (well - it is dark, next cinema or theatre in Fürth or Nuremberg :-)
      As I have no problems to fall asleep I get more sleep if I do that too - but honestly: THAT makes me feel old, thus I seldom do it, only in times of dire need. (I normally go to bed at 22:30).

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