How to routinely deal with a (hopefully) one off bout of Insomnia

If you heed anything tonight, heed this:

 DO NOT EVER LOOK AT ANY CLOCKS.  DO NOT COUNT YOUR TIME AWAKE, HOW MANY HOURS YOU HAVE TO SLEEP, OR TAKE NOTICE OF WHEN YOU HAVE TO BE UP FOR.  TURN THEM ALL AROUND.  PUT A POST IT NOTE OVER THE COMPUTER CLOCK. DO NOT LOOK AT YOUR PHONE.

The above warning is imperative to the quality of sleep you get if you do manage to get any sleep this late in the sodding night!!!!!

So... You've been lying in your bed (or someone elses), after having some half baked nodding off type dream where you lived in a flat (a lot like the type the junior ministers have in In The Thick Of It, because you and the Gids have been series's, seriesing, seriesining it and you might possibly be the tall lanky one in your dream, but you don't have rooms you have pods and you're not shagging anyone) but then you realise that you're half awake and you can see the Gids's mobile phone blinking, and you're thinking your bladder full, and the only one not snoring in your bed is you.  This is how you handle it.

1.  Lie there for another 20 minutes (real time 2 mins 13 secs), convincing  yourself that no, you really are going to go to sleep any minute now.  And your bladders not full, no, it's really not, you just think it is because it's half past two in the morning.  DO NOT LOOK AT THE CLOCK!!! HEED THE WARNING ABOVE. MAKE THIS THE LAST TIME.

2. Decide that, regardless of the state of your bladder, if you are going to get up to go to the loo you will get up properly because otherwise it will be pointless getting up at all.

3.  Get up.  Do not switch light on for fear of waking Giddy Blonde (boyfriend), and Not So Giddy Blonde (Dog).  Try to find manky fleece you've been living in most mornings.  Wake everyone up looking for it.  Find manky fleece.

4.  Go for a pee.  It'll be a surprisingly short one.

5.  Descend the stairs, and decide you want a snack.  Think about making cheese sandwich.  Don't, as it's too much effort.  Have 3 day old french bread from Lidl smothered with Lurpak.  It's actually quite satisfying.  Resist the urge to eat more, knowing that you'll finish the bread and resort to licking butter out the tub like it's peanut butter out the jar just because no one will see you.

6.  Try to examine psychologically why it is you're awake, with that chuffing smuggy voice your friends hear when you think you're being wise and helpful, when really you're just being interfering and officious.  It's usually pretty obvious. It'll either be one  (or a combination) of three things:

• Something has royally ticked you off. You'll have the situation, conversation, e-mail, what you said, what they said, how it started playing over and over and over in your head like a video. This will probably be a recurring situation, or a recurring someone that's compounding a situation that you've found yourself in (again).  It will be more to do with how you've handled things (how you couldn't stand up to this person, or change the outcome to the outcome you wanted), because, however you managed to handle it, that other persons just a massive dick head and can't help themselves (trust me, I know, it's always them). What happened, and every scenario you have in your head, what you should have said, did,  write it all down.  Including the one where you smash the fecker in the windscreen with your tiny wheeled Brompton, his car careers off into the harbour, explodes like a atom bomb, and you catch your little bike (it's boomeranged back to you because you and it are a team *air punch*) and ride off into the sunset.  Write that all down, you will feel better.

• You've not done enough moving today.  Seriously.  Running after kids, housework, up and down the stairs in the office doesn't count (though it does help).  It's not bodily fitness you do this for, but to change your brain chemistry.  Besides from releasing endorphins, exercise helps control  'RUN NOW BUT KILL THEM ALL FIRST' chemicals in your brain that rock about if you've been under stress (and make you loose your temper). Your heart has to thump though. When your brain gets used to your heart rate rising though an intentional and non-stressful means, your brain doesn't release these chemicals quite so violently, and if they are released, exercise gives somewhere to channel that energy you naturally want to use to kill those people.   If you're not used to exercise, just start with getting your heart rate up and quit just before you absolutely feel you have to.  Don't have time?  You massive liar.  1 minute shince (aka a 'run' to those who can, I can't), 1 minute walk home from work (or even get a bike!!!)  You tube sun salutations whilst your bath runs/kids nap or watch cartoons.  Get one of those mad little stepper things and hop on that 'til the adverts on Coronation Street come on (that's every 10 minutes people!).  If that's too strenuous, do it during the breaks of your favourite show. That's quite literally 3 minutes folks.

• Your brain chemistry is a little fecked. Me, the reason I'm up now listening to birds sing and watching the sky turn a dull blue at 4.20 am is a mixture of all three.  I've been finding it difficult to get to sleep for the past couple of weeks as it's been lighter right up until 10 pm now.  It's like reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder (which I get as well, managed with even more exercise and B vitamins).  

So compound this with being ticked off at someone, (myself, I am my own dick head - I wanted to finish something today and I didn't, I just wasted my day mostly, it's not the first day of this procrastination but several),  and not doing any exercise, (I could have done 15 minutes on the turbo trainer even though I was shincing on Sunday). I'm up listening to the birdies sing.  What are the options for this kind of issue?  Well  I usually don't go for the chemically induced option until a good couple of nights of proper struggling.  I have quite a high tolerance for sleeping pills and I like to give them the best chance of working and take them only when I really need to.   Either way, unless you go holistically (see the first and second bullet points) you have to make a choice between feeling crap with no sleep, or feeling crap (and mildly jellied) with sleep.  Just know that you're going to be rubbish and useless until you tackle one (or both) of the first two issues that will be keeping you awake.

It's properly light out side my window now,  I usually have a rule that if I've been awake until dawn, I will just see the day through again since the amount of sleep I get will not be enough for the day and my sleep pattern will be out of whack. But it is half four in the morning, and if I can get up and have a shit load of coffee, I might just be OK. 

Decisions, decisions.

Jx


DON'T LOOK AT THE CLOCK!