Sleep Sanctuary

For my entire life, I’ve had issues with falling asleep, going to bed at a reasonable hour, getting up at a reasonable hour, sleeping through my alarm, and the list goes on.  I will spare you from reading a list of the different methods I have tried to help myself get up when my alarm rings because it is LONG, although part of me thinks that some of the methods are so outrageous that it would be an entertaining read.  My sleep issues have been a gigantic suckfest of a problem for years, but in this post, I would like to focus on solutions.

In articles about how to improve your sleep, the same suggestion always comes up: you need to turn your room into a sanctuary that induces sleep.  There should be no TV in there.  You shouldn’t use your computer before going to bed.  You shouldn’t read books that are too stimulating.  You should be doing yogic breathing and meditation, blah blah blah.  Your bedroom should only be associated with sleep, and, ahem,  that other thing (although apparently for some people, even that is too stimulating and can keep them awake).

Here’s my problem with this sanctuary thing and why I generally fail at it.  I’m someone who absolutely adores thinking and contemplating possibilities, and it’s super duper duper hard to get myself to stop doing this at night.  If you’ve heard of the book The Highly Sensitive Person, I am one of those.  I’m extremely sensitive to any kind of stimulation, including thoughts, and it can take me hours to relax and calm down.  Just last night I watched a movie a few hours before going to bed and I was so excited, moved, and changed by this film that I became really WIRED and it took forever for me to relax.

“Thought addiction” is a very common problem for HSPs.  I first read some blog posts about this concept on therapist Ane Axford’s website, sensitiveandthriving.com.  She discussed how HSPs get this buzz from thinking about possibilities and figuring things out, often for hours before we go to bed, and if you don’t make a CONSCIOUS DECISION to UNPLUG, you will never get to sleep.  And when you finally do, you’ll want to sleep in to make up for the lost sleep, so you ending up being  late for work, or if it’s a non-work day, you sleep all day and then feel like a bum when you wake up, etc. (the story of my life).  When I read all this on her blog, I felt for the FIRST time that I wasn’t the only one with this specific problem. 

So I need to figure out how to unplug myself from all of my thoughts at night.  But the thought of just telling myself, “Stop everything and lay in the dark and breathe” for some reason is just too unpleasant for me, (my thought addiction is that great) so I realized that the only way for me to really get myself to unplug from my thoughts at night is to create a sleep sanctuary that is just so cozy, dreamy, and relaxing, that I can’t resist just settling into it and falling asleep.  It might sound a little weird, but when I was a kid, my best friend and I had this obsession with unicorns and the idea of magical lands where they roam free and there are pools of crystal blue water, etc. (hahaha)  The idea of a dreamy, almost magical sleep sanctuary makes me think of that fuzzy feeling I would get when thinking about these lands as a kid, and I think that fuzzy feeling might be able to help me relax into a lovely, dream-filled sleep.

So here’s what I’ve done for the sanctuary so far: I put a sleeping bag on the floor (to sit on before bed), because it is just sooo soft and makes me feel comfortable and cozy.  Usually before I go to bed, I’ll meditate/pray for a minute or two and do a calming yoga stretch.  I used to to this on a yoga mat but now I plan to do it on the sleeping bag to get that cozy feeling.  I try to declutter my room before I go to bed so that energy can flow freely throughout the room.  I have a sleep mask that I use.  I’ve started using some sleep-inducing body lotion that my mom gave me a while ago that has a very relaxing scent.  I also have some body oil that you can put on your forehead and get a nice, tingly feeling, which also smells like incense.  This is basically all I’ve got so far.

A key thing will be not using the computer for hours before I go to bed and instead reading books that aren’t too stimulating.  I’m hoping to get to the point where I’m excited to just curl up in the sleeping bag and read, rather than wishing I was on the computer doing stimulating stuff (watching shows, etc.).  Maybe I should journal before I go to bed to release some thoughts?  Or maybe that would be too stimulating for me.  Not sure yet.

We’ll see how all of this goes.  Paying attention to my alarm in the morning is another issue and I just started using another system for that, but hopefully over time the sleep sanctuary will ensure that I start falling asleep earlier, which will make it easier to get up when my alarm rings.

Have any of you done anything to turn your room into a sleep sanctuary?  Candles?  Incense?  Sounds of waterfalls?  I’d love to know! :)