Waking in the Middle of the Night?

Do you suffer from insomnia?

Some who have insomnia can't fall asleep when they go to bed. And some fall asleep easily, but then they wake at some unearthly hour and THEN they can't fall back to sleep. Of course, they suffer with severe tiredness the next day.

I am dealing with this problem and have discovered some helpful ideas.

Avoid Going To The Bathroom

For starters, you might think this is totally crazy, but if you wake up at night,do your best to avoid going to the bathroom. (That is of course unless your doctor has told you otherwise) I used to get up at night and go to the bathroom, until I read an article on the internet (forgot the URL to that article) that the bladder is like a baby. If you keep going to a crying baby every night, the baby will keep waking at night. But if you ignore the baby, he will eventually learn to sleep through the night. The same with the bladder. If you keep answering your bladder's call every night, it will wake you up every night. But if you ignore it, and go back to sleep, it is less likely to wake you up at night.

Don't get too hung up on the baby analogy. It is just an analogy. I'm not recommending that mothers ignore their newborns at night. And I'm not getting involved here in the controversial issue as to whether it's okay or not to let an older baby cry at night. I am only stating that this is a good analogy to waking up at night to go to the bathroom.

You might think it's impossible to fall back to sleep when you have to go to the bathroom so badly. But this article that I read said it's not true that it's impossible. Just don't tell yourself that it's impossible. As I remember it, the article assured that you will not have an accident, but if you're really afraid, get one of those adult diapers, but don't go to the bathroom. Just go back to sleep.

I have tried this, and while I can't honestly say that I've never given in and gone to the bathroom, in general I find this very effective.

Don't Twist and Turn

Along with the above, I find that if I wake at night, I have a much better chance of falling back to sleep if I just lay very still and quiet in a relaxed position. The idea is to avoid twisting and turning, and or rolling over on my back and staring at the ceiling with all kinds of thoughts racing through my head.

Don't Look at the Clock

Another thing I find very helpful: If you wake up at night DON'T look at the clock!! That is the worst thing to do. Here's the scenario:

You wake up at night, and you look at the clock. It says 3:30am. You immediately become very aggravated and think angrily "Not THIS again!! There goes another shot day tomorrow..!!..." and on and on your angry thoughts go. The aggravation alone is enough to keep you from falling back to sleep.

Instead of looking at the clock, if you wake up at night, and you see it's still dark, just relax and ignore it-and ignore your bladder too. Just stay lying in a relaxed position, and calmly tell yourself "Don't worry-yes I see it's dark outside, but who knows? Maybe it's not 3 o'clock in the morning-maybe it's 5:30 or 5:45 and it's not so bad. Let me just think about something relaxing..." Before you know it, you just might fall back to sleep.

And one last thing. Try not to drink too much before going to bed.




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