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Comment by DrPhish | Hacker News Reader

This is exactly the Zen moment that fixed my lifelong insomnia: lying in bed relaxed with my eyes closed, even if I'm not asleep, leaves me feeling worlds better in the morning than fretting about not being able to sleep. It's something that happened when I forgot about it completely. Once I realized I could literally just lie in bed for 8 hours and be OK, I was able to let go.

It's like a trap that closes tighter about you the more you struggle, and releases if you allow yourself to relax

Once I really got that, sleep became regular and uninterrupted

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Yup. I did a Sleepio course that had a good trick for this: Remember that you've got through every single day after a bad night's sleep before just fine. Even if you don't sleep a single moment, you'll get through the day. You've done it loads of times before and you'll do it again.

For me a big source of panic was worrying about the impact on the next day a bad night's sleep would have.

I still have nights where I don't sleep from time to time, but I've stopped caring about it.

Nice.

"Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

So if you fear death . . . ?

If you fear death, dying will certainly cure you of that fear.

Man, generally I don't have sleep troubles[1], but I hate not getting sleep. It destroys my next day. Like, objectively. I don't operate well without sleep, so the thought of "you'll get through the day" doesn't ring nice for me. The same is true if I stab my foot with a knife, but it doesn't mean I won't dread experiencing the recovery from the knife wound lol.

[1]: I sleep well, I get plenty of it. The only downside I have is restless leg syndrome which, according to my wife, has me kicking and moving my legs a lot at night. I imagine that impacts my quality of sleep, so I try to get a bit more sleep due to that.

Getting a lot of sleep != getting quality sleep.

If you have restless leg syndrome, you don't sleep well.

Agreed, but sleeping more still helps me. Maybe I could be happy with 7h/night without restless leg, but that doesn't change the fact that 8h for me is currently better than 7h. 7h just isn't enough. Which was my point - I get enough (more than average) to ensure I feel refreshed the next day.

It's definitely a problem though. I'm not a fan of medications, but I've not researched a natural remedy - perhaps I should.

Restless leg/limb has nothing to do with involuntary movements, so I don't think that's what you have here. RLS features a restless sensation, and sensations generally require consciousness.

No idea - when I'm awake it's definitely a restless sensation. Ultimately I'm the one that moves my leg, but it becomes nearly impossible to resist. It's a hard to describe feeling, a growing tension that almost buzzes electricity - not painful, but .. insanely insistent regardless.

I only found out that I kick in my sleep from my wife. She says it's worse on days when I actively, while awake, complain of restless legs.

Beyond that I've got no idea. It's not something that seemed to be dangerous nor bother me enough to see a doctor due to the infrequency that it bothers me while awake. If it occurred often while I was awake though, I'd have to see a doctor. No question.

Unsolicited advice: try taking 300mg of magnesium a few hours before bed. My RLS used to be rampant, and since I started supplementing Mg I haven’t had a single instance of it.

I use magnesium glycinate chelate because I’m a sucker for fancy vitamin sales pitches, but I’m sure other formulations work just as well.

> Remember that you've got through every single day after a bad night's sleep before just fine.

Not everyone has gotten through every day just fine, though. Drowsiness increases the chance of automobile accidents, decreases working memory, and, over time, contributes to stress-related diseases.

I discovered this recently too. Even in the instances when I still don't get to sleep (eg my 1 year old coming into bed and wriggling in her sleep waking me) I've still felt more refreshed when I've relaxed rather than laid in bed wound up. I'm not into new age / whatever stuff but I like to think of it as night time meditation as while it's still not as good as sleep it's still a great deal better than full blown insomnia! And best of all, sometimes it clears your mind enough to actually sleep.

> It's like a trap that closes tighter about you the more you struggle, and releases if you allow yourself to relax

That is a beautiful analogy. Both in terms of accuracy and imagery.

> 1 year old coming into bed and wriggling in her sleep waking me

I respectfully suggest you put a stop to that before it becomes a habit, as your child needs to learn to go back to sleep in their own bed.

Quietly & calmly return them to bed, tell them to go back to sleep, wait outside a few moments, then go back to bed. Repeat as necessary.

It will take a few nights, but they'll soon realize bed-hopping is not accepted.

(Not to mention, 1 sounds pretty young to have moved from a cot to a bed.)

> It will take a few nights, but they'll soon realize bed-hopping is not accepted.

Honest question: why is this not accepted? Maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up in the West (I’m from Eastern Europe) where we didn’t have that much real estate space and as such us, kids, didn’t have “our own rooms” to sleep in, but I’ve turned out to be a quite a well functioning adult even though I shared my bed with both my parents and with my grand-parents (when my parents were “shipping” me in the winter to live with them). In fact, the very nickname which I’m using on this website reminds me of one winter when I was 7 or 8 and I was watching a Soviet TV show based on a Jules Verne book at my grandparents’ house in the Carpathians. I remember that it was aired each Tuesday night, I was watching it while I was in the same bed with my peasant grandpa’, my brother was in the other bed in the same room with my grandma’, there was nothing wrong with it, it didn’t even crossed anyone’s mind that would be something wrong with it, to this day those moments remain some of the most important in my life. I get that lots and lots of stuff gets sexualised in the States and in the West generally, I guess this is where this phobia against kids sharing beds with adult relatives comes from, but it wasn’t always like this, and saying that letting a kid sharing a bed with a adult parent or close relative is wrong goes against most of our history as a species.

When kids are babies there's a concern about things like the covers suffocating them at night

Later it's more of a practical thing -- the bed's small enough already without a wriggling 4 year old!

> why is this not accepted?

Possibly a poor choice of words on my part. My comment had nothing to do with sexualisation (that didn't even cross my mind), but purely from the point of view of sleep hygiene for both parent and child.

Being able to go back to sleep by oneself is essential to good sleep, and something that people who didn't learn as a young child can struggle with into adulthood.

For the parent it can interrupt their sleep, as the GP mentioned. For someone who already has sleep difficulties, this isn't ideal.

Most practical reason: because as a parent who wants a good night's sleep, it's beneficial to train your kids to sleep well also. :). (And also because good sleep habits - by which I mean being able to fall asleep in your own bed without needing elaborate rituals or snuggling with a parent - are useful for life.)

Really, I think it's mostly about getting them used to the sleeping arrangements you want to have. If they're going to bed share until six, great, let them stay. But if you have them in their own room, teach them to sleep that way.

Note that doesn't mean no snuggling and reading. It just means that when it's time for sleep, learn to sleep in your target bed.

With infants, which doesn't apply to the GP, the current recommendation is to sleep in the same room but separate bed, to minimize the chance of getting squished or suffocated.

>Most practical reason: because as a parent who wants a good night's sleep, it's beneficial to train your kids to sleep well also

I think it would be good to get some evidence here that describes that sleep is most beneficial in the circumstances you are describing.

> learn to sleep in your target bed.

Children aren't NPCs in a video game, tho.

Edit: Apparently they are. My mistake.

Don't worry, whenever parenting advice comes up on HN I'm often as surprised as you are now.

FWIW: After I taught my kids to sleep in their own beds both my health and their mood improved.

YMMW but I was starting to get ill after not sleeping a full night for months.

Emphasis on taught because while we knew we had to teach or kids to eat and walk it never occured to me I had to teach them to sleep.

This isn't our first child and we do normally follow that advice. Unfortunately the 1 year old is teething again at the moment and not coping with it well at all. So bringing her into bed is sometimes the only way we can get her to settle (it's basically that or nobody in the house sleeping on a night due to her screaming. Plus I don't think it's really fair on the baby to put her through that stress when it's teething pain which is out of her control).

Our other kid is 4 years old now and sleeps really well on a night because we followed that advice but as I'm sure you'll know all to well yourself, sometimes as parents you have to break your own rules for your child's wellbeing.

I think as a parent you can generally tell between your childs "i want my own way" screams and their "i'm actually distressed for some reason" screams. Once her teething pains subside I assure you we'll go back to the "tough-love" approach.

> I'm not into new age / whatever stuff but I like to think of it as night time meditation as while it's still not as good as sleep it's still a great deal better than full blown insomnia!

There's a reason advanced mediators have vastly reduced sleep requirements (four hours a night or even less).

Yep. The book 'Quiet your mind and get to sleep' has this sort of advice.

For me something that helped was a cheap fitness watch for $29 that showed me how much sleep I was getting according to the watch.

This certainly isn't the case for everyone, but for people who have some trouble sleeping sometime, possibly exacerbated by disruptions to sleep due to small children or something it's very useful.

My mum always taught me this, and I've always found it works.

Simply lying/relaxing in bed for an hour or two can leave you feeling surprisingly refreshed.

> Lying in bed, relaxing and not focusing on not being able to sleep.

That sounds a lot like meditation! Let your thoughts flow, do not grasp onto them, simply lay there and breathe. It really does help. I have been doing this for the past two weeks and it has helped me realize that my "sleeping problems" are mostly self-created. I found my biggest problem during bedtime was always rooted in thinking. In hindsight, it makes total sense that training myself to let go of my thoughts was the solution. The short term gratification of interesting thought is outweighed by the long term benefits of healthy sleep.

I have started meditation with one of the aims being to improve my sleep. I still have problems sleeping, but it helps a lot when you are able to let thoughts go without ruminating on them.

I like to think of meditation as garbage collection for the brain. If you don't do it at a specific time to suit you, your brain will do it at the only time it's idle (when you're trying to fall asleep)

I can relate to this too - I also sometimes feel anxious when going to sleep, there's something strange about going away and coming back and continuity of self. I think the only reason people aren't afraid of it is that everyone is used to it.

One thing that helped was recognizing that I've never failed at eventually going to sleep - which then relaxes me and makes it easier to actually fall asleep.

For me it was an unintended side effect from starting to meditate. It dawned on me one night that I could just quiet my mind long enough to fall asleep. I wish someone had told me that was a use for the skill, I would have learned it way sooner.

Years ago I noticed that when I used meditation techniques to quiet my mind, it made me sleepy. It's possible that it was just revealing a bit of underlying sleepiness that was usually masked by busy activity. So, I started using it when I was having trouble sleeping, and it worked like a charm. I've been doing it for years and taught my kids how to do it. My elementary school kid, who tended to be on the anxious side, really liked it.

Only problem is that now I get even sleepier when I try to meditate. ;-) Oh, well, I'd rather sleep well than meditate if I can't have both.

> Once I realized I could literally just lie in bed for 8 hours and be OK, I was able to let go.

I think you still need REM cycles to be OK.

edit: Ok, I guess the purpose of this thread was to make everyone feel better, but technically I don't think it's possible to survive without REM sleep.

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-in-anyway-possible-to-survive-wi...

In the vain of feeling better: I find it easier to sleep once I realize I can just skip all obligations the next day and be fine if I don't get any sleep. Eventually I will sleep because it'll be impossible not to. That or I'll die, and I'm not particularly worried about sleep deprivation induced death.

You need REM to feel great.

You will still be far more OK then if you stared at a computer or something.

I'm always able to fall asleep pretty well in familiar environments but in new environments I can rarely sleep.

The whole "lay down with your eyes closed but not actually sleep" thing does work. I survived like this for 5 nights in a row with a maximum of 2 hours of REM sleep in the last few nights. I don't know how but I was quite functional during those days too.

You probably slept more than you think. I have the same issue and for a while after changing cities I was sleeping awfully. Yet I was still functional, my gym performance barely suffered, and the problem has almost entirely gone away now, mostly through telling myself "whatever, I'll be fine".

That's utterly fascinating. What a bastard the human brain is. I'm going to try that.

> It's like a trap that closes tighter about you the more you struggle, and releases if you allow yourself to relax

So it's saidar, not saidin :)

This would never work for me. The idea of lying awake in bed for 8 hours doing nothing sounds like torture.

It's a very zen realization: don't try. Just be.

My wife meditates while sleeping (she figured it out because she only really takes the time when she's in bed and it always put her to sleep - so now if she wakes up in the middle of the night she just meditates and goes back to sleep).

I find that works well for jet lag also (when your body really doesn’t want to be asleep).

Yes the worst thing yon can do to fall asleep is to trying to fall asleep.

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