After I've made a middle of the night visit to the loo (sigh, every bloody night) my mind/brain does the following, resulting in hours of wakefulness:
- plays some kind of song incessantly on a loop, ranging from an advertising jingle I've heard that day through to a song I love but haven't heard for 20 years. The more I try to stop it, the more incessant the "earworm", as the Germans call it, is.
- worries about current situations with work/pandemic/you name it
- races over things that aren't anxiety inducing but most definitely do not need to be thought about at three o clock in the morning.
I've tried sort of body scan relaxation, "start at your feet and relax each part of your body" but I only ever get to the feet before racing off on other wakeful loopholes as above. Same with breathing; I manage about two controlled breaths before my mind darts off to something else. It ends up where I'm basically internally shouting at myself to RELAX AND STOP THINKING, which is clearly counter productive.
If anyone has any tips that work for them, I'd be really pleased to hear them.
When I was single I would turn on the light and read (and I do have a little book lamp thing so that's not impossible now) but I love reading and tend in that situation to read for hours and hours and there's work in the morning regarding. So I'm really looking for ideas to go help me to go back to sleep rather than advice to get up and do something else.