How do you switch off at night if you're an overthinker?

[Imatorturedpoet]

I struggle to sleep at the best of times, I find it very difficult to switch off. I've tried counting, audio books, reading, meditation, various apps, relaxation exercises, rain and wave sounds etc etc.

Any other suggestions that work for you? I've had a rubbish day today and really don't want to replay everything in my head all night.

Glass of wine always helps 😂

Snoozeband with audiobooks. Mainly comedy ones. Nothing I have to follow as I never know when I'm going to go to sleep. Also not podcasts as they're too much like real life a lot of the time.

If my battery is low and I can't use audiobooks then the a-z game. Action films is hard I think. A for the avengers, b for Batman...

Yoga really helps.

Put the TV on with something mindless that I don't really want to watch.

I don't think you are really an over thinker 😂

Reading does usually work for me, sorry that it doesn't for you.

I have two non-sexual fantasies that help. One is about sorting out a huge crop of back spots on a faceless person. The other is a conversation on a train with an ex. I think they're so familiar and well-worn that they don't engage my brain.

I count..I usually only get up to between 10-20 and get distracted but force my brain to start counting again. It actually works for me. Most of the time. But then I dream so vividly all night I don't wake refreshed anyway!

Turn off the light.
Take a deep breath and relax.

In your mind, picture yourself somewhere.
A field, a town, a city, a mountain.
Now.. where are you going to go?
Who are you going to meet?

Invent a new town, a perfect town, with people and places.

Imagine you own a cafe and the customers come in to have coffee and a chat, who are they?
It's your world, they could be anyone.

If you're strolling along a cliff Edge, what can you see? Are there boats in the ocean? Distant tolls of bells from the buoys? Sea birds swooping?

Picture them in your minds eye, describe them with your inner.voice. have conversations with people you're imagining. What accents do they have? Where are they from?

You could create a different world every night or have one perpetual world with characters that come to life the moment you close your eyes.

What sort of audiobooks have you tried?

I have to have a semi-interesting, semi-dull non fiction book, read in a soothing voice, if possible by a British author. Nothing emotive but interesting enough that it distracts my mind from whatever I'd like to be thinking about. It needs to be fairly quiet so it sounds quite distant because that makes it more like I'm already falling asleep.

If it's really bad I sometimes put the sound of a stream over the top of it!

The other option (again sometimes layered on top) is thought exercises to distract me. So naming 4 objects beginning with each letter of the alphabet, or as many as I can for each letter. And I build a scene with all the objects as I go, one scene per letter like a children's alphabet book. One could probably do a scene with all the letters if you were going 4 per letter.

You can also do the same thing with categories - as many butterflies or trees or cars that you can name.

Or planning out the house I would have if I won the lottery (a highly academic exercise as I don't enter the lottery).

The aim, for me, with all of these things is to create a slightly dreamlike quality, so abstractness and maybe things that don't quite fit together is all okay, even beneficial.

Or counting backwards in 7s or 3s or whatever is difficult enough to occupy enough of your mind for the rest of it to go to sleep.

Paul McKenna has a sleep hypnosis thing on YouTube which is quite effective but annoys me because my phone screen stays on. I suspect if you find it works (for me it does but not often enough to bother) then you could find a paid for version that didn't do that.

The ‘Nothing much happens’ podcast on spotify, get a comfy snoozemask with bluetooth speakers.

Sleepaid from Boots and a sleep app.

Get drunk.
Failing that my go to nowadays is meal planning. I'm so, so fucking bored of meal planning.

ETA: when I'm really struggling, melatonin.

Trazodone and TV. Got to keep the brain fully occupied, visually and aurally, until the pill kicks in.

Nothing else works—I've tried it all, for years.

Listen to Nothing Much Happens. It works like a charm.

I wish the some of the suggestions in this thread worked for me but they don't. I need noise. I hate to say it but shit tv that I don't care about. At the moment it's Below Deck.

I find a specific sort of podcast works for me. People chatting about something I'm interested in. It can't be a story or a drama, so for me audiobooks don't work. I don't know why. It can't be sleep stories with those calming relaxing voices as i find them boring and start thinking about other things. The same with meditation or nature sounds. But if it's just people talking about something I want to hear about, I manage to stop thinking about other things that keep me awake and fall asleep.

That would be far too stimulating for me unfortunately

Tried that! 😂

The Michael Mosley podcast Sleep Well is brilliant. Really soothing. So sad he has passed 😞

Can you suggest any suitable audio books? I've tried listening to some, but find I wake up when it switches off - I set a timer.

I have tried the a-z game, but my mind wanders back to stupid thoughts.

I have a really busy mind when trying to fall asleep, so anything such as noise, or counting or visualising etc just keeps me awake for longer. The only thing that sometimes works for me is imagining a blank piece of white paper. Very random I know but does work for me!

I listen to my favourite audio books/shows and set a timer for an hour and a half. Because I've already heard them and I'm so familiar with them, my brain knows it's okay to fall sleep. My favourites are Project Hail Mary and the Cabin Pressure series.

Have you heard of ASMR? It’s a bit Marmite. I find the whispering relaxing and sends me off to sleep but if you don’t get the nice feeling it may just irritate you!

I sometimes have to have a combined approach. Usually I just read nonfiction books (history, popular science) or ones I've read before on my kindle. (All the Game of Thrones books have kept me going two months). When I've had a bad day I've tried; Headspace, any drowsy pills in the house eh antihistamines , weighted blanket, warm milk etc. Or a few episodes of something on BBC sounds; Farming Today is quite good.
The worst thing is overthinking how bad tomorrow will be due to lack of sleep, I don't know how you get around that!