Waking up sometime after 4am, racing thoughts

[PersephoneParlormaid]

Title should say ‘sometime after 4am’ !
What more can I do? I’m on HRT, taking mag glycinate, don’t drink alcohol, stopped dairy after my evening meal, have a regular sleep routine.
Im having those conversations with people/songs running through my head/worrying about things that don’t matter. Feel like I’m going mad, I just want to sleep until 6am at least.

That's interesting. I do find the same but thinking of words distracts me enough from my 'to do' list and so far has stopped me from my usual night-time catastrophising...

Does your HRT need tweaking? Do you take the progesterone before bed (this helps calm my mind)? I started on quite a low dose of oestrogen but when my 4am insomnia comes back I up the dose a bit and that solves it.

I'm the same. It's been a problem for about 3 years. On HRT. My employer knows about it as I worry I'll make a mistake later in the day when exhausted. I have tried several techniques to calm my racing mind, (hearing conversation / music or playing scenarios over in my head). Some of the ideas work but takes a lot of discipline: Try imagining a house you know well, (but not your own) in your head walk room to room looking in detail at all the room contents is good. (Or) Think of a 5 letter word. eg BENCH Then think of and visualise 5 things beginning with each of the letters :book ball baby etc Basically just bore yourself back to sleep. If all else fails I read my kindle- (never my phone) . I regularly fall asleep just before the 6.30 alarm - horrific. Xxxx

I use this to get back to sleep. It’s a very soothing meditation by Jon Kabat Zinn. Posting in case it helps anyone:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u4gZgnCy5ew&pp=ygU1am9uIGthYmF0IHppbm4gYm9keSBzY2FuIG1lZGl0YXRpb24gZ3VpZGVkIG1lZGl0YXRpb27SBwkJGwGjtWo3m0M%3D&cbrd=1

The only thing that has stopped this for me was proprananol - I used to get panic attacks though so would wake up with heart pounding then lie there feeling like my whole body was itching internally. Now I take 40mg before bed and it helps me sleep and keeps my heart rate steady at 60-63BPM (I monitor on my watch), whereas before I'd almost be getting apneoa and HR down to 40bpm then swinging wildly to 140 when I woke. Really hard to calm down from and I do think it kick starts the brain into anxiety first thing which is not good.

Snap! It's awful. I have had twenty + years of bad sleep, people have no idea how debilitating it is on every aspect of life.

I have the best mattress I could afford, orthopaedic pillow, cosy linen and cotton bedding, white noise machine (although I find brown noise more soothing so I use the deeper sounding setting). Lavender pillow spray, magnesium, the whole shebang.

Still doesn't work. I thought exercising more would help but it just makes me even more mentally"wired" (`whilst simultaneously being a zombie?!)

I think it's auDHD which isn't helping alongside peri in my case., not sure if that applies to you. Watching this thread through droopy eyes for any tips!

I do alphabets, think of a topic and then do an a-z of it. So, towns of Scotland, boys names, shops - whatever. On a good night I only get to about m, on a bad night, it takes about three topics. But it shuts out the overthinking which is the thing that's keeping me away!

Had this for years and recently read about how to curb these racing thoughts .

1. Think of a word , let's say star , star ends in an R so think of a word that starts with an R , rainy , so now a word that ends with a Y , yellow so your next word starts with a W and so on .

1. Another way of doing it would be think of a word , we'll stick with star , this time you think of all the words you can that begin with an S before moving on to the next letter T and so on .

It really takes your mind off all those thoughts that were running in your head .
Hope it works for you .

I have this when I'm very stressed. I've had a course of cbt recently and tried the things they suggest for getting back to sleep and the breathing techniques but they were not having any effect at all. What I have found works is telling myself it is time for sleep. So as soon as I wake up I think or say outlook that I'd is night time and I'm going back to sleep. And then every time a thought starts to enter my head I repeat that no, it's sleep time. It is like one part of my brain is interrupting the annoying part that just wants to worry! I visualise the worries, song lyrics etc stopping before they have a chance to form.

It does seem quite silly writing it down but it has honestly helped me be able to fall back to sleep.

calm app works - I use the background noise ones - rain falling etc rather than anyone talking.