Okay. I have a very comfortable recliner chair where I do my reading out of bed.
You go ahead and do what you need to do to get your sleep. I was just trying to tell you what sleep researchers have found to work in helping folks get the sleep they need.
I sure understand how anxiety can interfere with the ability to sleep. I think your strategies for working with the anxiety are sane and sensible.
The only comment I would make is that if your strategies don't work, stop trying to sleep and do something to take your mind off what you are anxious about. Try to learn that the pillow and the bed mean sleep time and even if you are sleepy when you go to bed, if you can't sleep because the anxieties take over, get up and do something boring to take your mind off anxieties until you are overwhelmingly sleepy again. And then don't allow yourself to take the anxieties to bed again.
Thinking is a behavior and you can control what you think about as you have already told me. Much better to spin out a fantasy than think about what you need to do that hasn't been done yet.
Re: But I *am* sleepy when I go to bed.
You go ahead and do what you need to do to get your sleep. I was just trying to tell you what sleep researchers have found to work in helping folks get the sleep they need.
I sure understand how anxiety can interfere with the ability to sleep. I think your strategies for working with the anxiety are sane and sensible.
The only comment I would make is that if your strategies don't work, stop trying to sleep and do something to take your mind off what you are anxious about. Try to learn that the pillow and the bed mean sleep time and even if you are sleepy when you go to bed, if you can't sleep because the anxieties take over, get up and do something boring to take your mind off anxieties until you are overwhelmingly sleepy again. And then don't allow yourself to take the anxieties to bed again.
Thinking is a behavior and you can control what you think about as you have already told me. Much better to spin out a fantasy than think about what you need to do that hasn't been done yet.
{{{hugs}}}