Trouble Sleeping With a Goal

[Aeolus]

Whenever going to sleep knowing I want to WBTB or even during a WBTB when I want to WILD it is harder than trying to fall asleep without any goal. Last night for me was a perfect example of this problem. I am planning to attempt FILD each day this week. Yesterday was the first. I went to bed at 9:30, which is early, just because I had a feeling I would have this problem. I resisted the temptation to check the time so I don't know how long it took but it was definitely over an hour of me trying to fall asleep. And then I woke up at 12:30 naturally, and it took around 20 minutes for me to get back to sleep. And then I woke up naturally AGAIN at 3:30, and it took another 20 minutes to fall back asleep. IT DIDN'T END, I woke up again at an unknown time, I decided to just try rest a bit and try my attempt then, because surely I had gotten enough sleep. So I was attempting the technique when my WBTB alarm went off, and at that point I gave up, and it took around 10 minutes to fall back asleep. I'm sure a big problem is just thinking about what is going wrong and getting angered over it, but it's hard to control these thoughts. I feel even if I tried a relaxation technique it would go to waste because right after it I would start worrying again. This is a mental problem rather than physical. How can I just empty my mind. Also I have one more problem. When attempting techniques like this I often get nervous and heat up, how can I help this?

[melanieb]

Let's take this bit by bit... When you get nervous and heat up...this could be caused by a combination of anxiety over failing the technique plus a minor spike in metabolism. The body can experience sudden and brief spikes in heart-rate and processing of simple sugars, and this commonly causes both anxiety and warmth. A fan by the foot of your bed can help. So can sucking on an ice cube or two. Relaxation techniques can help with anxiety, which sounds like it may be one of the problems preventing you from achieving your goals. The best advice I can offer is to pick a time two hours before sleep where you simply enpty your mind of the weights of the day, indcluding thoughts about sleep techiques. As for the waking up after three hour periods and WBTB issues...your body has its own paterns and cycles, and it's not about to change them for your wishes. Finding those rhythms can help you achieve better sleep. Attempting sleep an hour earlier to get in a WBTB won't affect your body clock. Go to bed when you are tired from the day, and wake up at a consistent time. Keeping your body on a schedule, even if it takes one to four weeks to find a reliable pattern, will do more for your lucidity attempts than anything else. Rest well!

[Triad]

I'm an LD novice but I am not new to what you are experiencing, most of my life I pretty much fought with myself to sleep because I simply could not fall asleep and this only compounded the problem. I can fall asleep fairly easy these days though, and here's how - STOP IT. Eventually I learned I could stop all the buzzing anxious, stressful, frustrated thoughts by just 'shoving' the thoughts aside as they came. "I don't feel like working tomo-" Nope, not going to let that happen. Immediately abort the thought, cut it short and cut them all short until they pretty much stop as soon as they start. Once you calm down and relax without all of those thoughts being imposed on you, you can finally let go of time and your brain will start its natural unwinding process and you will get absorbed into the chaotic thoughts (you probably wont remember them) and conk out. Mantras and such can still be applied here once you learn to keep your mind clear, just abort the unwanted thoughts and leave room for whatever you need. It's a hard thing to do after living with the issue for a long time, and everybody is different. What made it click with me was the futility of it all, fighting myself wasn't worth it so I just learned to forget time and decided to lie there resting, even if it meant hours, was overall better than stressing and getting aggravated at myself for hours at something that was (at the time) out of my control.