How To Train Yourself To Fall Asleep Easily
For most of my life up until I was about 22 years old, I really struggled to fall asleep at night. I had terrible anxiety some nights, other nights it was just racing thoughts, unable to get tired. It took probably an average of one to two hours for me to fall asleep after first closing my eyes, if I could fall asleep at all, and I was constantly sleep deprived.
Around age 20 I started seeing a counselor for anxiety, and she recommended I try classical conditioning — basically to be really disciplined with a few routines in order to train my brain to associate certain things with sleepiness. At the time my only real routine before bed was to brush my teeth at some point and turn off the lights at some point. We came up with a few triggers I might be able to associate with sleepiness and I think within the first two weeks I noticed a difference. A few months later I was falling asleep easily, regularly, and today I cannot keep my eyes open once my head hits the pillow, almost regardless of what time it is or how sleepy I was before I got in bed. To say my life has been changed by these simple hacks is an understatement, so I’d love to share them with you!
Here’s the routine I started with:
I was very rigid with this at the beginning.
About an hour before bed, switch off the main (bright) ceiling light and switch to a dim floor lamp
Shower, always with the same lavender scented soap (this scent now makes me sleepy)
Brush my teeth
Turn on a fan (light breeze + white noise)
Get in bed & scroll for a while (I know a lot of experts say not to scroll on your phone in bed… I didn’t really find this to be an issue; I found it calming if I was scrolling on the right things, and this was before social media was really much of a thing so it was probably different. Either way, you’ll have to just experiment for yourself)
Right before closing my eyes (and no sooner), turn off the lamp. This was to help my brain associate darkness with actual sleep, not just nighttime or just rest. Sometimes I would lay in bed for a while at first without falling asleep, but I would try to sleep. If I couldn’t sleep and wanted to scroll again or get up for a bit, I would turn the light back on. At the beginning I would even turn on my light when I got up to go to the bathroom. And then as soon as I was starting to feel somewhat sleepy and ready to try to sleep again, I’d turn the light back off. I was very rigid with this part of the routine.
Here’s what I do today:
I can be much, much more flexible now with this routine without a problem, though I think having dim lights for at least an hour before bed makes a big difference still. I have trouble falling asleep if I don’t do that step.
Open the blinds right away when I wake up and rely on sunlight as much as possible during the day for light
Whenever the sun sets, switch to warm, dim lights and if my screens aren’t already on the blue-light-blocking yellow mode, switch all screens to yellow mode.
Stop work around the time the sun sets, but if not right away, at least save time to have an hour or two of winding down and getting out of work mode before bed.
Eat dinner, shower, brush my teeth
Usually watch an episode of some show if I can stay awake (by this point in the routine I’m already usually very sleepy)
Turn off lights & turn on white noise (Right now I use our air purifier for white noise, but when traveling I use an app for white noise… usually by this point I’m sleepily asking Nathan to turn it on because I’m already half asleep)
I can now do these things out of order without a problem but still find that dim lights before bed and white noise help me a lot. If I ever don’t have them when traveling for some reason it does feel harder to fall asleep. It’s very rare that I can’t fall asleep now… only if I’m jet lagged or very stressed out. Otherwise now I’m usually out within 2 minutes or less.
A few keys to choosing good SLEEPY ROUTINES that work for you:
Try to choose routines that you can do from anywhere, even if you’re not home. This will help with sleep when traveling! For example, the breeze of a fan is hard to maintain while traveling unless you always pack a fan (I actually did pack a mini fan with me everywhere at first because it started to help calm me when I was anxious too — a nice side effect!— but when it broke I learned to rely on just a white noise app in place of a fan for sleep)
Try to avoid routines that you will also encounter other times of the day. For example, my lavender-scented soap became a sleep trigger, but if I had smelled lavender other times of day as well, it might not have worked well. If you use a soap, try not to have the same soap in your kitchen… keep the trigger specific to sleepy times.
I highly recommend trying out lighting as a trigger. There are lots of studies about light therapy and how our bodies naturally respond to bright lights & sunlight with certain chemicals to keep us awake and to warm dim lights (like a camp fire) with other chemicals that signal to our bodies that it’s almost time for bed. As much as you can watch the sunrise & sunset and mimic outdoor light inside your home, do it! Lights are also usually a pretty easy one to maintain when traveling.
If you can try going to bed and waking up at the same time each day, that will help too. I know that’s not realistic for everyone’s schedule but it definitely makes it a little easier.
I hope this works for you if you’re having trouble sleeping! It is a discipline at first and you might feel like it’s not successful for the first couple of weeks, but I am soooo glad I stuck with it because now you would never know I used to stay awake all night! I can barely keep my eyes open these days as soon as I even enter the bedroom— something I’m very grateful to say!