How do you get back to sleep ??

I read for an hour when I wake up in the night which I always do and then I plan the meals for the week ahead and try to memorise the ingredients I need but invariably I have forgotten it all by morning .

PollyTickle

Ah, thank you MerylStreep now I get it.
I do the alphabet thing which often works but change to other subjects.
Now I know the purpose I’ll stick to one subject.
Thank you

Me too MerylStreep. I will stop varying my virtual walkabout. The most boring one is the one I’ll stick to from now on. Go into the supermarket, pick up a basket, walk over to the first aisle. It gets tedious as you walk around the store.
?

I go through my finances in my head - deducting direct debits from income and so forth or I work through the budget for things like decorating my house. It sends me to sleep almost immediately. I thought it was because it is quite a boring subject, but when I think about it I reckon it's MerylStreep's theory in action.

I’ve had such spells, not sure why as it doesn’t happen all the time. When it does and I can’t get back to sleep after a short while, I just get up, go downstairs, tea and rich tea biscuits, check the papers, and I’m soon ready to go back to sleep.

I don't need much sleep (never have) so I'm often wide awake with tea and toast at 4 am.

My friend, though, has big trouble 'getting back to sleep' as she's convinced that anything less than eight hours is unhealthy. She tries to settle for hours - what a waste of time!

I wonder if Melania sleeps well Serendipity staring at that face all night long. Like a Halloween pumpkin on the pillow

Hey, each to their own, Serendipity. If sleeping with getting to sleep with DT works for you, stick with it .

Wow, interesting or what....
Im glad i asked this question, so many interesting replies.
Far, far more enthralling than flippin DONALD TRUMP ...I mean - seriously!!!!!!

You made me laugh violetsky with THE ORANGE ONE hahahaha

I go downstairs, make a cup of good old fashioned cocoa, take it back to bed and read my Kindle for a while.
I’m not saying it invariably works, but it beats the endless tossing and turning.

Ah, thank you MerylStreep now I get it.
I do the alphabet thing which often works but change to other subjects.
Now I know the purpose I’ll stick to one subject.
Thank you

I’m often awake during the night and then I start thinking about what I need to do for work, so I keep a notepad by my bed to jot down a ‘things to do’ list - then I often end up looking at the threads on GN for a while. As often as not sleep is so elusive that I end up going down and making a cup of tea - occasionally meeting my husband in the kitchen doing the same thing, which is always a happy coincidence.

I write a letter to someone! Not literally on paper, but compose it in my mind. Works a treat. I also find taking one or two deep breaths in and out very slowly, helps too.

I find the best way to get back to sleep is to recite poetry over and over to myself. My favourite is Wordsworth's Daffodils or the Shakespeare sonnet Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.
I never manage more than a couple of recitations before I'm asleep.

If you have an Echo device in your bedroom, I can also recommend
Music for sleep by Max Richter. I set a sleep timer for one hour, but I never hear the end.

sight not "site"

I often wake around 3am. I go to the loo (whether I need to or not) and mostly fall asleep again quite quickly. Occasionally, I have difficulty getting back to sleep and that's when I prop myself up in bed, switch on the bedside lamp and read a few pages of my book. The lamp is not very bright and is behind me so it illuminates the book but is not in my direct line of site and I start to feel sleepy again after 10-15 minutes. It works every time for me. Each to their own.

Counting for me, picturing the orange one would give me nightmares

I’ve said this many time before when this subject comes up.
Many years ago I went to a sleep therapist.
It doesn’t matter what you see, count etc. The science is, that you keep to the same subject. This is because your training your brain. It learns ah, this is where I go to sleep
It’s not an instant fix, that’s why you have to keep concentrating
On one subject.
This is the reason lots of people fail because they give up after a week or 2?

I do that as well Grannybags or try to make as many words as I can from a larger word. Fall back on going through every verse of Good King Wenceslas that usually works.

I fiten find that a quick shower works because it relaxes me.
I count downwards from 100.

If i cant get back to sleep within an hour I get up and just to jobs relating to my business until I feel tired again then I go back to bed. Being retired I can make my own timetable.

I use Pzizz. If I remember! Sometimes, like today, I forget. So I design my dream bedroom in my head and eventually that gets me off to sleep.

Grannybags I do that too, latest subject is GN user names. Fortunately I rarely have to use it, if I’ve been asleep for over seven hours, say it’s 6am, I just get up.

I concentrate on breathing, in for 4 hold for 7 out for 8 it works like magic for me. It bores me to sleep i guess. ??

If picturing Donald Trump works for you, great, but I can't imagine that I could switch off my thoughts in the way you do if I was picturing that particular face.

Actually, I've tried all sorts to help me drop off, but still haven't found a method that routinely works for me.

Methods that involve using my brain, such as counting backwards, or going through the alphabet thinking of names that begin with each letter, don't work for me.
Quite the opposite - once my brain is involved in an activity like that, it goes into everdrive and won't switch off again!

I now listen to audio books when I go to bed, and often go to sleep listening to those although I switch it off if I feel myself starting to drift off.
Uunfortunately, though not surprisingly, the boring books ones are much more effective!

The trouble is, even though I set a timer for the audio to switch off after, say, thirty minutes, I often spend ages the next day trying to find the place in the book where I must have fallen asleep.
In fact, I don't know how it happened, but I once 'missed' about three hours of a story and didn't realize for several days.

If I wake up in the night for some reason, which I do most nights, I try to get back to sleep without the audiobook, but if I reach a point where I am tossing and turning and just can't switch my mind off again, I do now put it on again because if I don't, I know that I might still be awake several hours later.

I choose a subject and go through the alphabet thinking of one for each letter. It can be flowers, cars, names, even cakes!

Radio, tuned to something utterly boring and on a very low volume.