Ugh.

[brainwalker]

I've been having a lot of trouble sleeping lately. My body seems to tire out well before my mind does, so whenever I feel like sleeping, I end up spending an hour or two (or three) lying in bed thinking about all the crap that's stressing me out in my life. That's a lot of fun. It's even more fun in situations like today when I'm under the

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[cbtr]

hey Brian, I know a bit of what you are describing about trouble sleeping. But I wonder do you suffer from migraines? It sounds like the pain from visual or arual stimulation might be connected to a migraine. What has helped me, and hopefully might help you, are a totally dark room with all light absent. I realize that this is difficult & impossible where I live now so I have an eyemask that I keep in the fridge (if you don't have one, a wet facecloth ran under cold/cool water & wrung out works too.) The coolness is soothing and the blocking of light really help me. As far as turning the old thinking machine off, well that is another matter that I have not been able to defeat. I have read in a couple of different places recently that if you listen to music about 45 minutes before trying to fall asleep it helps. I remember Cheryl fell asleep almost every night with very soft music playing in the background. A final note & I will not admit this to my husband or kids but being on the computer up until bedtime definately overstimulates my brain & that in itself keeps me from falling asleep. Hope any of this might help .... take care.

[brainwalker]

Well, I'm no scholar on the subject, but I don't get headaches all that often, and they usually aren't quite that sensitive to light and sound. I had a friend that suffered from migranes once, and if memory serves, the biggest differences between a migrane and just a regular headache are that the pain "pulses", rather than remaining constant, and that they tend to show up more often. I've had a "pulsing" headache before, but I don't get them with even the remotest frequency, and I'm not sure how broad the definition of the term "migrane" is...

But, yea, it's easy to close of visual stimulation. Just close your eyes and duck under the covers. Unless there's "dry lightning" going on outside, which there was last night. But it's damn near impossible to close yourself off from sounds, especially when your house is smack-dab in the middle of town, and it's the summertime, so the AC is cranking out coolness. I eventaully had to dig around for some earplugs I bought to protect myself from Reako's snoring after last year's SugoiCon, and I guess that finally did the trick. Wish I had remembered those sooner.

And listening to music can help, but not when it hurts to do so. I've been guilty of falling asleep with headphones on before.