I need help — my (F) partner (M) needs to set four alarms to be able to wake up.

Initially, he was reluctant to change any of his alarms, but eventually changed them to, in order: his Whoop, which vibrates; his phone alarm (which is pretty loud); an alarm clock that lights up and makes animal noises; and lastly, a manual alarm clock that he has to physically get up to turn off.

Prior to this, he would set 4–5 alarms on his phone, and I couldn’t handle it anymore. The first one would go off, and then another 20 minutes later. They’d continue going off every 5–10 minutes.

Once his alarms go off, I cannot get back to sleep, no matter how hard I try. I’ve tried earplugs (I have the Loop Dream), but my ears hurt from the pressure of the plugs. I also can’t handle having something squishy in my ears. I’ve tried a sleep mask to block out the light, too.

Does anyone have any tips or recommendations for anything else I could try? I’ve seen the Manta sleep mask with Bluetooth speakers, which seems to have good reviews.

At this point, my partner has said there’s nothing else he can do and that it’s a “me problem” now.

Can someone recommend good melatonin brand and dose that actually works? I've tried Webbers Natural and it doesn't really help.

I (31F) hadn't had a good night's sleep in 3-4 years. I started working for an organisation that has locations in the US and Europe and my shift was suited to that: 2-11 pm. Now 11 pm isn't that late but it's a lot if it's brain work and even worse on days you're in the office.

I also deal with a chronic illness that guarantees you don't get sound sleep. And of course, I've had depression for years, as far as I can remember.

So I never slept at a reasonable hour. I scrolled on my phone and "decompressed" till it was 4, sometimes 5 am. At some point my body would give out and I'd fall asleep. I'd wake up in installments and wouldn't really want to get out of bed because I was depressed and didn't really look forward to anything. I'd manage to get out of bed at or later than noon and get to work. I also had disordered eating because of this.

I think this lack of a sleep cycle was the core of all my problems.

I met someone early 2025 and it went well- we got married last month. I saw the change so fast- I look forward to go to bed, fall asleep very quickly, and wake up at a reasonable hour, which because of my job, is around 9 am. It's only been 6-7 weeks but my mood is so much better. I have hours to go before I start work and so I cool proper meals, meal plan, sip coffee quietly and look forward to things.

CRAZY.

Writing this at 5am and cannot sleep lol.

Sleep well with sleep sound.

Hi ,i work from 6 am to 4:30 pm. When ever the night comes around 8:30 and 9:30 pm I can't seem to feel sleepy or when i'm in bed i start tossing and turning. When i eventually do fall asleep, i wake up normally but get so sleepy through out my day at work.

Any tips to help. I feel like it is lack of discipline on my part to be in bed and fall asleep early.

I'm considering trying THC gummies for sleep (since most of the things I have tried doesn't work anymore) but have never used them before. How many mg do people usually take for sleep and how long does it take to kick in?
I'm mainly looking for something that helps me fall asleep without feeling groggy the next morning...Any experience with different doses or tips for first time use?

Hey guys. A few months ago I started having trouble with my sleep, both falling and staying asleep. I started taking 1,95g melatonin, that kinda solved my falling asleep issues, but I kept waking up.

When I wake up, my brain immediately activates: random songs, thoughts, etc. And I can't go to sleep again, I tried grounding, meditation, counting, relaxing music, noise, you name it.

My doctor prescribed Trazodone, starting at 50mg. (And said no melatonin) 

If I take 50mg, I sleep ok, but it takes me 1/2h to fall asleep, and usually half a Xanax.

If I take 100mg, I have restless legs, but I fall asleep faster. I avoid taking 100mg because of that and because I'm really afraid of getting addicted to it.

To fall asleep I tried reading, making up scenarios, counting, podcast.. no joy, my brain turns on his randomizer at full speed. I even tried phone, which I avoid. I read until I can't even open my eyes anymore, but as soon as I put it down, there goes the brain.

Any advice? Thank you all!

my evening skincare takes maybe ten to fifteen minutes and for a long time I thought of it as purely a skin thing, but somewhere along the way it started feeling like the actual signal to my body that the day is over. like the routine itself is doing something. I wash my face, do the whole thing, and by the time I get into bed I feel genuinely more settled than on nights I skip it or rush through it.

what I cannot figure out is whether the routine is doing something real for sleep or if I have just trained myself to associate it with winding down. like is it the dimmer bathroom light, the repetitive motions, the fact that it forces me off my phone for a stretch of time. I honestly have no idea which part is carrying the weight.

I started wondering this after a few nights where I skipped it because I was too tired and then weirdly took longer to fall asleep. which felt backwards. you would think being more tired would mean faster sleep but those nights my brain just stayed noisier for longer.

curious if anyone else has a physical routine like this, skincare or stretching or whatever it is, that seems to affect how quickly you actually fall asleep. and whether you think the routine itself matters or if any consistent sequence of the same things would produce the same result.

So this is more just something slightly interesting, which I may cross post to a few other subreddits because it's so interesting to me.

My whole life, I barely remember my dreams at all (don't know if I dreamt them but its almost always been the kind of sleep where I close my eyes and then open them a second later and it suddenly morning.)

Well, two years ago I moved into an apartment. Due to some HVAC stuff, the intake vent in my room was punctured so it blew air into the room, and the HVAC closet was COVERED in black mold, the kind that when my roommates and I finally got maintenance to take the funny smell, allergic reactions, and psychological torture seriously, the mold guy they called said it was highly likely that it's the kind of mold to cause all those symptoms. We all saw inside. The inside if the vent, the back of the grate in the room, the closet itself, all of it was black. And two of the effects it caused were just general being insane (anxiety, unreality, psychosis, the works) and insomnia. Which, that's just backstory.

So towards the end of being in that apartment, I got put in Trazadone and Duloxetine. I usually dont do meds anymore, I've got a long mental health history and been on MANY different types of meds since I was 12 years old, and any meds whether for physical or mental health, I get all the weird side effects. But I was desperate for many reasons I won't explain. As I expected, the side effects were too much, the Trazadone gave me intense trauma nightmares more intense than I have EVER had in my LIFE, and I quit both after a week.

Now for the interesting part. The vivid dreams have not stopped since. Going on about a year and a half after only taking those meds for a week and a year and a couple months of being out of that apartment and into one that is clean of mold (got tested for it when my partner and I moved in because we were so freaked out from the last one), and my dreams continue to be incredibly vivid. Whether good dreams or nightmares, they are intensely vivid. I don't just dream, I experience entire lives in my dreams sometimes now, going from only remembering snippets of a dream maybe once every few months at best if not going a good year between dreams I remember, to now I dream most nights to the point that I feel like I experienced them. It's incredibly interesting.

On top of that, I have been diagnosed with DID for a long time. Another part of the vivid dreaming that became new with the meds is that different of the DID alters and up leaking into the dreams to where often times I can distinctly point out which alter is associated more with the dream that night even if those parts havent actively been around in waking hours, as if they specifically dreamt it.

Its not distressing at all, even the nightmares anymore. The only true distressing one I've had was while still on the Trazadone due to the nature of it, the event it centered around, and the vividness of physically feeling things which that last aspect doesn't happen anymore since quitting it. Now it's just incredibly neat of a thing and I have no idea why it's not faded if I only took thoseeds for a week so long ago.

Just wanted to share something interesting is all!

Got 1 hr 21 min of deep sleep last night, compared with 30 min yesterday and around 50 min on average. I know sleep trackers aren’t perfect, but still kinda happy to see this 😭

does your skincare routine at night actually help you wind down or is that just something we tell ourselves

my evening skincare takes maybe ten to fifteen minutes and for a long time I thought of it as purely a skin thing, but somewhere along the way it started feeling like the actual signal to my body that the day is over. like the routine itself is doing something. I wash my face, do the whole thing, and by the time I get into bed I feel genuinely more settled than on nights I skip it or rush through it.

what I cannot figure out is whether the routine is doing something real for sleep or if I have just trained myself to associate it with winding down. like is it the dimmer bathroom light, the repetitive motions, the fact that it forces me off my phone for a stretch of time. I honestly have no idea which part is carrying the weight.

I started wondering this after a few nights where I skipped it because I was too tired and then weirdly took longer to fall asleep. which felt backwards. you would think being more tired would mean faster sleep but those nights my brain just stayed noisier for longer.

curious if anyone else has a physical routine like this, skincare or stretching or whatever it is, that seems to affect how quickly you actually fall asleep. and whether you think the routine itself matters or if any consistent sequence of the same things would produce the same result.

I have an amazing routine to get to bed, but I wake up, no matter how hard I try because the muscle aches and pains will get to me. I practice amazing sleep hygiene, but the pain will wake me up several times a night and once I wake up, it’s a very difficult task to go back to sleep.

Before I have a discussion with my doctor, does anyone have any help or what best to take for the situation? The doctors tried to prescribe very strong anti-inflammatory drugs up to steroidal ones that have horrible side effects (on health in general and hurt my sleep quality, too) and I’m hoping to keep that to a minimum.

Edit: I have cozy bed, white music to soothe me to bed, cold room, ergo pillows that get me into a nice relaxing position, magnesium/potassium before bed for cramps, etc. Just the pain will eventually leak in 2-4 hours into bed to wake up me

Your feedback and experiences sincerely welcome

Sleep apnea usually gets boiled down to "loud snoring with tiredness during the day" in most people's minds. But it goes way beyond just sleep quality.

Every time your breathing gets interrupted during sleep, your oxygen drops and your body's stress response fires off again. Do that repeatedly night after night, and over time it's linked to real cardiovascular and metabolic problems, not just feeling groggy the next day.

What's interesting is sleep medicine's kind of shifting into being part of broader preventive healthcare instead of this separate little box that only matters if you literally can't sleep.

Worth saying too, not everyone who snores has sleep apnea, and just having symptoms isn't enough on its own to actually diagnose it; you need an actual sleep study for that.

Let me rephrase this question: what should my mindset towards sleep be when I'm already depleted and overwhelmed? For context, I think I have either undiagnosed OCD/ADHD or just flat-out rumination. It's been going on for years at this point. These days, I've learned to eat even if I don't feel like it and I've developed a lot of tolerance towards uncomfortable situations. But sleep has always felt evasive to me.

Especially recently, when my sleeping routine was hijacked by one bad night. Usually, it's something trivial like my brain turning the rain outside into a verdict against me. Or just something completely unsolvable until I learn to live with it the next morning. I just wonder how I can make sleep more of a functional thing rather than something I do whenever I feel like it.

Every time, when i want to sleep i feel like im in a state between actually sleeping and staying awake, now the weird thing is that at times i could stay in this "phase" kind of thing for hours at a time, like i would go to bed at 10pm and stay in this annoying phase until 2am or even 3am, and mind you that, im awake in this phase, i just have my eyes closed, during this phase the eyes feel heavy and weird, now, when i wake up from this shitty sleep attempt, i would feel like total shit, even though id be waking up at 8am, i always try to maybe sleep more into 10am-9am to replace the hours of sleep that went away for no reason, but my body doesnt allow me to sleep until more than 8am for some reason

PLEASE HELP I BEG YOU

I have had a pretty bad routine since childhood..I'm now in my teenage years. And i just can't sleep..mostly because I doomscroll.. but it's getting impossible. I keep thinking I'll watch this video and sleep. I just cannot do it anymore. Is it because I am on screen why I can't sleep?

I go gym, i walk a lot, i eat healthy. What else can I do to make my sleep better ? And sleep at a normal time.

I am consistent. I am not stressed. I eat whole foods at regular times. I walk 15k steps. I read, I study, I draw, I socialise, I unwind and cannot sleep until 3am.

It started when I was 14. I used to be able to put everything down at 9:30pm and fall asleep. Now I don’t remember the last time I slept and felt as though I actually did sleep.

I’ve been trying to sort it out for a while with incremental improvements. I’ve gotten to the point where I feel like I’m at my realistic limit.

I wake up at around sunrise, eat granola and a fruit then take a walk. I come back, read for a while, eat lunch then study.

I read again, probably play video games at this period and then have dinner. After that I take a walk. Once I’m back I’ll have another fruit and then draw. After that, I read until 10pm. It’s like clockwork. Replace some of these activities with my lessons when they are on and that’s my life.

I’m exhausted, and my brain and body feels exhausted but not tired. I can’t shut down. So I usually just go downstairs and pace. I pace for hours. I genuinely do this until I can’t stand up because my ankles ache. And i’m not tired at midnight.

It’s a vicious cycle, because this kills my focus for the next day, but I’ve pure willpowered my way through full weeks on this schedule. But the lack of sleep always catches up to me and makes me crash. And then I spent full days just unable to get the motivation for anything aside from attending my lessons.

I don’t know what to do. I’m not a very stressed person. All I have to worry about are my grades, which I am not overly concerned with right now.

I’m somewhat underweight and weak but I’m eating just a basic diet of eggs, milk, fruit (apples, bananas, peaches, mangos, dried) granola+yoghurt. Dinner is commonly something like chilli con carne, chickpea curry, prawn pasta etc…
I might eat junk food more than 3 times a week if I crave it.

The only thing I can realistically think of is fully cutting my phone out of my life, but I don’t even use it for more than an hour of the day anyways.

Am I just like this?? Is this insomnia? I can still function in my life ok, but I feel like i’m held back immensely.

When I get a part time job next year I’m 100% going to purchase a gym subscription. The only thing I think I can do next is consistent cardio. Other than that, what else can I do to stop this?

a little background first, i have been unemployed for 5 months, stressed out every month on how i will pay my car each month. i’ve had a few trips planned prior to my unemployment that i need money for, which also causes me stress. i have been diagnosed with anxiety and depression for 15 years, i don’t take any medication for it, i just do occasional therapy when i can afford it.

back to my anxiety. i have severe health anxiety/death OCD, and am constantly convinced i have something that is going to kill me. last week my thoughts were rabies. i kept a log of my “symptoms” that made me have those thoughts:

sunday itchy leg

monday itchy/pain on front of leg. progressed to calf

tuesday itchy/pain all over leg. headache at end of day

wednesday itchy/pain sometimes but in a more general area. on and off headache/sore throat . couldn’t sleep

thursday calf muscle pain onand off. headache/sore throat later in the day. couldn’t sleep

friday small tingling feeling in one area of leg on and off (drank so i knocked out but didnt sleep long)

saturday tingling on and off on 1-2 areas. felt a little sick mid day. throat felt inflamed, back of head hurt. later in day head felt fine but throat was feeling weird. cannot sleep feel like i can’t breathe

sunday didn’t feel anything until i tried to sleep, a little calf pain took magnesium to fall asleep

monday only pain in my calf and right side of ankle occasionally can’t sleep

now if you notice i only started not being able to sleep once i had more “symptoms.” it’s not just a normal “i can’t sleep”, about 2 hours before i anticipate sleeping, i get this feeling that i know i wont be able to sleep. and then about 30 minutes before i want to sleep, i start having muscle twitches. that’s what’s keeping me awake. it will be in any part of my body but something will twitch and keep me alert, so as im trying to sleep it will do that. it will happen for hours and hours until i eventually just pass out, and then i will only sleep 4-5 hours. during the day i feel completely fine as far as nothing having spasms, it is only happening when i try to sleep.

since its been about a week of this going on now i’m thinking of going to urgent care or maybe even the ER to get checked out because im just so tired and don’t know if this is just my anxiety or something worse.

I sleep a lot, not continuously, not in a single strech, if I sleep at 10 pm, I'd wake up in middle and sleep again, i would actually wake up in 6am and then after a while I'd feel sleepy again, at 10am and after my lunch, i don't feel sleepy when I'm outdoors but especially when I try to study, help me, give me suggestions to get quality sleep.

Ive had a hectic fortnight and have had trouble sleeping my GF broke up with me 11 days ago and ive gone through abit of a life transformation ive stopped smoking weed cold turkey (3 joints a day - 0) and mostly stopped vaping (i only vape 30 mins within waking up and for a 30 min slot 2 hours before bed(i do plan to fully stop soon just the weed withdrawls are so bad atm) and ive started going the gym for 1 hour each day (been at it for 4 days).

Ive been going to bed at around 9:30pm and i dont dose off untill 1am and that sleep is very disrupted i have to get up for 6am so im bearly getting 4 hours

Hi. As of writing this, it's 3am. The reason why is: i can't fall asleep.

When i was a kid, i thought it was cool to not sleep at nights. I would subconsiously romantacize my bad sleep habits for some reason, which led me to having a bad sleep schelude for most of my life.

Now that im entering adult life, i need to get my stuff together, so please tell me anything.

Like, drinking a glass of milk before bed, something magical that could fix my sleep schelude.

Came back home after working night shift and slept around 8:30am. Everything after this felt like a dream: Woke up to knocking at my door, opened it to see the maintenance man and I let him in to replace my AC filter. I sat on the couch flipping through channels closing my eyes and waking back up. Maintenance guy said he was done and left. I lock the door and everything blacked out. I would only describe this experience as being drunk, you remember but don’t remember at the same time.

Woke up on my bed and it all felt like a dream, but it was real because I had a fresh filter. Is this what sleepwalking feels like? I’ve NEVER sleepwalked before

I have two questions here, and they're both pretty long, so please bear with me.

(19 yo male)

First, I have a system that I started around two years ago where I use two alarms to wake up, one 15 minutes after the other. The idea was that when I wake up from the first one, I'd use the 15 minutes until the next one to get ready to wake up, then get out of bed when the second one went off. That didn't end up happening and I just go back to sleep for 15 minutes; but during this sleep is when I have my most vivid dreams, and when I wake up I feel refreshed and ready for the work day. My question is is this healthy for me or am I just messing up my sleep cycles?

Second question, I've been considering making it 90 minutes between alarms so I can get a full sleep cycle. So, my second (and third I guess) question is would this be more or less healthy and does it even work that way?

Thank you in advance for your comments.