I know I need my sleep to deal with the challenges of caregiving, but I struggle to get myself into bed. Instead, I pretend it is “me” time and watch a show, check email, read shallow websites (yay, boredpanda.com...). Before I know it, it’s 2 AM or later. Obviously, I feel better in the morning if I get to sleep earlier, but it seems I face this challenge every night. How to stop this destructive behavior?
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(My personal time has always included reading in bed, it is partly pure escapism and partly a wish to believe that putting off sleep is also putting off the need to wake up and start a new day)
Eventually I had to give myself a time limit. Ok, 11pm, turn off the computer. Later I made 10pm my shut off time. Then I found 9pm was the best as then I could actually get some shut eye. And I made sure I had no caffeine after 7pm.
For a while, I was able to move my bedtime hours from 1:00am to 12:00-12:30 slot. Even though my body/mind is sleepy at 11:30pm, I fight to stay up - because I'm on the computer. Addiction. I admit it. I'm addicted to surfing the web.
This is the time that my Mom used to get up and go to the bathroom every night before she was admitted to the nursing home in May 2017. My body still hasn't gotten used to the fact that it can sleep all night and that I don't have to "watch and listen" for Mom to get up in the middle of the night. While I miss having Mom at home, my stress level has decreased greatly and I feel more relaxed than I have for 9 years. {Sigh.}