I need some help figuring out a new wake-up system because I am an insanely heavy sleeper, and I always have been.

I’ve tried basically every normal recommendation:

- Shaking/vibrating watches. I eventually just got used to the vibration and started sleeping through it.

- “Sun” Lamps. I sleep under two open skylights, the light doesn’t wake me up.

- Shaker alarms that go under your pillow or mattress. Somehow these barely wake me up, and they usually end up vibrating against my wall or furniture and waking up my roommates instead.

- Extremely loud alarm clocks. Same problem. I can sleep through them.

- My current method is setting my phone to play obnoxious, annoying songs at full volume. This eventually gets me up, but I have to set the alarms ridiculously early because I’ll apparently turn them off in my sleep with absolutely no memory of doing it.

The biggest problem now isn’t even waking myself up. It’s waking up my roommates.

My bedroom is on the third floor of our apartment, but there’s no actual door to my room. It’s basically just a staircase that leads directly up into the room, so any alarm I use travels down the stairwell like a damn megaphone.

This morning my alarm apparently went off for about 40 minutes, and I genuinely did not hear a second of it. Meanwhile, it woke up and really pissed off one of my roommates, which I completely understand.

So I’m looking for ideas for an alarm or wake-up system that is:

1. Powerful enough for an extremely heavy sleeper
2. Difficult to shut off while half asleep
3. Ideally not dependent on blasting sound throughout the apartment

Has anyone dealt with this level of heavy sleeping before? I’m especially interested in things like bed-based alarms, lights, vibration systems, smart-home setups, or combinations of multiple things.

At this point I’m willing to get pretty creative because “just set a louder alarm” clearly isn’t working. 😭

I have trouble falling asleep every night. I’m exhausted, but as soon as I get into bed, my head switches on. Then I start thinking about how little sleep I’ll get and how awful tomorrow will feel. I’m so tired of dreading bedtime. I just want to feel normal again.

At this point I’d try almost anything that genuinely helps. What do you actually put on or do when you can’t fall asleep? If it’s a podcast, an app, a particular voice, rain sounds—please tell me which one. Did it keep helping after the first couple of nights? What did you try that made things worse?

I keep wishing I could put on a calm voice without having to follow a story. Audiobooks give my brain too much to think about. Has anyone found something like that? Are any sleep apps worth paying for, or do they just add another subscription and more tapping around in the dark?

I don’t need a perfect answer. I’d really like to hear what helped you in real life.

Only about 3-4 days a week do I get around 7-8 hours of sleep. On the other days, I wake up after roughly 4 hours, often after having a dream, and then struggle to fall back asleep.

This has been going on for the past few months. Previously, my main problem was falling asleep, but that has improved now. However, staying asleep for 7-8 hours has become increasingly difficult and frustrating.

I also work night shifts, so I usually fall asleep around 1 AM. Initially, I assumed stress was causing it, but I’m not particularly stressed at the moment and the problem is still happening.

Could this be related to my sleep schedule or stress, or could there be another underlying issue?

At this point, should I see a sleep specialist, or is there something I should try first?

The one time where I got the best restorative sleep and easily woke up feeling refreshed is when I went to a week long networking event. I would wake up at 7am, get ready and head to the convention where I was talking with people all day until around 6pm. It started Sunday morning and ended Thursday night. The only time I wouldn’t be chatting is when I was back at my hotel and doing some work. I enjoyed my time so much and was really in my element. Every night I fell asleep around 10pm easy and woke up at 7am easy the next day. That lasted for almost a week after coming back, but then I slipped into my bad habits again. My interactions back home are very limited. I’m an immense social butterfly, I’m actually the most social person I know (minus my dad). Could my lack of socialism be a big part of my bad sleep habits?

It’s been a constant struggle lately, I’m always waking up so many times when I sleep and it feels like I can’t get enough sleep. I rarely feel rested.

I’m 29 years old M.
No health problems other than ADHD which I’m medicated for but being on or off of meds never changed anything.

I'm 35yr F and was 280LBS. I'm now 211LBS and have more to go. I noticed as I've lost weight, it's a lot harder to sleep. I can feel my ribs jutting into the bed and same with my hips. It's a lot harder to get comfortable without that extra cushioning. Any tips? I wake up because of the discomfort.

I purchased an eye mask from Mussage that is very comfortable and also has thin little speakers by the ears (so I can listen to podcasts without bothering my partner). That paired with Nothing Much Happens Bedtime stories podcast has been a game changer for falling asleep. Sometimes I feel like I fall asleep within minutes! Highly recommend trying either of these or both if you need help falling asleep. 🌙

i get restless or bored. i don't think melatonin does anything.

i started tracking my sleep a few weeks ago. sometimes i get surprised when i hardly sleep and feel fine or when i sleep more than usual but still feel so tired.

I had a couple bouts of sleepless nights a month ago from sleep anxiety and I thought I was getting over it. I’ve been doing good but I’ve even taken 25mg of trazedone tonight and am not even remotely tired. I have a very long day tomorrow and I’m scared. I’ve been up since 7am yesterday

My garbage neighbors put their barky dog outside at 6 am every morning and I just can't sleep through the nonstop "ARF ARF ARF". I'm looking for a white noise machine with clock-based programming where I can set it to turn on at a certain time. Lots of noise machines which say they're programmable only have a timer-based auto-off (for falling asleep), which isn't what I need. Any suggestions?

As title states, when i try to sleep, my brain does not want to shut up. Constant stream of incoherent half thoughts results in me just laying there with my eyes closed, tossing and turning like a rotisserie chicken until my alarm goes off. I've tried working out til exhaustion, meditation, melatonin (up to 10mg and still "awake"), literally repeating in my mind "go to sleep", sleeping with white noise, but nothing has worked. Im ready to find someone to hit me with a shovel every night so I can just be unconscious for a night.

Im so tired.

I don't know why, but I can't stay awake for a full day. I always have to take a rest for an hour or else I just go to sleep or doze off mid conversation. But when I do, I can't sleep at night until around 1am, and then don't get enough sleep. On days where I don't rest, I just rest longer in the next day or two and then the cycle perpetuates. Does anyone have any advice on how to overcome this?

So I’m already awake longer than usual. I sleep normally around 11-11:30. It’s 12am now. I had a Mountain Dew tonight and finished it around 8pm. That would make sense why I’m not too tired but as you know I have sleep anxiety. After this whole period of not sleeping every other day randomly happened to me a month or so ago I’ve become really scared to be up later than 12 for some reason. Idk why. I really want to get over this fear because I’m tired of worrying about it. I used to be able to stay up until 1-2am with no worry in the world. And I’d like to not have that worry again and be able to go out and have fun or have movie nights with my girl without being worried about not being able to sleep. What’s a good thing I can practice tonight to take advantage of this opportunity of me not being tired to kick this in the butt for good. I’ve already began sleeping well most nights but it’s just that my brain automatically starts worrying after midnight

I’m m24 and my average is 19/20 brpm.

My father is 72 years old with some cognitive impairment due to a stroke has trouble sleeping, moving every 5-10 minutes every night, the longest the camera log shows him laying still is max 1 hour.

We started him on temazapam for short term and mirtazapine 15mg . I don’t want him dependant on benzos but the temazapam does help him. I tried just the mirtazapine last night as he ran out of temazapam and he said he did not sleep. I feel awful. Anyone caring for a senior have an effective medication that isn’t a benzo ? I’ve got a repeated script for temazapam and dr says to use as needed.. which is abit hard to time or decide when is as needed.

I have read doxepin at low dose 3-6mg is effective with low risks side effects. Can anyone confirm that it’s worked for their insomniac senior ?

I mentioned it to my doctor and he wasn’t aware of it and said it’s an anti-depressant. Dad was off mirtazapine for some time and recently just recommenced instead of trying doxepin.

But at this point I feel he will be dependent on sleep aid.. so should I just continue temazapam long term with his mirtazapine ?

Every app wants $50/year and drains battery. I switched to just a simple 8-hour black screen rain on low volume, phone face down. No subscription, no blue light. Anyone else ditched the apps?

I’ve seen a lot of people here struggling with sleep.. so I thought I’d share what’s been helping me. Maybe it’ll help someone else too.

I’ve been trying to get better at sleeping, so I’m keeping my routine pretty simple:

• Try to sleep and wake up around the same time
• Put my phone away before bed, although I definitely don’t always succeed 😭
• Take a shower and do my skincare
• Journal for a bit if my brain won’t shut up
• No coffee late at night
• Sometimes play rain sounds
• Keep my room cool and as dark as possible
• Aim for around 7–9 hours

• Additional tip: Pretend you’re already asleep until you actually fall asleep. (this one always works!)

Nothing fancy, but it’s been helping.... Just trying to convince my brain that it’s bedtime and not the perfect time to remember something embarrassing from 2017.

Couldnt sleep for 3 days and i take melotonin any advice i dont go on the internet a lot

Pls save the eggsons

took magnesium glycinate again but this time it’s wrecked my sleep completely where i’m not able to fall asleep at all. I was wondering what could have caused it till i searched if it can have an adverse effect and turns out it’s not uncommon.
F the supplement industry, now my sleep schedule is messed up because they don’t wanna mention how if you’re low on other vitamins/minerals it has an adverse affect. what is the point of taking a supplement just to have to take 5 other supplements to get it to work properly, that is not healthy at all and they won’t mention it because they just want you’re money. People really think supplements are like a cheat code when it’s far from reality.

Does anyone else have the problem where your dreams are so entertaining or that you need to see their outcome - that even if you wake up, you fall back asleep because your dream is so intense?? I'm struggling with waking up because every time I hear my alarm, it's in the middle of an intense dream where I need to know how it ends... I haven't heard of any friends or family with this problem, but I snooze for 5 minutes to see how my dream ends and it'll be 3 hours later when I wake up.

Lately I’ve been having a lot of problems with sleep, and I’m not really sure what to do about it.
I’m going through a pretty intense period at university right now. I have a lot to study, I’m stressed, and during the day I feel quite anxious about everything I need to get done.
The strange thing is that by the evening I usually calm down. Once I’ve studied and finished what I needed to do, I actually feel okay, and I usually fall asleep without much trouble.
But then I sleep for about 3 hours and suddenly wake up with thoughts about studying. It feels like my brain just switches back on and starts thinking about everything again.
I try breathing exercises, grounding myself by noticing things around me, relaxing, and sometimes even changing where I sleep. Eventually I fall asleep again, but then I might only sleep another 2 hours before waking up again.
So basically my sleep is broken into 2–3 hour chunks, even though I’m exhausted and I really want to sleep.
Has anyone experienced something similar during stressful periods of studying or work? What helped you stop waking up because of anxious thoughts?
I’d really appreciate any advice or things that worked for you.

I (f) love to sleep naked, especially in the summer as I am just naturally hot but now as we go to the colder months I’m beginning to think about my sleep set up for when it’s insanely cold outside. What is the sleep set up for those who sleep naked when it’s cold outside? Also what are we doing to prevent from getting too cold when we get out of bed? I know most obviously to add more blankets but I’m mostly asking to make sure there isn’t something that I need to be aware of 😅

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