Introduction
This post is about all you have to know regarding sleep and a rant about things that I still can’t understand at all.
What made my sleep better
- Really relax and wind down before going to sleep; not just sleep always at the same time, but relax.
- Don’t mess up your schedule; keep it consistent if possible, but it doesn’t have to be exact.
- Don’t drink too much water before going to sleep.
- Let your brain talk when you lay down. It has to dump all the mess off the table, don’t try to stop it. Someday that information will be valuable.
- Use calming scents on bedsheets and pillows.
- Make sure your work and morning routine start after an hour if possible, so as not to wake up all stressed out.
- ASMR really helps a lot when having anxious thoughts. Not always, though.
- Don’t let the sleepy wave pass. It’s really cool that the brain cleans itself when sleeping. It removes beta-amyloid that builds up as residues of cognitive effort. Beta-amyloid raises the probability of having Alzheimer’s disease, which starts as brain fog.
When things get weird
I experienced weird sensations and dreams. I’ve been struggling with anxiety pretty much my entire life, and that has caused insomnia and strange sleep quality patterns. I usually take 1.5h to fall asleep (Between 23:45 to 00:00 I fall asleep usually) when on schedule and regular stress and anxiety levels, unless I’m really tired, which can take just up to 40 minutes.
There are really rare occasions where I relax so deeply when trying to fall asleep that I feel I don’t have any weight and I’m floating; it’s an incredible experience, it’s so good. However, that is something that happens probably three times a year, sadly.
But what I still can’t understand are dreams. I spent some months writing about my dreams in Obsidian. I created a daily page with its dream and created relationships between places, people, and items. When you focus on dreams, you start remembering them a lot, so that’s why I used to create one a day. Most of the dreams shared common assets like elevators, stairs, escalators, high buildings, and skyscrapers, and sometimes, screams that aborted the rest of the dream.
Elevators and Stairs
Most of my dreams have elevators, stairs, escalators, trains, and other transportation. It’s like I’m in a city or mall, and I end up on a building where I take an elevator, well, I see myself already there, I don’t see myself entering the elevator. Then I go up, down, both, and sometimes even horizontal elevators are there.
The ambiance could be different, though. I dreamed about elevators in futuristic glassy hotels, The Last of Us zombie buildings where I had to go up and down to avoid them, and one that felt special. It was a pure white environment and a stainless steel elevator, like a mall elevator, let’s say. It was closed and couldn’t be opened. So I had to go upstairs, just one floor, which was just maybe 20 stairs, and there was a lock that needed an elevator key, those triangle/square shaped, and turn it. Once I did that, I went back to the elevator on the previous floor, and I saw it open, and a person walked in. It felt as if I solved the puzzle and helped that person.
Similar dreams regarding trains, too. Basically, they follow a similar structure, but sometimes it’s just a movie; I’d say it depends on how vivid the dream is. And I mean vivid and not lucid, as I just had two lucid dreams; I wish I had more. I tried lucid dream techniques, like WILD, FILD, and more, but it’s really hard to do, and some require sleep paralysis, which is something I wouldn’t do. DILD worked, but I don’t know how.
Random Nightmares
Remember stairs? I have sometimes random nightmares, which I don’t understand either. I recall one where I was in a white room with a table with my carbon fiber wallet there. I grabbed the wallet and as I got outside the room, I saw my house corridor, but with metro stairs. As I took the stairs, I saw a shadow at the top, so I got scared and threw the wallet at it. Again, same structure in these cases, there is something interesting: a wallet, a monitor, a computer, whatever, and all of a sudden there is a screamer that makes me tense, and I wake up, and I feel scared for maybe 4 minutes. Those have a strange face or specimen and a really loud noise or scream.
They don’t happen often, maybe four or five times a year, but I don’t get why happen.
Imagine recording the dreams
I would love to record the dreams and store them in a playable format like MP4, MKV, etc. That tech would be so cool, and I would buy it. When you recall you overwrite the memory, this happens when you try to remember a dream; even if you really remember, you will add noise on top. By recording it, you won’t be able to overwrite anything and get the original version.