Can't make myself go to sleep

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Oh God it's happening again.

I know I have to be up early. I know I should retire. But I just can't make myself got to that bed and sleep. I want to keep staying up. I'm fixated on this site, other sites, things I want to find out, the music.

Bloody hell.

I know now that I"m going to mess up tomorrow morning unless I go to bed NOW.

And I know I"m not going to go to bed.

What's wrong with me?
I hate myself these time. Can anyone relate?

(12:46am)

I can relate.
I sometimes think of little rituals that would probably work. Take a minute off from WP or whatever, run and do these two of little bed-time things, then come back to the computer if I still want to.

But I don't get around to giving them a serious try.

I think it would work better if I could casually tell someone, "I'm going to try X." That works with some things.

It's 12:30am. I'm going to try it now.

Me too. I find myself still awake even though I have an early morning and a long day. I just cant seem to make myself want to go to bed.

(12:58am)

Apart from just paying attention to breath (both relaxing and boring), a favourite thing for me is to t hink of the sound of the alarm going off and how I feel then. That tends to have a physiological response, as it reminds me of that really want to keep sleeping feeling.

As soon as night comes I get a energy surge compared to during the day I can just sleep when I feel like it.

Im always screwing up my schedual. Today slept from 1PM till my mom woke me up for dinner, then i went back upstairs and slept till a half hour ago (1 AM)
im sleeping on second shift and today it made me feel like an ass because as soon as i was done eating I went to bed after my mom had gotten me a cake because it's my birthday.

00:46 is still average by my standards. As long as I can get six hours, I'm good. I find that worrying about having to wake up early has a negative effect on the problem. If I'm not asleep by, say, 4am, I'll pull and all-nighter and just deal with it using coffee.

This is a major issue in my life. I completely understand that feeling of knowing you should go to bed, knowing you have to go to bed, knowing you're going to be so tired, knowing you're going to be grumpy and that will upset people which in turn will make you feel worse, knowing you PROMISED yourself you'd go to bed by 1am tonight. Then ignoring it all and staying up doing nothing.

People talk about 8 hours, i probably average 5 hours during the week. Last night i was proud of myself for getting to bed at 1.15am, alarm set for 7.30. That's over 6 hours and i feel less bad than usual, not refreshed, but not worse. The rest of this week it's been 2.30am and that just results in poor days and a poor frustrating life. I also have a surge of energy late at night. I can pull an all nighter, barely be coherent enough to get through the day, almost kill myself by falling asleep at the wheel, then feel awake at night and still stay up til 1am again.

I sleep as long as i can at the weekend, which basically means as long as my wife will let me, which i also ate becuase she has to find things to do in the morning and "let" me sleep til 11 or 12am, or if she's out for the day maybe 2 or 3pm.
I also have no weekend becuase i'm asleep and get upset that it's the week and work again.

I try making promises.
I try setting my alarm to go off at midnight or something
I try to reason with myself and use my usually unfallable logic
Nothing seems to work.
The only thing i know would work is my wife being there telling me to come to bed, i get embarised to admit what time i went, so i know i would feel embarised if she was there at the time, but she's in bed at 10-11pm and it's unrealistic to think i can work to that routine.

I don't know the reason for the problem, but two parts of it here -
Not wanting to face work and the world - It's quiet and i'm on my own at night, i like it. The morning will bring work and people and difficaulties and i will need to get my public face back on and everthing will be hard work.
Efficiency - Going to bed early wastes the evening, before i know it it will be tomorrow and i'll have to do things again, so by staying up i maximise my free time. This is BS though as i waste most of my freetime at the weekend sleeping.

Looking forward to more thoughts, struggles and possible insights and ideas here.

OMG that is exactly it! I always think to myself "this is MY time. The only time I have for me. If I go to bed, it's over". Meanwhile I love to sleep. I love my bed. I love my pillows. Come morning I'd pay good money to be able to sleep some more.

I've been what others call a "night owl" for my whole life. My mother tells stories of me being wide awake at 2am when I was 2 yrs old. Driving her crazy. (she finally gave up when I was 9 and let me stay up till whenever).

The alarm is a good idea.
I have a baby, so basically when the baby cries for food around ---am, that's when I force myself to shut it all down and go to bed. But I wish I had some more discipline in the matter!

If you want to go to sleep but your body wont let you, a technique that I find incredibly helpful is 1)lie down in a comfortable position
2) take deep slow breaths; not so slow as to feel controlled.
3) visualize a chalkboard; don't worry about detail, it's not necessary.
4) in your mind take a piece of chalk and slide it up and down on the chalkboard. make sure to go as slow as feels comfortable.
5) after you repeat step 4 a couple of times, start writing 1, 2, 3, 4,... and so on. you should pass out by 20.

I hope it helps. It works wonders for me. I can't seem to find the actual website where I found though, so if for some reason someone else does could you please post it here.

When 5:00 PM rolls around, I get this sudden rush of energy, and it annoys me, because I usually have to go to bed, at 9, to be up for work, the next morning.

I get that sleep problem all the time.... I would ocassionally get it quite badly that I would end up staying up all the way till 5 or 6 in the morning or if I got too much energy, I would of been up all night otherwise and fall asleep in the middle of the day.

terrible problems with sleep. it seems to get worse when i know i have to be up the next morning. (i average 4 hours a night when keeping a regular schedule.) lately i've been keeping the radio on, talk---this silly conspiracy theory program that goes on into the wee hours. it's interesting enough that it distracts me from processing the things i'm likely to process at night. it's silly enough (there's no need for analysis, really) that it allows me to go to sleep. it's still a little "bumpy," but it does seem to help.

(and now i know about alien abduction and big foot. fortunately, the show doesn't tackle any serious conspiracies. :)

i seem to sleep better when i have about 2 cups of coffee 'efore bed

Simple - We think too much. Although I have a curfew, I spend most nights lying awake thinking deeply for about 2 hours. Often times I get out of bed to write down reminders for tomorrow. This, I mention, is after having taken Horlicks.

My sleep schedule has been messed up for years. It's worse lately. I can't seem to sleep for more than about four hours at a time. Then I go to work all day, come home and have a nap for two or three hours, because I can't stay awake anymore. After a few days of this, I get dark circles around my eyes, and bags under them. A problem is waking up from a dead sleep to go to the bathroom. After that, I can't get back to sleep. I'm considering asking my doctor to put me on Ambien or something, long enough to establish a routine.