You need to revivify (or numb) yourself with some Instagram cat reels.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CvChlWavHaq/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

I’m not sure it’s my insomnia or a particularly vivid dream the likes of which I seldom recall.

That's precisely what i needed!

Coffey can keep you awake at night. The harvest festival. Small girls offer corn dolls to the smiling premier to general applause. A new five year plan is announced.  Second class fruit for all but they don't call it that any more. Gasps as a basket of root vegetables in the shape of politburo members is presented. 

It wasn’t THAT sort of dream Rham just vivid and very surreal. Everyone remained clothed but the frisson 

How dare they call it a banana republic. It's a constitutional monarchy with parliamentary sovereignty. 

Reading the tozzagrazza will keep you up at night.

Ohmagerd! Cat peoples!!!!!1

Poor you. 
 

I have had endless bad nights and insomnia in recent years. I do not recall the last occasion on which I slept through the night but it is over a decade ago certainly, perhaps pre 2010.  You have my sympathy. 
 

I tend to be vaguely awake then my cortisol levels rise and my body tells me to be alert. Alert for what? All is dark and silent. I ask for what and my brain then says: for THIS. I then get a stupid show reel of all the things that are current worries. The usual stuff. Health of loved ones, to-do lists, money and decisions ofc, future plans, relationships, children, own health, work, friends’ welfare… it just runs like the Devil is standing there saying ‘ok ok so that doesn’t do it, right then how ‘bout this’ and it escalates until I have to get up and leave the bed as if He is in the sheets like some Diabolic bed bug. 
 

I have resorted to therapy. My therapist says when this happens silent self talk is key. How lucky I am to be in this fine bed, not shivering in a war zone or hungry in a famine ridden desert. How sweetly my loved ones are sleeping and how everything has been ok so far and will be ahead. I have had to relearn a resistance to fear of not sleeping. 
 

hope is key to destroying the build up of anxiety. Hope for better and belief in prospects ahead erodes the toxicity of nihilism. Darkness is symbolic but also a creator of natural deep-held primeval fear: here I am in my cave in the most vulnerable state. I cannot even see my predators but they are out there. Will they pounce? I guess my therapist is saying be thankful for the cave and fire, reflect on the safety it brings rather than speculate on the many ways it could fail. 
 

Last night at 3am I built a castle wall to hold off the foe with deep laughs by watching stuff like this. 
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJckMjWV/

I guess my therapist is saying be thankful for the cave and fire, reflect on the safety it brings rather than speculate on the many ways it could fail. 
 

An easy principle to expound and obvious to agree with but the catch-22 is that when you are in that nihilistic state there is no power to control the reaction. 

And 

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJckDc7h/

I had years of insomnia following a burglary where they broke in while we were asleep and my eldest was 6 months old. Used to wake throughout the night, and always at 4am. 
 

We now have a big dog (sorry) and I sleep like a fat baby.

Nice one. Pleased to hear it. 

That came out far too smug. I didn’t mean it to. Insomnia is horrendous.

Mutters that is excellent counsel, thank you. 

No it didn’t Bentines. It was fine and my comment was genuine. 

My mum woule get on with your therapist i reckon, muttley. Well, if she approved of therapy. Glad it is helpful somewhat anyway. 

Tiktok tho. Stuff like this reminds me i need y ok make more effort to connect with the evolving environment.

To be honest, I’m not sure it is that helpful. It tells me what I should be thinking, but it doesn’t trigger the right thoughts necessarily for reasons given above

I don't believe in shoulds. Gratitude therapy can be just another stick with which to beat yourself. It's ace to have a nice bed but we're still human animals.

I have been thru periods of this too.  The best method I have found is to take it on.  If brain is saying

"haha you thought you were sleepy, but here is a showreel of exactly how awful you've been.  And then, cos this is a matinee, we will the. Be showing how awful things could be in the future.  I say 'could' but you know it's actually definitely certain sure going to happen.  Oh and here's a sweaty side order of st vitus' dance to make your bed really uncomfy"

you just take it on the chin.  Ok brain, you win, i'm awake.  I am going to have a juice and read a trashy novel whilst you get on with that.

give it an hour and then try again

seems to work

“haha you thought you were sleepy, but here is a showreel of exactly how awful you've been.”

heh. Definitely this. So many volumes too.  

I do this and it always works. I started to sleep badly about 2 years ago so presuming it is whatever chemical comes with age.  If I wake up alert I get up I don’t lie there. The idea is to get brain away from worrying and on to another topic. Do not scroll. Get up go to kitchen and make something, have a glass of milk hot or cold.  When mind relaxed return to bed and take an ibuprofen and paracetamol/aspirin. Listen to this or anything to get your thoughts away from dooming and on to something else. 
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eEd2K1FxNQY

Hi have had it off and on since I was kid, largely kicked it now as I have a few techniques. I do some meditation (Headspace although the app has gone shit now), I go through phases of this, but I first started a few years ago when I was going through hell at work and waking up at 4am exactly every morning to panic for 3 hours*, and it was almost like flicking a switch, it seemed to retrain my mind to be able to not race for 15 mins which was enough to send me off.

That had the twin effect of lessening the occasions, and also giving me something to do when I did wake up.

Alternatively, I try a bit of distraction, in my head plan the 3d model of the Land Rover Series 3 I'm going to do up some day, or the Shetland 535, including colours, engines and upholstery. This often works.

Stage 3 - have a clergham

Stage 4 - get up and read a book like Wang said

*one time I woke up at 4am to panic about work and realised I very likely had (and in fact did) have cancer. That was an unpleasant few hours.

Insomnia.

I suffered from this about 30 years ago. Someone once told me 'You will get as many ways of stopping insomnia as people you tell that you've got it.' That was true.

Here is the first thing that helped me, which I got from my dad. When it starts to feel like a bad night,, get up, put your dressing gown on, go to your living room (or wherever) and sit in an armchair. (Not the sofa.) You can leave a light on in the next room if you like. I found that when I did this, I would usually get a half-decent night's sleep. I guess my idiot brain was fooled into forgetting that we were trying to sleep, and just fell asleep. 

When I was diagnosed - last year - with stage 4 cancer I had to be a little more pro-active to stop myself thinking about a relatively imminent, probably painful death, and so I've started making lists. Anything that isn't directly related to my life will do, but all recent lists are about movies - movies with children in, movies not set on Earth, movies with beards (more accurately, movies with characters with beards), movies with trains. And so on. I count up to 5 on my left fingers, and keep count of the 5s on my right fingers, and the goal is to get to more than 15. Often I'll forbid the inclusion of movies previously listed, otherwise it's too easy to get to 15. It's worked very well so far. You can't use, e.g., lists of cities I've visited because it loops too directly back to yourself.

Many people will find these tricks useless, but some might find them useful.