Meditation before sleeping

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Anyone else like me struggle to sleep at times because of the mind racing?
I find meditation helps me to clear the mind and feel good resting.

Yes, definitely helps. I also find for some reason that it helps me to watch videos of happy cats and kittens before I go to sleep. It helps me get my mind off of disturbing or worrisome things. I have to be careful about not meditating too much on things that are either of those categories, or that makes the racing mind worse, not better.

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Official diagnosis: ADHD, synesthesia. Aspie quiz result (unofficial test): Like Frodo--I'm a halfling? 110/200 NT, 109/200 Aspie.

I have trouble sleeping all the time because of anxiety and racing thoughts. I've recently started getting back into meditation and am trying to make it more routine than I did in the past, because it has helped me a little, and seems like it could help me more with practice.

I imagine a filing cabinet and I take every thought bouncing around my head one by one and put it in the filing cabinet and close the drawer. It seems to help.

I can't meditate. My mind won't slow down enough. Meditation just gives my mind the opportunity to race.

I use the TV. It has to be something interesting to me, believe it or not, otherwise it just annoys me and keeps me awake. If I watch something that can manage to captivate me, I'll usually be out like a light pretty fast. If I'm tired enough, that is.

I could do this when I was a kid. I mean, I meditated so deeply I transcended (by imagining Nothing). I find it harder as an adult, for reasons already brought up, such as thoughts that won't shut up or race.

Until the last few years, my fantasy life (an ongoing story with my own fictional characters) is how I put myself to sleep almost every time. I still go to it nowadays when I get into bed initially, but sometimes the racing, stressed out thoughts won't let me. I have less tolerance for stress nowadays.

Sometimes I bring my Macbook to bed, and that can help me get to sleep, but it sits on me while I'm on my back (only comfortable position) and I'm afraid if I keep doing that I'll let it fall to the floor. It's come pretty close a couple of times.

I've never been able to completely clear my mind. I find it pretty much impossible for me to think of *nothing* whatsoever, personally, though some people may be able to do this. When I used to attempt it that way it was really frustrating to me, but I've found it helpful to try to just think about my breath itself and the vibrations of it, during meditation. I still get intrusive thoughts during this but it at least helps me to minimize them.

It's something that's worth my looking into.

Around here -

A = TV

M = straight meditation

P [yrs trly] = reading or project work [non thought intensive].

Failure need not mean lack od sleep or trouble gettuing to sleep, but climbing doswn out of day stress is essential for us,

Meditation is not something that comes easy to me. I have to sorta be in the mood for it. Furthermore, I find that it can be problematic when trying to fall asleep as it makes me become more aware of my body and environment. It's hard to fall asleep when you notice your heart racing, body itching, the sound of ants marching a continent away and what not.

So I try to just put myself in an imaginary place with nice imaginary entities (most of them non-human I might add) that I interact with. Usually, it's the same old plot over and over with only subtle twists to it. Kinda like watching the same movies over and over again. If I get too creative, it'll make it harder to fall asleep since the new plot becomes more interesting than falling asleep and then I'm back to square one