[xyzelement]

I am a little surprised that so many responses suggested optimization to your technique but not how to solve the problem at root.

I am neither a shrink nor your shrink but I think it's probably safe to say that whatever is affecting your sleep is probably affecting other parts of your life too, and while you mentioned a very difficult time - our bodies and brains don't by default react in most helpful says (eg - keeping you up with nightmares isn't helping anything)

In my experience what helps is a real way to "look within" to understand what's really going on. Ideally, this is done with the help of a real psychiatrist - someone willing to do real deep work of therapy and analysis, not just boredly write a prescription.

The other thing is developing self insight techniques yourself. For me, a diligent yoga practice and yoga study into the meditative aspects has been immensely helpful. But even on the purely physical practice level, learning to "look within" to understand why a pose is hard or painful teaches you the same process that I am talking about.

This all may sound wishy washy but if you are a software person you can relate to this - it's often easy to fix problems once you understand them. It's impossible to fix problems until you do, at best you can manage symptoms.

[koheripbal]

I specifically did not want to describe my specific crisis because I didn't want to distract from the conversation of my solution to the sleep-impacting aspect of the stress.

We are also dealing with the source of my/our stress, and it should be resolved one way or another in the next few months. It's a 24x7 crisis for us that's complex and we're all working on it. This isn't routine work stress.

I have also used some stoic phrases and slow breathing to help me during the day. https://iamthemaninthedarkroom.com/

My above comment is strictly about this one technique that I stumbled upon.

[kiddico]

Is that darkroom site a reference to, or pulled from, something? A quick search for that string only turned up that site, and this ( https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9781848880528/BP000023.xm... ) which seems unrelated.

Anyways, thanks for the link, I bookmarked it. Might also make a local version of it and set it as my homepage.

[dudeman13]

The very best way of dealing with stress isn't internal, it is making the source of stress go away.

Unless the internal changes fundamentally change how you view the world ( i.e. the source of stress no longer causes stress, which is the kind of change you'll very rarely see in adults ) it will only be a paliative measure.

Being better able to cope with crap is useful, but I don't think it can be considered solving the root of the problem ( due to lack of neuroplasticity in adults ).

[xyzelement]

I couldn't disagree with you more, fortunately. You can never remove all stressors but you have way more control over your reaction than you think.

One example - people's natural emotional reaction to work deadlines is something like "I'll die if I don't make it" which is almost never literally true, but your body and mind torment you as if it was. Everyone can learn to reframe it to something more healthy like "I am a hard-working processional and I am driving myself to achieve this deadline as a matter of achievement and pride". Then you can engage with it fully and then still go to sleep at night.

Here's the key thing: whether you are able to change how you react depends on whether you try, and whether you try depends on whether you believe that you can. So at the start, you must believe that introspection will empower you to make changes, or you are doomed to be stuck forever.

The pit that many people fall into is that they take themselves very seriously and believe that how they feel about something is an objective representation of the severity of that thing. My example with deadlines above is one example. Another simple one is social anxiety. Someone can really believe and feel that "if I go to drinks with coworkers, they will judge and laugh at me and I will make an ass out of myself somehow" - that feels super real to them but objectively it's not real at all. So they spend hours of torment and lots of sleepless nights fearing and dreading and avoiding something that objectively is nothing. If they can reframe it (over the course of years, with a lot of help and work) the whole thing reduces to "it's just drinks who cares.". Same situation, but the person turner a stressor into a neutral or maybe even positive.

Don't be stuck where you are, and don't think you can't change or feel differently unless the world does. And then expect the change to be hard work but worth it.

[dudeman13]

Uh, must be a cultural abyss here.

When someone says they are under a lot of stress, I take it as they work 70 hours weeks, or they found out they'll be a cripple or people they love are dying, or the chance that you'll be stabbed when going to work is quite high.

Never crossed my mind that enough people are under heavy stress by the examples you gave.

[treeman79]

Having a large rainy day fund is something a lot of people are missing.

Paycheck to paycheck drastically increases stress level, yet so many won’t get away from it.

When I ran an Airbnb, it was shocking to see how cheap other cultures would eat. Every meal home made. Despite no kitchen access label on listing.