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[Neonivek]

So occasionally I get huge bouts of sleep anxiety or sleep phobia that keeps me up until I become more tired then I am anxious.

Often this is triggered when I have something to do early in the morning or that is absolutely important later... (or if I sleep with the windows open >_< but that is seperate)

But I also can just get random attacks where I become too afraid to sleep.

I don't think there is much I can do (and medication wise... well... see my other thread) but I'd like to see if there is something else I could do.

One thing I used to do is drink a LOT of milk which calms me down... but I am not joking when I say a lot of milk. I'd polish off a whole bag (1L carton for you Americans). Yet that isn't a realistic solution to something I might have everyday for a week... I dunno milk just calms me down, it makes me feel cool.

[Harry Baldman]

The best way to never fall asleep is to fuss over how much you need to sleep and how incredibly tired you'll be if you don't get exactly those X (usually hours of sleep.

I've actually had experience with this, as I had some sleep issues as a kid that were mostly a result of getting yelled at for staying up way too late once (I was a very neurotic child, you see) - those were mitigated when I started putting my head under the pillow to block out noise and light, though this was mostly a psychological thing. Grew out of it eventually.

What's usually worked in general experience, though, is relaxing with a good book. Maybe go to bed an hour earlier and start reading. At some point you'll either fall asleep without noticing it or just put the book down when it feels like you can't go on. And besides, you don't really need those 7-9 hours of sleep - not every day, at least - if you don't sleep, eventually you'll accumulate sleep pressure, but that's basically a debt of sleep that you can repay over time. In the immediate sense, what matters more is the timing of your sleep - if you can get woken up during REM sleep, you should wind up feeling pretty fresh compared to stage IV NREM sleep, which is the immediately preceding stage. They proceed sequentially, and each one's about 15 minutes or so.

Truth is, you can sleep 9 hours and wake up feeling fucked up, and sleep 5 hours and wake up feeling amazing. Which one's going to happen is largely out of your control unless you have a very well-defined sleep schedule (maybe you do - I certainly don't), so it's mostly not worth worrying about.

[ChairmanPoo]

Hmm.. have you tried counting upwards? I think its dull as hell, but the days I've actually managed to keep it up  I think I had less trouble sleeping.

[Neonivek]

I can't force it unfortunately.

Also yeah I tried counting, what doesn't help is that counting doesn't make me relax... which is odd for a person.

[malimbar04]

Ever watch Penn and Teller's Bullshit? They have an episode about sleep (saying mattresses and such are generally overpriced woo). Well, at the end of their episode it mentioned things that help people sleep. From memory: 
- don't eat right before bed 
- turn down lights for a good while before bed 
- don't take naps 
- don't drink alcohol 
- go to bed at the same time every night 
- don't watch TV or go on the internet within an hour or 2 before bed 
- if you can't fall asleep within 20 minutes, get up and read a book for 20 minutes and try again.

-----
From some articles online (lifehacker I think) and a class on human physiology (and probably some other classes), here are some other tidbits: 
- repetition, emotional attachment, and practice are required to form habits. Training your body to follow a sleep schedule is in many ways a habit. It might takes ~ 6 weeks. 
- Exercise helps. I really don't remember why, but its' been proven over and over again. It doesn't have to be intentionally exercising, but a good walk before bed will probably help.   

-----
and here are some tidbits about stress, from some textbook on stress management a while back: 
- Meditation helps you relax. 
- Deep breathing helps you relax. 
- A stress-resistant personality generally sees problems as challenges, and has you feeling like you are in control of the situation.
- work on one thing at a time - the thing right in front of you. Other stuff can sit in the backburner. Think about those later, and you'll be more effective at dealing with the situations that you are facing.

- Also, willpower is not something that you should rely on. Willpower is awesome, but will quickly drain if you don't set up mechanisms to make things easier. "High willpower" people generally set up situations in their mind to be simple challenges. They use coping mechanisms all over the place - joking, forcing a smile, fidgeting (I prefer a squeeze ball, or a rubik's cube), and so forth.

[LordBucket]

Often this is triggered when I have something to do early in the morning or that is absolutely important later...

Try setting two alarm clocks. For example, one plugged into the wall and also your cellphone. That way, if the power goes out you still have an alarm. if the cellphone randomly dies, you still have the one plugged in to the wall. And most likely they'll both go off. The odds of you failing to wake up are very slim. if your subconscious concern is about failing to wake up, this might help.

But I also can just get random attacks where I become too afraid to sleep.

Afraid of what?

if stuff is attacking you in your dreams, learn to wake up. If it's sleep paralysis, that's you becoming aware during an out of body experience. Don't be concerned about the vibrating sensation, it won't hurt you. If you're seeing scary stuff on the threshold of asleep/not asleep, or having bizarre sexual dreams that result in you being exhausted the following morning, something might be feasting on you. Try emotionally and with certainty confronting it and telling it that you will not be prey and then follow through and make sure that it's unable to keep doing what it's doing. Don't ask, don't request, don't bargain. Speak with intent and command. If confronting it makes the experience worse, that's it trying to maintain its food supply. Be persistent. It might take some time. Leave the room and go for a walk around the block if you need to. Don't simply go back to sleep if you think something is going to be eating on you while you sleep.

One thing I used to do is drink a LOT of milk which calms me down...

Try melatonin tablets. You can get them at any GNC. Be sure to get the (sublingual) ones that dissolve under your tongue, not the swallowables. The swallowables take several hours to reach your system. Under the tongue enters your bloodstream much faster. You might have to experiment with dosage. 1 to 3 milligrams is typical. Note that while melatonin is basically harmless, it can result in muscle cramps that make it too painful to actually sleep. More is not necessarily better.

Alternately/also you might try plain, unsalted peanuts. A couple handfuls before bed. If you wake up in the middle of the night, repeat. Try it for 3-4 days. That should be enough to know whether it helps. If it does great. If not, move on. Note that this may tend to affect your dreams.

[Neonivek]

Try setting two alarm clocks

Ohh gawd you have no idea how much worse it is with alarms.

Afraid of what?

Sleeping... just sleeping

Try melatonin tablets.

Ohh I have those! But I only have so much and my father doesn't like it when I use them as "sleeping pills"

[FallacyofUrist]

When I was younger I used a second pillow to rest my head on to help me sleep...

But what might work better would be setting a good night routine- do the same things when you're going to sleep every night, good nights and bad. Eventually your body should get the message: "now, it's time to sleep".

[Neonivek]

Thank you all for your suggestions

Though I don't have insomnia, well ok it is an insomnia, I have intense anxiety and fear of sleeping that is keeping me awake.

A lot of these would be great if my issue was just general sleeplessness.

[LordBucket]

I have intense anxiety and fear of sleeping that is keeping me awake.

Ok. Why? What is it you're afraid of?

Try setting two alarm clocks

Ohh gawd you have no idea how much worse it is with alarms.

Ok. It is Pavlovian association of the misery of being awakened from warm nuzzly sleep by that horrible cheap alarm noise?

If so, maybe download an mp3 alarm program so you can choose something soothing instead?

[gimlet]

Boy, alarms, especially loud redundant alarms, really *remove* anxiety for me because I don't have to worry about not waking up in time.  Bummer if it's different for you.  I find myself often waking up 5-10 minutes before the alarm goes off, and I've been setting some pretty weird ones to catch timed game events in the middle of the night.

Other stuff that helps me:
- no caffeine after 1-2pm - that's no coffee/soda/anything.   Maybe a cup of green tea, but for starting out I'd recommend cutting even that and see if it helps.
- getting some exercise, and not too soon before evening.  I sleep a LOT better if I did at least a half hour on the bike, or an hour brisk walking that afternoon.
- Remove sources of morning anxiety - have clothes laid out, pocket stuff in a container on the dresser, enough stuff for breakfast.  Then I know I can get up, take a shower, eat, get dressed and get out the door without stress in 45 minutes (I eat slow) or an hour if I dork around a bit.  I set the alarm to cover that, and I know I'll almost never have to solve problems in that time - "oh no, no clean pants".   And known workarounds - "oops no milk or eggs - no problem, get out the door quicker and grab a bagel and coffee from the place on the corner"
- no light, especially no blue light visible - I got blackout shades, moved the computer lights out of sight or covered them.  For travel I have an eye mask (and earplugs) but it comes off a lot
- no sound, or cover up intrusive noises with loud white noise.  I have heating pipes that pretty frequently make a sound that sounds JUST like footsteps approaching, even though I KNOW it's the pipes it can jerk me awake if I'm half asleep.
- a routine where I wind down for bed gradually - maybe an hour of tv/movies, then an hour of reading, trying to end up with nothing too exciting (textbooks are ideal for finishing up).  I've seen recommendations to wear orange tinted lenses (blue blockers) for a couple hours before bed, I've tried it off and on and can't say I've seen a difference, but it's worth a try because people vary in their sensitivity.
- Don't do *anything* else in bed except read, don't play computer games on the laptop or anything like that, it helps to get used to associating the bed only with sleep.
- Even then, my mind can stress out over things I remember that I need to do or that might be problems - I try to gently pull my mind off that stressful wheel-spinning and onto something calmer, sometimes I have to do this a LOT of times as the brain wants to go back to worry about stuff.  You WILL get better at this as you do it more and more.
- If I'm really having trouble, I try not to focus on it, and start tensing then relaxing muscles one at a time, starting from head downwards - face, neck, shoulders, torso, arms etc. and concentrate on that to get other anxious thoughts to recede.
- If 3-4 cycles of that don't work, I read some textbook with a dim (but not too dim) light for a while, a lot of times another half hour of that will do the trick.

Anyway that's a routine I developed over the years that works pretty well for me. 

ED: And aw damn, I read that doesn't seem to be your problem, oh well I typed it  so maybe some bit will help somebody.

[Harry Baldman]

Seems like I misunderstood the problem, too.

Are you afraid of falling asleep because you think you might not wake up again?

What are the physiological signs you get? Sweating, palpitations, that sort of thing? A big part of anxiety is, as far as I know, the feedback loop of the reaction to fear making you more afraid, so you could try to break it by listening to something in bed, like an audiobook or something similar. Something with words, preferably.

[Neonivek]

I have a rather good ability to wake up in time (I can count the number of times I've overslept on one hand) but when I set an alarm clock I so desperately don't want to be woken up by the alarm that I get insomnia. Hence why I never use them.

This was mostly created because my oldest alarm clock did a loud high pitched beep that would shunt me from sleep... and when I am forced awake, I wake up horribly and go into "shock", which can last an hour.

---

What are the physiological signs you get? Sweating, palpitations, that sort of thing? A big part of anxiety is, as far as I know, the feedback loop of the reaction to fear making you more afraid, so you could try to break it by listening to something in bed, like an audiobook or something similar. Something with words, preferably.

Anxiety, acid reflux, stomach aches, tension, sometimes headaches and limb aches (usually from tension).

But it is all psychological.

[martinuzz]

Tried some valerian tea? While not sleeping aid per se, it can help you relax from your anxiety, plus there's this thing we all still subconsciously got from being babies, where nice warm liquid in your stomach makes you a bit more drowsy. You could even try that with your milk, if you don't already: make it warm before drinking. Although personally I'd advise against binging on protein rich stuff like milk before going to sleep, for the reason malimbar04 posted: don't eat before going to sleep.

Valerian is possibly the mildest calming agent out there, and readily available at most supermarkets. They have tea at the health te section, tablets at the vitamin additives section. I remember advising it to someone before in this forum and getting positive feedback on it. Although that was for general stress, not for sleep anxiety.

EDIT: I'm sure that if you look at the health tea section at your supermarket, there will also be herbal teas spcifically for helping you sleep. Just can't remember which herb, by heart.

[Sappho]

Oh man, I understand exactly what you're going through. I've had the same problem my whole life (I'm 30 now). I still haven't found a total solution. Anxiety issues are extremely difficult to treat / help / fix. If you've got a brain that tends towards anxiety, no amount of good suggestions or willpower will ever really "fix" it.

However, that doesn't mean there's nothing you can do. As someone who has basically the same problem, I've tried just about everything people have suggested here and then some. One therapist foolishly tried to hypnotize me once, not realizing that my type of brain isn't hypnotizeable. I was even given sleeping pills several times, but none of them worked for more than a day or two. I built up a tolerance to them almost instantly. In a way, you can think of yourself as being exceptionally strong - immune to all that modern medicine can do to try to change you. But of course, in this case it would be nice to be a little less strong.

All that being said, there are some things that I have found DO help at least part of the time. Some of them have been mentioned already.

-Making exercise - and I mean a LOT of exercise - a routine. Taking a walk before bed isn't likely to help in your situation, but if you manage to keep your body consistently exhausted, it will override your anxiety and force you to sleep much more easily. I'm talking about long runs or long periods of lifting weights or something. Hard to do regularly, especially if you're always tired and anxious, but very effective if you can manage it. Exercise is a very effective treatment for anxiety in general, although difficult because anxiety can make it hard to exercise.
-Avoid lit screens for an hour or two before bed. I didn't expect this one to work, but it does help. Electronics like phones and computer screens are designed to mimic the sun, and they send a strong "stay awake" signal to your brain that only makes sleeping more difficult. You can use a program like f.lux to take the harshest light out of your computer screen in the evening if you're not able to turn the computer off that long before bed, which helps a bit too.
-Don't use your bed for anything but sleep. This one is really important. Our brains associate locations with activities. If you do anything in your bed other than trying to sleep, start doing it somewhere else.
-Make yourself a bedtime routine, like a 3-year-old. You'd be surprised how well it can work - again, our brains can be trained like Pavlov's dogs - and you can have fun with it. Make up a chant or a rhyme to repeat before bed. Stand on your head. Whatever you want. As long as you do it consistently, it will eventually help, despite the anxiety.
-Tea. Not caffeinated - I find I have to avoid caffeine after 4 pm or I'll never sleep. In fact, it's best to avoid caffeine as much as possible if you have anxiety issues. The herbal teas I find help me are chamomile, melissa (lemon balm, though there's a type without the harsh lemon flavor), and mint. Actually, any kind of mint can help. Scented oils, anything. They have a mild sedative effect on the brain. I cycle through these teas so I don't get too much of a tolerance to any one. Might be a good replacement for the milk at least some of the time.
-This one is dependent on where you live, but in my area it's not illegal: as a last resort, I smoke cannabis before bed. It's not ideal because it makes it harder to wake up in the morning, but I use it in situations where it's really important for me to get to sleep. Not good to use it too often though, or it stops working, and you can also start to have different anxiety issues as a result of being used to being sedated all the time, as I'm sure you know if you have experience with any kind of tranquilizers or anti-anxiety medications.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head but I'll post again if I think of something else. I really hope this helps at least a little. Being terrified of something you know isn't rational, having anxiety you can't control, is a hard thing for people to understand if they haven't experienced it, but at least you've got one person here who knows exactly how it feels. Be strong - you'll find your best solutions and get back in control if you don't give up.