I think I am stuck believing that my thoughts are facts. I have created a bad habit of staying up too late and regretting it in the morning. I have it written on my schedule to be in bed by 10:30, but I keep ending up staying up til midnight. I think I am acting like a rebellious child and trying to mother myself and the child is winning. The mom side of me thinks it’s time for bed. I want to feel rested in the morning. I want my body to feel good. The child thoughts are NO! I don’t want to go to bed! It’s too early!

I questioned those thoughts and came up with I want to have some fun. I want to relax. I want to feel good (except it’s instant gratification and then feeling like crap in the morning). I think I feel angry and trapped because I see that other people can go to bed at 12 and wake up at 7 am and be just fine, but with my health conditions, it would seem I need much more sleep than that. And that frustrates me. Secondly, by the time I get home from work, have my shower, eat my dinner, do my allotted self-coaching time and take care of other responsibilities, it’s basically 30 minutes before the bedtime I’ve set and that triggers thoughts of “I don’t have any time for me.” I want to do something fun or I want to have more fun. I want to talk to my friends. I want to let my creative brain flow. And I guess I believe that I don’t have enough time for that in my week otherwise.

I’m arguing with reality basically. I WANT to be one of those people who functions well on 6-7 hours of sleep, but it seems I need about 10, unless I have a particularly good night where I fall asleep and stay asleep (which hasn’t happened in 10 years) and then 8 is okay.

Yet I find when I do go to bed on time, I struggle to fall asleep, which is usually because of all the thoughts I’m thinking. I get excited and start thinking of fun creative ideas. So then I dread going to bed on time because falling asleep turns into me getting mad at myself for not being able to fall asleep.

What I think I need to think in order to happily go to bed on time is “I had lots of fun today. Today was a great day. I’ve accomplished so much today. I’m excited to go to bed so I can wake up refreshed for a fun day tomorrow.” But I believe NONE of those thoughts, nowhere close. Even if I believe I’ve accomplished a lot one day, I still sometimes feel stimulated at night because accomplishment isn’t everything if I haven’t had fun.

And apparently scrolling facebook is fun and searching the web for things I think I need.

I am not sure how to address this situation. Obviously, staying up late is not creating a good situation for me, but when I go to bed on time, I start to get grumpy about how little time I have for “Myself” and “fun” and I start feeling tempted to stay up late.