You wake up early, put it a long, grueling day at work, and then finally make it home. You’ve been thinking about crashing into your bed all day. It’s quite honestly all you’ve been thinking about. You’re so exhausted, you can barely make it there. Yet, when you fall into bed, ready to immediately head off to your dreams… nothing happens.
You find yourself tossing and turning, overthinking everything that happened during the day. Something your boss said to you three days ago keeps bouncing around inside your head. You start worrying about buying a friend a present for their birthday… that’s three months away. You can’t seem to relax, and you can feel yourself getting frustrated.
You want to scream: “Why can’t I just fall asleep?!”
If this sounds familiar, it’s likely you’ve dealt with insomnia before.
Insomnia is a condition that affects millions of people all over the world, across many different age groups, genders, ethnicities, and occupations. The frustration of not being able to fall asleep at night and not fully understanding why is a feeling that many people have experienced at some point in their lives and can, unfortunately, relate to.
However, despite the frustration (and the many days of being exhausted due to the lack of sleep), you may find comfort in knowing you aren’t alone, and what you’re experiencing is actually quite common.
That’s why we made this list of people who have suffered from insomnia — and some of the wisdom they have to share. Likewise, we’ve added a few tips at the bottom that you can try to help find some relief.
Funny Quotes About Insomnia
Sometimes, the best way to deal with something that’s stressing you out is to laugh about it. Here are a few funny insomnia quotes to help you through your day (or night):
“Not being able to sleep is terrible. You have the misery of having partied all night… without the satisfaction.” - Lynn Johnston
“I'm an insomniac, my mind works the night shift.” - Pete Wentz
“Error 404 sleep not found.” - Vishal Surelia
“Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.” - Anthony Burgess
“Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.” - Albert Camnus
“The amount of sleep required by the average person is five minutes more.” - Wilson Mizner
“Don't fight with the pillow, but lay down your head And kick every worriment out of the bed.” - Edmund Vance Cooke
“Sleep: a poor substitute for caffeine!” - Wallace Shawn
“According to the ‘you snooze, you lose’ principle, insomnia makes us winners!” - Unknown
“Friend: Are you getting enough sleep? Me: Sometimes when I sneeze, my eyes close.” - Unknown
“The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.” - W.C. Fields
“His insomnia was so bad; he couldn’t sleep during office hours.” - Arthur Baer
“My bed is a magical place where I suddenly remember everything I forgot to do.” - Unknown
“Sleep is such a luxury, which I can’t afford.” - Robin Sikarwar
“Insomnia sharpens your math skills because you spend all night calculating how much sleep you’ll get if you’re able to fall asleep “right now’.” - Unknown
Insomnia Quotes for Parents
Being a parent is almost a full-time job itself, to say nothing about juggling it with a normal career and… well, whatever free time you can manage to scrounge up. Oh, and sleep? There’s a reason we didn’t mention it when talking about juggling family and a career. Here are some quotes dealing with insomnia and parenthood:
“Yes, my kids come first, but as a parent I need to come to them with a fresh mind. I can't be too exhausted or too tired. And I am a better parent [when] I have more energy.” - Molly Ringwald
“The only thing kids wear out faster than shoes is their parents.” - John J. Plomp
“I feel everything more deeply. Every action I take, I think of her first. That's a big change for me. That — and no sleep!” - Jenna Dewan-Tatum
“Why don’t kids understand that their nap is not for them but for us?” - Alyson Hannigan
“People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one.” - Leo J. Burke
“Embrace it. Especially because of the lives we live, a lot of times other people have to care for [our kids] and you have to have that mommy time. Get your sleep!” - Jennifer Hudson
“Every morning when I wake up, my first thought is, ‘When can I come back here?’ It’s the carrot that keeps me motivated. Sometimes going to bed feels like the highlight of my day. Ironically, to my children, bedtime is a punishment that violates their basic rights as human beings.” - Jim Gaffigan
“The sleep deprivation after children is so real. I liken it to what it must feel like to walk on the moon and cry the whole time because you had heard that the moon was supposed to be great but in truth it totally sucks.” - Amy Poehler
Emotional Insomnia Quotes
While trying to find the humor in insomnia can be soothing, sometimes you don’t need to laugh — sometimes you just need to know that other people have felt how you currently feel. Insomnia isn’t fun, and the reality is, it can be incredibly frustrating suffering without sleep night after night. Often, it can feel like no one really understands what you’re going through.
“Sleep comes more easily than it returns.” - Victor Hugo
“I've got a bad case of the 3:00 am guilts - you know, when you lie in bed awake and replay all those things you didn't do right? Because, as we all know, nothing solves insomnia like a nice warm glass of regret, depression and self-loathing.” - D.D. Barant
“The creak of bed springs suffering under the weight of a restless man is as lonely a sound as I know” - Patrick DeWitt
“I've always envied people who sleep easily. Their brains must be cleaner, the floorboards of the skull well swept, all the little monsters closed up in a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed” - David Benioff
“It appears that every man’s insomnia is as different from his neighbors as are their daytime hopes and aspirations.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald
“When I don't sleep, it's not that I feel tired so much as assaulted. In the morning after a night of no sleep my eyes are sore and tender and can barely open. My joints ache. There's a taste in my mouth which isn't like any other taste, only a feeling, and that feeling is defeat. My skull aches evenly across its hemisphere. [...] I go to bed at night, I get beaten up, come downstairs in the morning. Then I go about the day as if things were normal and I hadn't been beaten up, and everyone else treats me as if I hadn't been beaten up, and that way I survive, but no more than that. If somebody willed your destruction they could do it this way, by taking away your sleep. Of course, it's tried and tested.” - Samantha Harvey
“The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4am knows all my secrets.” - Poppy Z. Brite
“The scary thing about having insomnia is not the hours lost for sleeping, but the re-run of thoughts you’ve been trying to forget.” - Unknown
“Insomnia is a vertiginous lucidity that can convert paradise itself into a place of torture.” - Emil Cioran
“Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care. The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath. Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course. Chief nourisher in life’s feast.” - William Shakespeare
“In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge.”- Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
“He was afraid of touching his own wrist. He never attempted to sleep on his left side, even in those dismal hours of the night when the insomniac longs for a third side after trying the two he has.” - Vladimir Nabokov
“Between the midnight and the morning: on a given day, that's the hardest stretch of time to fill.” - Luis Joaquin M Katigbak
“A night full of nightmares is way better than a sleepless one.” - Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“Like travel, insomnia is an uprooting experience. You are torn out of sleep like a plant from its native soil, then shaken down so that any clinging vestige of slumber falls away, naked confusion exposed like nerve endings. Sleep, in its turn, is a matter of gravity. It pulls you down, beds you in the earth, burrows you in. In sleep you connect back to the bedrock that provides nourishment and restorative rest.” - Marina Benjamin
How Can You Get Rid of Your Insomnia?
As you can see above, if you’re struggling with insomnia, you aren’t alone. Yet, knowing that won’t help you get to sleep. So what can you do to finally get some rest?
The first thing that you should do is make an appointment with a doctor. While insomnia is sometimes caused (or exacerbated) by our behavior, many times it’s due to an underlying medical issue. This is why so many people will urge you to see a doctor if you tell them you have insomnia.
While there’s a chance you might be able to solve your problem with better sleep hygiene (doing things like keeping a sleep schedule, not bringing a screen into the bed with you, ensuring your room is cool, and giving yourself plenty of time to get to sleep), a lot of the time this advice simply won’t be helpful.
In these cases, your problem could be more serious — and for that reason, it’s important to see a doctor. A medical professional can help you discover the reason you aren’t sleeping — and in some cases, simply knowing that can help you get to sleep.
While you’re waiting to see the doctor, however, here are a few things that might help you go to sleep:
Make Your Bedroom a Sleep Sanctuary
Simply having a disorganized, messy room can invite anxiety — and thus, prevent you from getting to sleep. For this reason, it’s important to keep your room clean and free of distractions that might prevent you from getting to sleep. For parents, this can be hard. Your room might turn into a central space in your house — and there might be children’s toys, clothes, and more scattered all about your floor.
Yet, simply making a routine of cleaning all this up can help you fend off anxiety.
It’s also a good idea to make sure that there aren’t any bright shining lights in your room. Frustratingly, many electronics makers seem dead set on including bright blue LED screens on their products. Blue light can disrupt sleep, so covering sources of it can be a good practice.
Establish a Routine
Our bodies operate on an internal clock — and if that clock gets out of sync, or worse, never gets the chance to get in sync, then you’re going to have problems.
Try climbing into bed at the same time every day. Likewise, try waking up at the same time. It’s a good idea to give yourself time to fall asleep and to wake up, too. If you are setting your alarm minutes before you have to jump into the shower (or else you’ll be late for work), you might want to rethink that! The same goes for bedtime — if you are trying to squeeze in too much before bed, you might be sabotaging your sleep.
Try Deep Pressure Touch Stimulation
Massages, meditation, yoga, and — of course — weighted blankets, may all promote better quality sleep, according to the latest research.
As Kray Kibler states in Sleep Review, a journal for sleep specialists, “The chemistry of sleep is relevant in relation to massage because it directly influences the body’s production of serotonin, which is essential for the production of melatonin.”
Deep massage, which uses slower, more forceful strokes to target the deepest muscles, is ideal for relaxing the body and achieving sleep.
Don’t have someone around to give you a deep massage? That’s okay — you can try a weighted blanket instead. Research published by the American Academy of Pediatrics reveals that weighted blankets may help children with autism spectrum disorder sleep better. In a 2004 study, weighted blankets reduced nighttime cortisol (the stress hormone) levels in adults with sleep disorders, stress and pain.
Insomnia Quotes Not Enough? Try a Weighted Blanket
Would you like to experience better quality, more restful sleep? If you struggle with insomnia, a weighted blanket may help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep throughout the night. Order your weighted blanket today. You can also get in touch by calling us at 855-736-7222 or using our online contact form.