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I am a big advocate for meditation and practicing as a ritual multiple times a day as well as stretching and continuing to keep up my exercise, regardless of how tired I become. Unfortunately, I do believe that you are right Holly and sometimes it is up to professional help, as my mother is also a nurse and suffers from insomnia, but unfortunately for her she was started on ambien when it was a newer drug and now cannot even get remote sleep without which makes me try to avoid medical intervention at almost all costs. Melatonin and Benadryl areas far as I go, but they do not work too much anymore. I am used to perseverance and lasting out the difficult situations and feel that for the next 6 months this is most likely what I must do and just be ready to move on again to a place which has day openings. I have been through much worse in life and know I can tough this out, despite COVID, just was hoping there might be some tidbit I was missing. And ChristiM, thanks for the feedback, I actually have been using Calm now for 6 years, Headspace only for the last 6 months and I began another called Balance which I really like as it has some other different cool techniques in it. I guess nights are very difficult because moving to a completely different part of the country straight to nights, expecially now with COVID and working strictly with it, it can feel very isolating and would be nice to have others to communicate with outside of work as it has become mostly work and home isolation to keep others safe from myself. All other RNs I work with our much younger than myself now and pretty lonesome.

I have a newborn so my sleep schedule is a little messed currently. I have been getting about 6-7 hours a night, but they are broken up into 1-3 hour increments. My goal is to fall asleep as fast as possible. Headspace and Calm apps have really been helping when nothing else is working.

The Calm app actually helps me go to sleep more quickly by helping me clear my headspace and thoughts. I just have difficulty staying asleep.

I started night shift after 7 years of days. I sleep well at night when I'm off, but I have difficulty sleeping during the day.
 

I have been rotating shifts so my sleep is all over the place. Now that I am on a more Regular schedule, am trying to go to sleep at same time so I can get at least 7 hours  of sleep.

I fall asleep okay but I have trouble staying asleep

Hi there; I find that the stress causes me to feel somewhat depressed, like the anxious "do do go go" feeling never really subsides and I begin to feel hopeless, even though I may be relaxing at the end of the day prior to bed. I found that when even a little bit down or depressed from the stress, I could not sleep as well. I really think that emotional and mental health take a toll on our sleep patterns; its important to assess this these areas for improved sleep.
 

Just starting out; want to learn more.
 

I've always been terrible sleeping on nights and I have done a solid year and a half recently with no change other than melatonin and Benadryl has lost it's effectiveness and a lot of times I will actually end up not able to sleep between shifts and then sleep for 2-3 days on and off without ability to accomplish much other than the forced exercise I do as I have always had that as part of my routine growing up. I also have the opposite issue with weight than I always read about with lack of sleep and cannot gain anything because I rarely give myself time to eat and will force myself to eat. I have read many resources and taken CNEs on this and it is all the same material and from issues with insomnia in my childhood, I already would do most of them and set myself 2hours of dim lighting and low level activity without eating large amount and avoiding spicy, high junk carbs as well as binging. Warm bath or shower, mindfulness and yoga for over 10 years, as I said regular exercise despite being tired, and because I have done this a lot for portions of my life I hide it well and most would have no idea unless I am up over 48 hours which is too frequent more recently. I know I need to get to a different shift in the end as it's the only way with my natural tendency to have trouble sleeping, I'm not made for nights, but I need to make it another 6 months at least and was hoping some ideas might get thrown out there that I may not have heard or implemented. Sorry for length, once again up for 38 hours now. Thanks! I can say the biggest help though for everything in life has been mindfulness as it puts the right perspective on everything and is the only way I'm able to deal with this without allowing it to stop me and I have made great gains and travels in life for it regardless of difficulty. This is my biggest advice to others if not being used as a tool in the toolkit yet.

My sleep problem is staying asleep throughout the night.  I often wake up at 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. as if I forgot something.  When I am working, I need to be up at 5 a.m. so I end up losing that extra hour of sleep if I wake up at 4 a.m.  Ideally, I would like to to get 7 hours of sleep a night, but I often average 5 or 6 hours a night.  I hope I can complete this challenge with everyone.