Hi Pat,

During a particularly stressful time in my life I had trouble switching off my brain to be able to sleep. I have found a few things which helped me.

You said you tried herbal tablets, but have you tried herbal teas? Usually the main ingredient for inducing a relaxed sleep is chamomile, but different teas have other extra ingredients maybe to help relaxation or to make it a pleasant tasting tea. I have started a new job 5 months ago, which is the late shift, 4pm - 11.30pm, and I get home at midnight. I find it difficult to go straight to sleep but I still wake up early, usually about 6am, so if I am particularly tired I make a cup of the sleep tea about half an hour before going to bed. I make it in half a cup of boiling water so that I don't have to get up in the night to go for a "widdle walk" (sorry, folks! but it defeats the purpose to finally get to sleep and then have to get up to go to the loo - kind of like getting woken up in hospital to get a sleeping pill).

I have decided that the best description for the result is that drinking the tea "takes the edges off the frazzles". By that I mean, when my brain is so overactive and won't settle down to let me sleep, it is like thousands of tiny "frazzles" all vibrating at high speed and with a sort of high pitched internal/mental sound, like the cicadas that just started buzzing outside my front door. I imagine the frazzles as finger-like things or cilia - the tiny hairs inside your ears - waving around at a frantic pace. By drinking the tea the frazzles become less tensed up, less frantic, and they soften themselves into more relaxed, more slowly moving shapes and so the tea doesn't really put me to sleep it just allows me to get into a frame of mind conducive to sleep.

A brand of tea I like is by Celestial Seasonings, but there are others available, asl long as they have chamomile in them. Chamomile on its own is a bit of an acquired taste. I find I can drink it if I need it, but it's a bit too powerful for my taste.

Next, when I come home from work I usually sit at my computer and play a few games of solitaire - the game called Spider is my favourite at present - which is far from exciting, fairly repetitive but engaging enough to click my brain into focusing on something other than my current worries or preoccupations. I save a particular game and keep trying to solve the same one because I can focus on the same information and try to solve the same puzzle rather than starting new games each time.

I also have a cheap computer software programme for doing jigsaws. I can load my own photos into it so that I am focusing on images I like, and I make it just hard enough to be interesting but not hard enough to be demoralising. That helps me to get into a more relaxed frame of mind.

As for CD's, I discovered Adagios when I was in that very stressful work situation a few years ago. I have a CD clock radio, and I put a CD of Adagios on with fairly low volume and the rhythm of the music is long and slow. I bought 3 Adagio CD's and to this day I have never consciously heard the end of the 3 CD's because I have always fallen asleep before the end. Another Cd I can recommend, if it is still available, is by the Canadian Mudcatter called Musicman (Paul Evenden. The CD is called Farewell: A Collection of Celtic Waltzes and Slow Airs, a tribute to his wife who passed away.

And about taming your worries, someone told me many years ago when I was having difficulty working through some issues that a trick is to mentally imagine putting all your issues or worries (the type that you keep going over and over in your mind and can't seem to get past them into a solution) into a paper bag and then imagine tightly sealing the bag and then throwing it into the garbage bin. I did that and mentally chucked it in the river. IT's a funny thing but it seemed to help me to detach from things which were overwhelming me.

I'm lighting a candle for you, and thinking of you. I'm sure everything will work out fine. It's always so hard to take up a new job, and if it is a lot to learn it is not unusual to be eating, sleeping (or not sleeping :-) ), dreaming your job until you settle into it.

Helen