Over time I’ve developed a fear of that self reflective laying in bed trying to sleep time especially as when I get into negative thinking it keeps me awake far longer, sometimes hours of ever increasing torment so I find myself unable to go to bed before I’m tired enough to fall asleep quickly - generally that involves distracting myself with social media, YouTube, video games, porn, or even work but then I’m tired the next day and spend most the day sitting around distracting myself on my phone trying to avoid that limbo of guilt and negative thinking when I’m not awake enough to be productive.
Maybe 2 minutes normally. Hard to tell really. If I don’t I have two strategies:
If I’m staying awake because of some captivating train of thought (stressfull or exciting or whatever) I mentally put it aside with the thought “I can’t change that right now anyway I can deal with it tomorrow” and start trying to freely associate without focusing on any thought starting from some nice landscapes.
Otherwise if there isn’t something obvious keeping me from sleep, I just start focusing on relaxing bodyparts and breathing deeply and slowly to stimulate my parasympathetic nervous system. That normally puts me out quickly.
Usually within a couple of minutes unless something is triggering my anxiety, which hasnt happened in years thankfully. Otherwise I can pretty much turn my sleep on/off at will
Idk I don’t tend to look at the clock when I fall asleep, but I do know that whenever I accidentally fall asleep while watching, say, a PBS spacetime video, I pass out for no less then about an hour
Also I have no clue how the other people here figure out how long it takes them to go to sleep, because as far as I know, looking at the clock just keeps you awake for longer
You can test yourself at the expense of actually getting sleep. As you settle to sleep set a timer and hold a teaspoon (or similar metal object) in your hand hanging out of the side of the bed over a metal tray. When you fall asleep the spoon will slip from your hand and clatter, causing you to wake. You can then check how long that took.
An hour maybe to get some light sleep, and I can’t get to deep sleep until 5 AM easily.
I remember a few years ago that suddenly this topic came up with friends, and turns out almost everyone sleeps nicely after 1-5 minutes in bed.
And I thought my case was normal (it’s been like this since I was a kid). But I’ve been probably losing years of life without a way to gain them back. Depressing.
The time it takes to fall asleep is called sleep latency, and mine is also around an hour so you’re not alone. In my case I blame a combination of ADHD and Aspergers, which means that my brain literally always wants to think about interesting stuff rather than quiet down. For about 10 years now I’ve been using ASMR videos as a sleep aid and it helps immensely. I use the ones with people talking and it totally occupies the speech centre of my brain, cutting off my brains ability to keep thinking about whatever interesting thing it wants to think about (it’s hard to think complex thoughts while also trying to absorb what someone is saying)
Typically <10 minutes, but under <5 quite frequently. If I get woken up in the middle of the night or very early morning, good luck. I have such a hard time falling back asleep as I get older.
Over the last few months I’ve worked hard on teaching myself to fall asleep. I take 5 breaths to think about how comfortable i am - or to get comfortable if I’m not. Then i focus hard on relaxing each body part for 3 breaths, beginning at my feet and pushing out any other thoughts. I rarely make it past my knees.
Initial bedtime sleep takes a few minutes or so. If i wake during the night, it could take me hours to go back to sleep. If this is a daytime nap, that takes me like 20 minutes.