Oh snap, you’re me! I just wrote about having the same routine!

As to “sleep hygiene” stuff, I find that a lot of well-intentioned tools and advice simply don’t work for me. That’s why I value hearing what creative solutions the fellow members of my neurotribe come up with. It’s also validating to find that others ended up organically following the same routines as I do.

I switch to one of the numerous Wikipedia pages I seem to perpetually have open. I put the browser on a dark “reader” mode and read until I find myself unable to follow along, which is a signal that my brain’s ready to sleep. If I end up staying awake for a while, it’s not because of the phone keeping me up - it’s because my brain simply isn’t ready to sleep yet.

In fact, if I don’t have quiet time to read alone on my phone just before I fall asleep, it can make falling asleep even harder. The topic of the page gives me something to think about and redirect myself toward if my brain tries to wander. It’s not a perfect solution, but it helps often enough. This is especially true if I’m traveling. My brain’s more alert in unfamiliar places, and the farther I deviate from my typical routine, the harder it is to fall asleep. Sometimes those few minutes of reading are the only consistent thing day-to-day, and it’s a time I look forward to. It wouldn’t help me to take that away.

You got it. Sometimes the safest thing to do when somebody’s having hallucinations is to play along, and that means telling lots of lies. Sometimes people think their kids (who are well into their 60s) are still newborns, and they will have a panic attack because they don’t know where their “baby” is. I’ve reassured people that I “just set the baby down to nap” numerous times.

I’ve seen people treat dolls like real babies, too, and one time a lady rolled up to me in her wheelchair, asking to see a doctor because her baby (a doll with food smeared over its mouth) wasn’t eating. I even went so far as to get those “magic” doll bottle things that appear to “empty” when you tip them.

Point is, you’re right. But I don’t feel as conflicted about all the other lies I told, I guess the religion thing is just too … I dunno, “icky” for me? I’m an out atheist with pretty much everyone else. I don’t like having to go back into a closet.

When I worked in a nursing home, I was Christian.

I mean, I wasn’t. At all. But the dying little old ladies who sundowned so bad that they sometimes thought I was their grandchild? When they asked if I believed in Jesus, I’d bite my tongue and tell them yes. I hated having to lie to their faces, I hate even thinking about it all these years later, but some of them had nothing to look forward to except “going to heaven” by that point. Lying seemed the most ethical choice.