u/Fancy_Imagination195

I’m 21F and since April I’ve been dealing with sleep problems after trying to fix my sleep schedule. I used to sleep in the mornings and wake up in the evenings, so I tried staying awake for 24 hours to reset it. Ever since then, I started getting anxiety around sleep itself.
At first I had nights where I’d barely sleep at all or only get 1–2 hours and eventually i was awake for 2 almost 3 days, and I became really focused on whether I was sleepy or not. It felt like my body was exhausted but my brain kept “checking” if I was falling asleep, which made it harder to actually sleep.
I eventually got back into sleeping normally for a while by doing calming routines before bed and stopping myself from checking the time constantly, but recently my schedule shifted again and the fear came back after trying to reset it.
Earlier today I tried going to sleep and laid in bed for around 2 hours without falling asleep. The weird thing is my brain feels calm now and I’m not panicking the way I was before, but I’ve become super aware of my body and sleep signals. Sometimes I don’t even feel tired, which scares me because I start worrying that my brain somehow lost the “sleep signal,” even though I still eventually sleep sometimes for 7–9 hours.
Has anyone else dealt with this weird calm-but-alert feeling where you’re not anxious anymore but your brain still keeps checking for sleep?

In April, I was struggling with sleeping. I had a very bad sleep schedule where I would sleep in the morning and wake up in the evening. I wanted to fix it, so I pulled a 24-hour (which was never a problem for me in the past). I ended up dozing off for a bit twice, both times for maybe 20 minutes. At night, when I would try to sleep, I couldn’t I would just be wide awake. This kept repeating for a few days. I would get maybe a few hours of sleep here and there, but it came to a point where I didn’t sleep for 2–3 days. Eventually, my body just fell asleep on its own somehow. Even though I was sleeping, it felt like my brain was still awake the whole time i was sleeping. After that, I knew I had been sleeping for a while. Once I fixed my sleep schedule, I was going to bed at 9 p.m. and sleeping until 7–8 a.m. That feeling of my brain still being awake lasted for about two days, and then I felt normal again. However, after a week, my schedule shifted again (the same as last time). I was getting at least 7 hours of sleep, and once my brain stopped worrying about not sleeping, I started feeling normal again. But today I tried to fix it again by staying awake. It has been about 21 hours since I last slept for 7 hours. I tried to sleep after smoking some indica (slept for maybe an hour), but while trying to fall asleep and feeling my body drifting, it felt like my brain kept trying to check whether I was asleep while still being awake. It feels like I’m forcing sleep instead of letting it happen naturally. How do I stop that? I’m starting to overthink this again, and I don’t want to end up awake for 2–3 days again.