6d ago

Insomnia / Weird Sleep Patterns - anyone else?

For as long as I can remember (even dating back to childhood) ive never had a consistent ability to maintain a sleep time. This has resulted in me always being tired. I remember in elementary school over the summer I'd fall asleep at 4am and wake up at 12pm. In high school I would sleep at 4am, wake up at 8:30 for school, then sleep the second half at 4pm when i got home. Earlier this year I was sleeping at 3 in the afternoon until 11pm at night, then I would stay up all night and go to work. Today I fell asleep at 7pm or so and woke up at 2am, just been watching a show and listening to music since then while waiting to get ready for work. Often times if I try and maintain a specific time of sleeping I will roll around for hours awake, or alternatively I will only sleep for a few hours and then fall back asleep later. The longest ive been able to manage a consistent sleep time was in 11th grade, for about 6 months I slept at 11pm but gradually my body started wanting to push later and later. I tend to only get a full 8 hours of sleep one or two nights per week as well, sometimes I'll drink alcohol to help sleep longer but only on a friday or saturday.

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You might be interested in this
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder
DSPD is frequently misdiagnosed or dismissed. It has been named as one of the sleep disorders most commonly misdiagnosed as a primary psychiatric disorder. DSPD is often confused with psychophysiological insomnia; depression; psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, ADHD or ADD; other sleep disorders; or school refusal. Practitioners of sleep medicine point out the dismally low rate of accurate diagnosis of the disorder, and have often asked for better physician education on sleep disorders.
- I'll look into it. thanks!

Going to bed when it’s bedtime no matter how much you’re going to toss and turn is the first step. Your body will start to realize it is the time to go to sleep eventually. It takes a while. No being on your phone or reading or anything.

Maybe your body is telling you to live on the other side of the world. You'd be impervious to jet lag.
- I've always thought about this. I actually moved to the opposite coast of the country and my sleep schedule is technically better now than it was. so I'd imagine I would thrive in far Eastern time lol.

I have insomnia too so I feel for you, it's awful. How's your Sleep hygiene? Things like avoiding blue light (so no phones) and no caffeine after 2pmbreally help.
I also use a herbal roll on but steer well clear of lavender cos too much is a stimulant

Yeah this was me for all my life until last spring. It was depression related although it's hard to say which came first. I "cured" it by getting blinds that let the sun through, by getting a cat that wakes me up every morning and by smoking a lot of weed. Milage may very much vary 😅
- haha, i used to smoke but not so much these days, it started to make me real panicky at some point.
  
  But maybe the other stuff can still help you. For me it was mostly about syncing my inner clock by sticking to a routine and connecting with the world around me.

You might be interested in trying a polyphasic sleep cycle. Instead of one big 8 hour sleep each day, you could try two 4 hour sleeps. So, you can have your middle of the night sleep, and maybe another one after you get home from work or eat dinner or something.
Supposedly polyphasic was pretty common prior to the industrial revolution. Nothing really wrong with it if your schedule can accommodate it.
- oh wow, this sounds exactly like how I was sleeping in high school. I remember back then reading about something called biphasic sleep. maybe I'll try and go back to something like that.

11 comments