Cassandro in knots: sleep, procrastination, life purpose etc

Maybe you're just being too hard on yourself trying to sleep all the way through:

https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-used-to-sleep-in-two-shifts-maybe-we-should-again

Try listening to your body, and giving it what it seems to need?

"When science meets mystery" is always a situation where I try to bite my tongue!

I also can totally understand how this feels. I'm stuck in a routine that I can't seem to shake. I don't like it but deviating from it is so hard and draining. I think that generally (well in my experience) most people on the spectrum seem to be far more comfortable in the winter. If it's not heat, it's too much sunlight, more noise (well here in the city) and generally more sensory input.

I'm just making an assumption here but you sound like a ball of energy that is having problems finding a channel. I also see a lot of qualities that aren't necessarily negative that are feeling negative. From what I've seen of you, you are a person who adds a lot of insight and finds resources for information. Not much procrastination. I have qualities myself that really grind my brain up, I'm over-vigilant, observant to a degree that irritates me (and other people sometimes), I can be prickly but not an arsehole. I always tend to try and be altruistic too and that can weigh on my mind. It causes me a lot of stress. There are lots of things I can try and channel it into but I can't put it into practice.

I think there are a lot of Autistic people that have a lot of energies, talents and qualities, that can end up giving us problems or make us heavily self-reflect. I don't know what to tell you to do but I can understand what you are saying. I think that you coukd apply yourself to pretty much a lot of things but I know myself how hard it is to make it happen. I've saw you say you struggle with people but I think you are a "people person".

I'm here shitting myself because my routine has got to change because I'm going to stay somewhere for a few weeks. Totally terrified. Worst thing is I can rationalise it and I feel even dumber. 

Autism is like having a suit of armour with some BIG weak points, an rocket with a tether, a howitzer that turns into a Nerf gun when you least expect it.

I don't think anyone neurodiverse or neurotypical ever learns all they need in time for certain phases in life. I think all we can do is work with what we've got and try to use our strengths to get through.

Hope you work it all out. All the best mate.

Cassandro said:

Where to begin? And then where to go? Well, there's so much jumbled up, different ways of seeing things:

Good Fortune from myself. I often do not reply to starters who have a very disparate and mixed number of enquiries, but you are currently a very important member of this "Community" (...), and so I attempt something(s)...

Prioritise and sort/list each trouble one at a time, else none of them shall be sorted (if possible) since they can all link to each other. For instance, I was thinking about the SLEEP business... I agree with NAS37638, and firstly:

Elephant-In-The-Room said (via a Picture):
' there is a separation between your brain saying "this needs to happen" and, "if I do this, this will be the logical conclusion"... and your none brain saying.. screw it, I'm worn out, time out card!! '

...It is all very well helping others and being awesome... yet if REST is not gained, then that cannot happen in the long term and will finish in being of no use to anybody at all. Do whatever relaxes yourself in order to 'switch off', for it is nothing more-or-less than a thing which MUST be done...?!

Thanks. It's not a current problem with the heat, because I have quite a breeze and very light bedding, and actually have no problem getting off to sleep at first. It's only after I wake up at 1am, 3am, 5am that I need a strategy. If it's after 6am the rule in my head has been to start the day rather than try to sleep, although there's little practical to do before businesses open and unfortunately it turns into computer time, which would be fine if I were writing.

I've not read that Wikipedia article, but it's definitely relevant. When I've come across autistic inertia mentioned before, I could relate. I would call it paralysis more than catatonia, possibly also related to procrastination and perfectionism.

' can override feelings as secondary to a rational understanding'

Rational autistic self lays out logically what should happen and needs to happen. The autistic self lays down its own challenges and veils of complexity that can present a barrier to the logical pathway being achieved. This leads to knots. ... separation between brain saying 'this needs to happen'... and your non brain self saying 'screw it, I'm worn out, time out card!'

Yes. This is it, in part at least. There's an internal conflict of sorts, that's a bit hard to describe to more typical people that I'd previously thought of in terms of personality type.

A major concern for INTPs is the haunting sense of impending failure. They spend considerable time second-guessing themselves. The open-endedness (from Perceiving) conjoined with the need for competence (NT [iNtuition Thinking, ie rational]) is expressed in a sense that one's conclusion may well be met by an equally plausible alternative solution, and that, after all, one may very well have overlooked some critical bit of data. An INTP arguing a point may very well be trying to convince himself as much as his opposition.

Well, I just lost a thousand words of reply to DragonCat16. Maybe it should wait until tomorrow....

Cassandro said:

It's autism meaning something affecting my ability to connect to people, but with main features being 'alexithymia' (not knowing what you're feeling) and poor 'executive function' (getting stuff done). It's not that I don't understand feelings, it's that unless very depressed I can override or ignore them and usually do.

Yup. Totally me.

And the:

Cassandro said:

consumed by the future of the planet in millions of years.

Usually, the Jehovah's Witnesses are the ones trying to get away. They ask daft stuff like, "have you thought about the end of the world?", to which I earnestly reply, "Yes - but it doesn't matter anyway because even if we take care of the planet in perpetuity, humanity is finished when the sun runs out of fuel, therefore it is actually moral to destroy the planet in the successful pursuit of getting mankind off this rock..."

Everyone I've recounted my difficulty sleeping to (too hot, too light in the morning, birds too loud) has said they're also having a hard time sleeping because of the early dawn. So that could definitely be a contributing factor. But it does sound like a rather classic insomnia pattern-you get to sleep and wake up, often around the same time and have trouble getting back to sleep. Rinse and repeat.

When I get insomnia (which is thankfully not too often, but I've had it enough to know the established pattern) it goes in pretty much that same pattern; have trouble getting off initially, wake up dead on the dot at the same time every night in the early hours, can't get back to sleep despite being really tired. Finally get off again for another hour before I have to get up. Which is awful, because I need a good 8-9 hours sleep really to function well, and I'll end up wanting to fall asleep mid way through the afternoon (except you can't nap because that doesn't help-and when I do try and nap I still can't drift off). For me, it is a sure fire sign that I am stressed-even if I haven't previously realised it. My body is more sensitive to how I'm feeling sometimes than how I think I'm feeling ( I also get a really strong physical reaction to anxiety (nausea, stomach ache, shaky) that's not necessarily proportionate to how anxious I feel) so I'll feel like emotionally I'm fine and it's only when I realise I'm trying to do 1039393 things that it occurs the insomnia might be due to that. So it's a cue for me to cut down on my obligations as much as I can, and take some time to relax and eventually my sleep patterns go back to normal. Difficult when you can't find something you can immediately cut out-the worst I've ever had it was during my undergrad dissertation, I didn't have the time to take a break, so I was just painfully tired for about 3 weeks and took a break as soon as I was able to. Does help if you can try not to take naps and get into a good routine before bed; stuff like having a nice bath or some warm milk is meant to help-I did find when I used to work nights, establishing doing the same thing every morning-breakfast, hot chocolate, hot water bottle when it was cold, really helped me get off nicely, though I can't say how much it has an affect when I've got insomnia. Having other routine might help the sleeping part of it sort itself out though.

Also, could you be having issues with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertia_(anxiety) ? I definitely get this, a sort of paralysed feeling that you just can't.

Agreed  it is not a great form of self medication.... liquid methadone for a lonely soul and also a depressive. 

I'm sure you already know this, but while alcohol tends to help with getting you to fall asleep, it actually leads to a very unproductive type of sleep and an inability for the brain to fall into a state of deep sleep, so it is not adivisable as a cure for insomnia. Since two people have indirectly implied that alcohol helps with getting to sleep, I thought I should mention that it's not actually a good or healthy solution, especially for someone who tends to wake up and cannot get back to sleep.

Apologies, the page froze and I had to screen grab my post! That’s so you wouldn’t spot me as a bot! 

I have had significant problems sleeping so I know where you're coming from. The thing is that a sleeping pattern is habit forming, so if you sleep well one night, you are likely to sleep well the next, etc. You are also likely to repeat bad sleeping habits over and over. Melatonin is actually really good for establishing a good sleeping pattern, but for some reason that I cannot fathom, you can only get it with a prescription in this country. You really only need to take it for two nights and then it's easier to sleep after that, even without the melatonin. It is suspected in some circles that autistic people are not as capable of producing melatonin as other people. I suspect that being extra sensitive to light makes it harder to produce melatonin, which is released by the brain when it gets dark.

The thing to do if you want to change a repeating pattern of bad sleeping is to force your brain to associate bed with only sleep. Go to bed only when you feel tired and if you don't fall asleep within 20 minutes, get up and go somewhere else, until you feel tired again, then repeat. Don't read in bed. Don't use a screen in bed. Any devices with screens that you use away from bed should be set to filter out blue light from sunset to sunrise at least. I have found an app for my phone that does that. and my computer already had the utility built in. Don't sleep in, even when you don't have to go to work.

Once you have developed a good sleeping pattern for several weeks, you can ease back on some of the rules, but don't allow yourself to get into unhealthy sleeping patterns again.

I have an app on my phone to monitor my sleep by detecting the vibrations of my movements through the mattress (I said not to use a phone but for this it's ok). It's good for trying to figure out what factors make me sleep well, and which ones cause me to sleep badly. The app detects when during my sleep cycle it is best for me to wake up and then it plays an alarm. That one feature makes me feel refreshed in the morning, even if I technically haven't actually had a very good sleep all night.

Use an eye mask or a blackout shade to block out the morning sun. Even the tiniest bit of the blue daylight will stimulate your brain into being wide awake, so heavier drapes will not be sufficient unless they allow absolutely no light to pass. The app also shows that I wake up when the sun starts to rise (which is before the actual official sunrise time), but I don't know if it's because of the light level (it happens even when I wear an eye mask, but that doesn't block out all the light) or the birds that start chirping outside my window at an ungodly hour in the morning once they themselves wake up. Probably a combination of the two. It seems to me that I have heard the first few birds of the morning several times. It starts with just one, then another, and pretty soon all of the rest of them wake up and it's a cacophony of chirping.

As for motivation to do things, what I do is make lists. Of course, you first need to have the motivation to make the list in the first place.... But crossing things off the list is so satisfying. There are many apps for that, or you can just use paper. Divide the tasks into smaller chunks so you're not stuck on something for hours. Believe me, I know how that is too.

I hope that helps.