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Sleep and relaxing

Will Young

I find it really difficult to sleep unless i’m really tired and I can only sleep if the air around me is cold with a cold pillow, I think I might have insomnia. 

I also can’t sit on a chair without clapping my knees together constantly, it happens without me even thinking about it.

How do you relax? 

Because the most relaxed I feel is when I’m playing sport where everyone else says relaxing is lying down doing nothing. I don’t understand why anyone would do that because it’s not fun or productive and just a waste of time. 

Is it just me or is this relatable?

  • I have the radio on all night. Usually it's Radio4extra, occasionally BBC World Service or Radio5live. Concentrating on the radio distracts me, to some extent, from all the anxieties that keep me awake. I used to listen to spoken word CDs or podcasts which would finish after an hour or so but I now realise that continuous speech all night is what works best for me.  Slight smile

  • in reply to Will Young

    My AS causes me to wake up and reprocess my interactions with people trying to work out if I have behaved correctly and with honour.   I also have ultra-vivid dreams because of some of the meds I take and my health problems break my nights up..

    Night time is not something I look forward to.

  • in reply to Plastic

    Why? And I also watch TV until I’m tired enough to sleep, the best sleep I get is when I’m drunk.

  • in reply to photonic_electrons

    I suspect I have OCD but I can’t see the benefits of being diagnosed. One of the reasons is I’m kept awake at night by me worrying about whether I locked the door or done all my work or closed the vivarium or packed all the correct things.

  • I put the TV on very quietly so it's really difficult to hear it - and set the timer for an hour - then try and watch - I normally fade out agian.

    I get to watch a lot of night time tv.

  • I struggle to sleep often. Usually i can't stop thinking about "stuff" and hae to actively try and think of something more relaxing.

  • in reply to Hathor

    I listen to music all the time like hours upon hours as it helps with most thinks like exiting the world around me and helps me feel emotions as I have alexithymia and it seems to be one of the few things that give me a buzzing feeling inside.

    My hobby or main interest would definitely be historical wars (mainly WW1 and WW2). I love watching documentaries and TV programs on the war, the ***, RAF and other forces. I like certain TV series like arrow and Gotham, Luther and the serial killer programs.

    I can only get to sleep with 1 thin pillow and I keep having to turn it over until I fall asleep so it stays cool.

    I often bite the inside of my mouth for some reason but I also do the hand drawing thing sometimes. Another thing I do is tap my heels to a song that is stuck in my head.

    What do you do and what are your hobbies?

  • I can't relate to the need for cold air and pillow (quite the contrary) but I do need it to be dark, the bedding to be very smooth and not to be too hot or cold. Both mattress and pillow need to be very soft indeed. So needing certain conditions for sleep is definitely relatable.

    The knee clapping sounds like a stim to me. When I'm sitting down if I'm not on my computer or doing puzzles (the latter is a stim, too, I think) then I draw patterns with my fingers on my hands, the remote and anything else I happen to get my hands on. Restlessness can be a symptom of autism so it sounds as though you're autistically normal.

    The word and number puzzles help me and I do jigsaw puzzles, too, which I usually find quite relaxing. I never fully let go, though. As you can't play sport 24/7 I'm wondering if there might be other activities you could do which put you into flow. A hobby or interest, perhaps.

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