Published on 12, July, 2020
Just thought I'd throw this out here.After a night of no sleep (realistically I must have had about; 30 to 40 minutes of sleep); I did some rather quick reading on the subject today, & I'm curious to know if anyone else has any sort of sleeping problems? From what I can tell it seems to be quite common in people with ASD?I've struggled with sleep since childhood. At first I believed it to be due to the abusive/ disruptive surroundings (& I'd listen to music to drown it out & help me sleep. Sometimes I will still do this, but other times even that doesn't really help), but even after I left that predicament & moved into calmer settings, the sleep problems persisted, & have done so even to this day.
I've had everyone; through the years, giving me their 'suggestions' on where they believe I'm going wrong. Even had a few cheeky sods suggest it's because I wasn't active enough during the day, so I wasn't 'tiring myself out' enough. As you can imagine; I managed to prove that theory wrong on numerous occassions haha.A few occassions in the past it has gotten bad enough for me to consider going to the doctor, but he's a bit bloody useless to be honest (& I'm actually on the look out to get myself & my family moved to another GP surgery).
All in all it tends to be manageable, believe it or not.
I think one problem I have is that I will stay in bed, 'trying' to sleep, when I clearly will not drop off no matter what measures I take. Every now & then I can tell when I'm going to have a small bout of insomnia & just wont sleep 'enough', last night was an extreme case as it's been a long time since I was awake all night.I was talking to a friend about this, & even she suggested something I was considering, which is to just get out of bed & do something productive with my time. I'm a freelance artist, so those hours would be great to make up on lost time. I didn't sleep a wink last night, & I don't feel tired at all. I'd planned on maybe having a nap during the day, but I really don't need it.
I think most of the stress stems from me also being a stay at home mum & thinking that me not getting enough sleep will result in me being too tired to contend with my children. I'm tempted to just get out of bed the next few times this happens; do something productive & seeing what the results are.My own little 'experiment' I suppose.
Sometimes it's pretty obvious that I can't sleep due to overthinking/stress, but other times, I'm just not tired at all & there really doesn't seem to be any obvious cause.Does anyone else have anything like this?
I've always had trouble doing things that come naturally to most people...eating, socialising, sleeping. I'm taking medication which helps me sleep now, but before I'd wake up a ridiculous amount of times every night. When I was a child I'd be up at 5am because I couldn't stay in bed. I read a bit about it too. There are ways that can help you nod off, but unfortunately sleep seems to be something a lot of people with autism struggle with.My nightly ritual is now to have all technology off at least an hour before I plan to go to bed, dab lavender oil on a scent piuch next to my bed, use Tisserand roll on sleep oil, and use visualisation every time a worry comes in to my head (visualise a bucket which you put the thoughts in and tell yourself 'you can think about that tomorrow'). I've found it helps slightly to designate yourself 'worry time', where each day you allow yourself 15 minutes to address the worries you have, and after that you tell yourself your worry time is over for that day, and you will deal with it at the next scheduled time. You could also try natural remedies, such as rescue remedy's night time dropper ( http://www.boots.com/bach-rescue-night-dropper-10ml-10077391 ) Apparently eating foods high in tryptophan can help too: https://draxe.com/tryptophan/
On a random note, it's nice to meet a fellow artist =]
I hope you find something that works for you!
Ah sleep! Something I find difficulty with,always have done,I would creep downstairs and crawl behind the sofa to watch tv, my mum and dad sometimes knew and other times didn't, I seem unable to say"right time for bed" I sleep by just exhaustion o sheer tiredness, if I go to bed I just lay awake,head buzzing,a hundred different ideas or thoughts,in darkness I am worse as my eyes won't stay closed? So bright light is best, if it is to quite I hear my heartbeat,Basically I just get more and more anxious.
As a young lad I would sit up hold my arms out straight until they were really heavy! I would force myself beyond the pain until I had to give in.
life sure is interesting.