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Can’t Sleep!

Kitsune

I finally fell asleep about 2am, then woke up at just gone 3am and can’t get back to sleep! Usually I can sleep through on Nytol, but not tonight! Need to be up at 6am with the children too, thinking of just staying awake now! Is anyone else having difficulty sleeping tonight?

Parents

  • It's a very rare night that I don't have trouble falling asleep - kind of.

    I say "kind of" because I almost certainly have delayed sleep phase insomnia - no matter what I do, my brain is convinced that I live somewhere in the US mid-west, so I'm on US Central Time! When I don't have any external reason to get up at a particular time, I can sleep perfectly well if I go to bed at about 3-4am and rise at about mid-day - I feel rested and refreshed if I do that. Trying to force myself to fit around the regular "9-5" schedule simple doesn't work - massive sleep deprivation is guaranteed. As remarked, it's quite amazing how productive I can be in the early hours, when there are so many fewer distractions (or even just potential distractions), and when my mind often feels at its sharpest.

    I have been this way for as long as I, or anybody else, can remember, and several other family members have the same problem. To what extent it's biological, and how much from the night-time being less over-stimulating for my senses, I can't really say. However, it does seem that sleep problems in general, and late-onset insomnia in particular, seem to be especially common for autistic people. I've tried every solution under the sun - medication, light-boxes, different daily routines etc.- but nothing seems to budge my stubborn body clock (I have got to the point where hearing the same tired old advice over and over again makes me feel like biffing people on the nose! - much like autism, you just can't explain it properly to people who don't experience it.)

  • in reply to Trogluddite

    maybe you're a vampire  

Reply Children
  • in reply to aidie

    That's exactly what my landlady's son calls me! Laughing

    Oddly (spookily?) enough, when I was a kid, I did have loads of dental work done to my canine teeth- they're still set a little too far forward even now.

    Of course, it's purely an amusing coincidence that I didn't post much at my usual nocturnal times on Friday night (it was the 13th AND a full moon)... Imp