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Shima Honnou posted:As far back as I can remember into childhood, even before I was school age, I've had issues falling asleep and staying asleep at night. I went through most of school on somewhere between 2 and 4 hours of sleep a day because it usually took me until 4 or 5 am to fall asleep, which resulted in me spending a lot of my class time getting poo poo done as fast as possible so I could spend the rest of the hour sleeping at my desk, though I have also fallen asleep in the hallways etc. I pretty much can't quiet my mind no matter how much I try poo poo like meditation or various "the military totally swears by it!" sleep bullshit so that's probably related. It's extreme enough that even going 24 hours or longer without sleep then trying to sleep at night doesn't really make a difference, I either will be unable to sleep despite being incredibly tired, or I'll get an hour or two and wake up feeling normal. It doesn't really matter how tired I am standing up or sitting down, once I lie down that stops immediately. iirc, being a night owl is an actual thing. People have wildly varying circadian rhythms and some people genuinely are more active at night and no amount of sleep training or conditioning is likely to change that.
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Dec 8, 2020 12:27
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 01:38 |
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I sleep very, very, poorly, and I have done so since middle school, and to a lesser extent, always. I've gone through every gentle sedative (tricyclic antidepressants, melatonin, etc.) and they do nothing at all. Absent powerful hypnotics, I rarely sleep more than an half an hour at a time, if at all, and almost never at night. It's not infrequent that I got two or three days without sleep. It make functioning normally during the day next day impossible. I sleepwalk dangerously on Z-drugs. Since I broke my leg once of Ambien, I refuse to take Z-drugs anymore. Chloral hydrate works, but I'm deathly afraid of it. The difference between a therapeutic dose and a lethal does is dangerously narrow. When I absolutely need to be awake in the morning, I take a substantial does of phenobarbital the preceding evening. Keeps me asleep for a good nine hours and I'm not too terribly groggy in the morning. I don't using anything stronger than phenobarbital -- Seconal scares me, too. I'm not afraid death, but the therapeutic index too narrow for me.
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Dec 9, 2020 11:49
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I sleep ok but I have sighted non24 sleep disorder, so my schedule free roams around the clock. I tend to flip from being awake during the day to being awake all night about once a month or so. I've tried all the sleep hygiene stuff and light therapy and medication, my brain will just not accept that our day is 24 hours long and not 26 no matter how hard I work to fight it. I've been this way since my teens. I used to take thermoses of coffee to school with me to try and stay awake during the night sleeping cycles but it didn't help. It makes working really difficult. Socializing as well. The weeks where I'm awake all night are so boring and lonely. When I was a little kid I had legit night terrors, as in my parents had to move the deadbolt on the front door up out of my reach because I kept sleep-screaming out the front door. Glad I grew out of that. I bet my husband is glad about it too! So clearly there's just something wrong up there.
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Dec 10, 2020 23:47
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In short: if i fall asleep, i sleep great. But falling asleep is not something that happens easily to me unless it's well past midnight. I always fall asleep easily when it's 02.00 or 03.00 at night. Great! And i'll wake up well rested 9 hours later. But most jobs don't let someone start at 11.00. So i have to force myself to wake up at 07.00. That of course makes me tired as hell the whole day. Despite that, i don't fall asleep earlier. I might fall asleep right before or after dinner, essentially ruining the little bit of free time i have during the day, but that will just make it harder to fall asleep later that evening. Melatonin helps somewhat, but it's not holy. It doesn't help with the feeling of being awake and energetic in the evening. In the end, when i still had a 9 to 5 job (now i work specifically afternoons) i resorted to drug use to make sure i would not go to bed at 23.00, then be awake until 02.00 or so. Because that would leave me with just 5 hours of sleep. Sometimes i would go to bed at 23.00 and fall asleep at 0.00, but i just couldn't count on it and 7 hours of sleep isn't enough to begin with, so i would do anything just to be sure it wouldn't get even less. By now i wanna punch people claiming 'you get used to it'. It does not. For half my life i've had to get up early, and i've essentially never felt rested a single day that i had to wake up before 09.00 did i ever feel rested. Right now i have a part time job starting in the afternoon so everything is fine, but this won't make a living sadly. So sooner or later i gotta find help. Probably will try that once i actually have a new job.
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Dec 13, 2020 20:57
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Like absolute poo poo. I got a smart watch recently, and here's how it's gone. 
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Dec 13, 2020 21:53
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Lib and let die posted:Like absolute poo poo. I got a smart watch recently, and here's how it's gone. How does your watch measure sleep? Mine will say I got bad sleep if my wife smashes into my hand while I sleep.
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Dec 14, 2020 00:25
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gay for gacha posted:How does your watch measure sleep? Mine will say I got bad sleep if my wife smashes into my hand while I sleep. I'm not sure, actually. I'll have to look a bit more into it, but my wife and I have been sleeping in separate beds after my accident earlier this year. I'm sure some part of my hosed up brain isn't letting itself really fall asleep lest I wake up to the paramedics standing over me again.
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Dec 14, 2020 00:57
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gay for gacha posted:How does your watch measure sleep? Mine will say I got bad sleep if my wife smashes into my hand while I sleep. Mines pretty bad at it too. My resting heart rate is pretty low and it seems to think reading a book or watching a movie is a few hours of sleep I definitely didn't get.
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Dec 14, 2020 06:33
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LimaBiker posted:In short: if i fall asleep, i sleep great. But falling asleep is not something that happens easily to me unless it's well past midnight. I also have been drinking more water during the night (before bed, pee breaks) and I feel like that has also improved my sleep.
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Dec 15, 2020 13:26
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I sleep like poo poo most of the time. For a long time (felt like a year at least) I was waking up between 2:00 and 3:00 am every loving night and I would toss and turn until after 4:00. A doctor at one point recommended using OTC sleeping medicine for a couple weeks to train my brain to get through the night but it didn't work so well and I didn't want to become dependent on them. I used melatonin for a month and stopped recently after discovering I shouldn't be taking it for extended periods since it can gently caress up my body's natural production. When I wake up in the middle of the night my brain is usually racing about dumb work stuff so I attribute it to anxiety. But usually the poo poo I think about it so meaningless, which makes it all that more frustrating. Knock on wood, but in recent weeks I've been sleeping through the night. I naturally wake up between 5:00 and 6:00 am but I'm a morning person so it doesn't bother me. I cut out alcohol for the month of December, and I suspect some of my lovely sleep was due to me drinking beer multiple times per week. I've learned a lot about myself during my sober month, and I plan to cut down my drinking significantly. I smoke weed and I would love to rely on that to sleep (it really helps me fall asleep) but I have self-control issues and I'll smoke all day, every day when it's in my house so I force myself to take two week breaks every three weeks when I run out of my stock. If I could get to a point where I only smoke a small amount in the evening I think I would be okay maintaining like that. me your dad fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Dec 30, 2020 |
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Dec 30, 2020 16:39
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I used to have a pretty tough time going to sleep, at least an hour in bed before finally falling asleep, would wake up to use the bathroom and usually fall asleep afterwards but occasionally would stay awake for a period of time. I just adjusted my sleep time to compensate for it and would go to bed at a time that my peers were laughing at me. Once I had a baby that all changed, I guess my body realized that it had better take any chance it gets to fall asleep and nowadays I'm down within minutes of hitting the bed.
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Dec 31, 2020 02:47
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me your dad posted:I used melatonin for a month and stopped recently after discovering I shouldn't be taking it for extended periods since it can gently caress up my body's natural production. Ugh, really? I should cut back. It works so well for me and I’ve tried so many other things. I stopped ambien for obvious reasons, and I heard that Benadryl/diphenhydramine can block the formation of new memories and gently caress that poo poo.
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Dec 31, 2020 03:52
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Lower back pain is making sleep more difficult nowadays. Started sleeping with this pillow filled with grain that I microwave a few minutes, the heat helps.
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Dec 31, 2020 11:19
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I've had low quality sleep for as long as I can remember. I average 7.5 hours every night, but often find myself at least a little foggy during the day. It's quite the vicious cycle: poor sleep leads to struggling during the day leads to stress leads to poor sleep. Part of it may be that I can have difficulty getting to sleep because bedtime is basically my brain's time to de-stress with long-form day dreaming, which sometimes just pushes me quickly and smoothly toward sleep and other times leaves me amped up for a couple hours. I guess I could try finding some other time in the day for it and actually attempt to "turn off my mind" like folks apparently do, but it's not so simple as there just isn't a whole lot of other time in the day to just let my mind roam free for such a length of time. My brain wants sleep, but it wants the time to day dream more. There are only two things that have reliably eliminate this. The first is international travel, which I imagine leaves me too exhausted to do anything but sleep and breaks the habit for a couple of weeks. The second is having a partner spend the night, which, even if we're not getting up to anything, results in rapid and sound sleep. The first isn't really a solution. The second hasn't been available for some time and, until covid's been overcome, won't be until at least late summer. Tangentially related: I haven't had a proper nightmare in at least eight years and I feel like I'm missing out. The last "holy poo poo, this is terrifying" one I had, my brain inexplicably chose fight over flight and completely turned the dream upside down in the most exquisitely satisfying way. Ever since, whenever there are hints of unease or fear in a dream, my mind just "nope"s right out and stomps it out.
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Jan 2, 2021 21:49
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I sleep pretty well. I take melatonin between 10:30-11 and am usually out 30-40 min later. I use that time to play a switch game in bed I've conditioned myself to mean "sleep time". I'm up around 7 for work. I have a small child so I'm occasionally up for an hour or so in the night which sucks. I used to have terrible getting back to sleep after waking up in the night but I'm a pro now.
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Jan 4, 2021 02:48
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I'm 33, childless (thank loving god), and I sleep like a rock for about 7-8 hours every night. I've even slept through earthquakes. No matter how much sleep I've gotten before, I can not stay awake in any moving vehicle during a trip that's longer than like an hour & a half. I'm pretty sure my right middle, ring, and pinky fingers are permanently damaged from falling asleep on them during a cross-country (US) plane ride. Hopefully I'll never end up becoming a light sleeper -- it sounds pretty terrible. Also hopefully my post helps, OP. From reading the thread, it sounds like kids are what affects sleep most often for people my age.
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Jan 6, 2021 15:36
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Cugel the Clever posted:I've had low quality sleep for as long as I can remember. I average 7.5 hours every night, but often find myself at least a little foggy during the day. It's quite the vicious cycle: poor sleep leads to struggling during the day leads to stress leads to poor sleep. i get nightmares every couple of months and they’re cool. wish they were a bit more frequent along with dreams in general
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Jan 7, 2021 10:27
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Several months ago I started doing this thing to help me fall asleep where I count to 500 in my head, knowing that if I get to 500 I have to get up and do 'something else' (like some work I have to do [might be best to be specific in your head what it is you must do]). If you toss and turn and readjust yourself, you have to start the count back to 0. You need to be fully in position and ready to go to sleep. (e.g. no major arm re-adjustments once you start counting). When I get to around 250 I can feel my body settling down into sleep, almost like I notified my brain that I am ready. Then I get to like 350 and think "there's no way I'm going to be asleep by 500". But, I have honestly only ever gotten to 500 a single time (when I was trying to force a procrastination nap in the middle of the day). (I do pretty much go to bed only when I feel tired and have never had that much trouble sleeping, so I don't know that this is actually helpful. I have been told by one other person it did not work for them but I feel like they didnt commit to the premise completely). I find it to be a fun and useful bedtime activity. Also, you don't have to count slow. Part of the fun is that I count as fast as I can in my head, trying to see if I can get to 500. Internet2 fucked around with this message at 11:12 on Jan 7, 2021 |
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Jan 7, 2021 11:09
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I can sleep fine if left to my own devices - I had 2 weeks off at Christmas and was sleeping 4am-10am and it was no problem. As I approached my return to work, I kept saying to myself, I'll get myself back to a normal sleeping pattern, but my mind doesn't switch off until about 3/4 in the morning. I get stuck in a Wikipedia blackhole or similar quite a lot. If I force myself to go to bed 2230-2330 ish like my girlfriend does, it feels like I have to toss and turn for ages before I get to sleep. I can get away with 0100-0600 during the working week without feeling too tired but occasionally my mind is still too active at 1am and then it feels like pressure as I'm really cutting my sleep time down the longer I toss and turn at that late point. Ultimately I need to discipline myself into going to be before 2300 and I guess I will adjust. I'm not very good at that though.
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Jan 8, 2021 15:35
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I'm naturally nocturnal. Having a 'normal' sleeping pattern is constant suffering. I've been trying to correct it somewhat before work again next week but the same as always will happen - I'll basically not sleep during the week, and sleep for 12-14 hours at the weekends.
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Jan 8, 2021 17:12
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It's 4am so... I'm natural night owl who struggles to keep to a normal awake during the day schedule and any time I have more than a week consecutive with no survival demands to get up in the morning I inevitably slip into 4am-2pm sleep cycle. I've been this way ever since I was born according to my mum. I love evening shift and night shift work because it's the only way I get to align my sleep schedule with money earning work hours.
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Jan 8, 2021 18:21
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I'm also a natural night owl, and one of the things I truly love about my current job is that it's 9:30am-6:00pm. I wasn't 100% sure I was going to like it going into the job: I was worried about getting off work so late, but it was such a huge improvement in my quality of life over normal 8-5 or earlier jobs. I've had two job interviews in the last week, and I'm a bit concerned about having to go back to an 8-5 shift, but I really need to make more money.
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Jan 9, 2021 01:52
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I'm definitely a night owl-- my natural sleep schedule is 4 AM to 11 AM almost on the dot, and although I've been able to keep to a more normal sleep schedule when my career has required it, it's a constant effort and I get next to no sleep at least once a week. Fortunately I'm self-employed and most of my clients are in time zones several hours later than me. Apart from that I sleep very, very well. That wasn't always the case, but once I started taking melatonin an hour or so before bed, maintaining good sleep hygiene, and making it a point to watch somewhat dull TV right before bed, things improved drastically.
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Jan 9, 2021 09:21
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I’ve always had trouble sleeping. In middle school I always lay awake and got scolded for staying up. In high school I had so much trouble sleeping that if I didn’t sleep before 3am I’d have to stay up or I’d miss school. This has happened to me on a semi regular basis until about 10 years ago. Nothing really happened except that I was able to at least sleep before 2am. Currently my sleep quality is terrible and I’ll only fall asleep around 2 am, getting up about a minute or so before I’m supposed to check in for work online. I haven’t dreamt for years, not that I remember anyway. Sleeping is one of the more horrible things in my life, or maybe, getting up is. It’s a necessity and waking up takes an immense amount of energy, so much that it feels counterproductive. Alcohol or no alcohol doesn’t seem to matter. I have been in the sauce and I’ve been off the sauce for half a year and my sleep quality won’t improve. Pot helps but it makes me useless the next day. I hope to experience decent sleep before I’m a geriatric old gently caress.
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Jan 10, 2021 02:09
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Poorly. I used to sleep pretty decently until I spent a few years working 3rd shift, between that and chronic pain its been a decade since I've started working more normal hours and I still cant fall asleep when I want to. The only place I can fall asleep easily is when I'm driving unfortunately but it doesn't work in all moving vehicles as I cant sleep as a passenger or on planes, that really sucks when you fly on a weekly basis. Its gotten a little better when I paid attention to things like sleep hygiene, not drinking coffee after noon, trying to get exercise or enough physical activity every day, and surprisingly starting on adderall for a different issue. By better I mean I can get a few good hours right before its time to wake up. I see that everyone came here to share how crappy their quality of sleep is but it helps a lot when people share what worked for them to make it even a little better. I'm probably going to try that counting to 500 thing.
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Jan 14, 2021 06:23
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On a bed made of money.
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Jan 14, 2021 07:45
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Much better now, I rotated my bed 180 degrees and now my back feels much better in the mornings.
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Jan 14, 2021 13:25
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woke up this morning so tired my eyes burned just opening them gonna be a long one today.
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Jan 14, 2021 14:31
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I've been doing daily meditation since the 2nd and it's actually having a pretty noticeable effect. Did 20 minutes before bedtime and it left my mind calm and clear in a way that it just never is when heading to bed. Ended up falling asleep within 15 minutes and getting a Fitbit sleep score 10 points better than my average, both of which are unheard of for me. Ymmv but it's worth giving independent or app-assisted meditation a shot.
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Jan 14, 2021 16:18
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I haven't slept through the night in probably fifteen years. I can only imagine how much better my mental health and cognition would be if I'd been able to sleep properly all this time.
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Jan 16, 2021 04:34
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Cugel the Clever posted:
I've never meditated before going to bed, but my better sleep did coincide with the time I stated sleeping better. If you have any issues with anxious thoughts or the like I can certainly see it helping. One other weird trick I've used occasionally (and have since I was a kid) was thinking about the mundane lives of fictional people. This started off as kind of an offshoot of various attempts to write fiction, but I've found that slipping back into the lives of these random people I've created and thinking about how they'd deal with say having their MIL move back in during coronavirus puts me in the right mindset.
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Jan 16, 2021 08:38
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Dick Trauma posted:I haven't slept through the night in probably fifteen years. I can only imagine how much better my mental health and cognition would be if I'd been able to sleep properly all this time.
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Jan 18, 2021 10:43
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honestly at this point, if my doctor told me i had to kill someone to get a good night's sleep, there'd be a body in the waiting room on my way out.
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Jan 18, 2021 14:08
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i finally called and made an appointment with my doctor for my sleep issues. my wife and i had a nasty little spat this morning that arose from me being the world's biggest loving rear end in a top hat in the morning when i don't sleep well (every day).
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Jan 19, 2021 21:07
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Thanatosian posted:Get a sleeps study done, if you can afford it. It loving helps. I have sleep apnea, chronic pain and terrible neighbors. So... no mystery. My father has apnea as well and when he went on one of those CPAP machines it gave him cardiac problems bad enough to send him to the ER half a dozen times until he stopped using it. I expect it will be the same for me since I am an amalgamation of all of my mom and dad's health issues.
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Jan 19, 2021 21:40
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Dick Trauma posted:I have sleep apnea, chronic pain and terrible neighbors. So... no mystery. My father has apnea as well and when he went on one of those CPAP machines it gave him cardiac problems bad enough to send him to the ER half a dozen times until he stopped using it. I expect it will be the same for me since I am an amalgamation of all of my mom and dad's health issues. awesome, i assume this is gonna be me too since nothing ever loving breaks my loving way at this point, i'd take the big one over not being able to loving sleep
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Jan 19, 2021 21:48
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Lib and let die posted:honestly at this point, if my doctor told me i had to kill someone to get a good night's sleep, there'd be a body in the waiting room on my way out. I grind my teeth at night and have a hypersensitive gag reflex, and at one point got a mouth guard. I tried it for a few days and woke up gagging so much I gave up on it. Dentist told me I was gonna have destroyed teeth in my 40s/50s (I was in my 20s at the time), and I told him "if you told me I was gonna die next week if I didn't wear this, my response would be 'I had a good run.'" Not sleeping is the loving worst.
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Jan 20, 2021 03:26
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Thanatosian posted:I grind my teeth at night and have a hypersensitive gag reflex, and at one point got a mouth guard. I tried it for a few days and woke up gagging so much I gave up on it. Dentist told me I was gonna have destroyed teeth in my 40s/50s (I was in my 20s at the time), and I told him "if you told me I was gonna die next week if I didn't wear this, my response would be 'I had a good run.'" After years of ignoring my mouthguard my tooth sensitivity went through the roof. My dentist finally scared me into sticking with it. It sucked for 2 weeks but the gag reflex slowly got itself under control, and the mouthguard provided a cue to unconscious me to stop clenching & grinding. That led to better quality sleep, which improved the acid reflux as a bonus, and a reduction in stress. I now wear my mouth guard religiously. Please give it another shot and tough it out for the first few weeks. Trust me, it's worth it
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Jan 20, 2021 07:06
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His Divine Shadow posted:Lower back pain is making sleep more difficult nowadays. Started sleeping with this pillow filled with grain that I microwave a few minutes, the heat helps. I'm a side sleeper and when I'm having back trouble, I find that sleeping with a pillow between my knees helps ease the stress on the lower back. Otherwise, I'm a pretty solid sleeper, although I'ma night owl as well; I tend to stay up too late and sometimes have trouble staying awake during the day.
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Jan 21, 2021 02:20
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 01:38 |
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got off on a technicality posted:This was me. Stressful job leading to untreated acid reflux for years leading to hypersensitive gag reflex. Major tooth grinding from the stress
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Jan 21, 2021 20:42
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