Sleep problems

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Having some white noise helps me sometimes. Usually it's select episodes of the Netcot podcast, or soft jazz.

But yeah, my sleep patterns have gotten a little weird recently. After we came back from Florida this summer, I've been falling going to bed around two, two-thirty in the morning and taking at least thirty minutes to get to sleep. Luckily my efforts to get my sleeping back to around midnight have been doing well.

I have a non-24-hour sleep-wake cycle. I can fall asleep fine if I go to bed when I feel tired, about an hour later each day. But if I try to go to sleep at a regular time then I have horrible insomnia and lay awake half the night.

It's hard for me to fall asleep if it's noisy, especially if it's people talking or something else that can make me think. But once I've fallen asleep nothing can wake me. I have to use one of those alarm clocks that get progressively louder until you turn it off. And the purpose of that is to wake everyone else in the house so they can come wake me up.

I find audiobooks really good, especially if I already know the story. I've been listening to Harry Potter on tape every night since I was 10 (15 years, lol) and it really helps me get to sleep.

It's possible, but difficult, for me to advance my sleep phase. Basically, I need to religiously subject myself to strong light as soon as I get up, severely limit light in the evening, and take melatonin 2-3 hours before I'd otherwise want to sleep. I feel like I naturally have about a 25-hour day, so just MAINTAINING a sleep schedule is like trying to advance the sleep phase by an hour every day.

Fortunately, it gets easier if my schedule gets horrible - like from 5 AM to 1 PM - probably because of the increased light while I'm sleeping. It could be all the artificial light at night that keeps me up. Also, I'm very loath to use caffeine after 4 or 5 PM no matter how late I got up.

I'm currently sitting at about 2:00 AM to 10:00 AM.

I can't stand heat, people talking, dogs barking (much worse if it's my dog) or snoring when I'm trying to sleep, but don't mind most other sounds of nature like crickets, geese, rain or even thunder. I would even go so far to say I'd sleep better at 0°F than 80°F!! Because at least then I'd get a lot of weight in blankets!

There is an app for iPhone called SleepStream that plays soothing sounds and some "brainwave" technique to help you sleep. It worked for me, I'll use it when I need to.

Yes the noise also bothers me at night....I'm really sensitive to it. I can't go to sleep until everyone else in the house has fallen asleep.

I used to have really bad sleep problems when I was younger... I would have racing thoughts, would go over conversations i had that day that bothered me, replay embarassing moments of the day over and over, worry constantly about aliens abducting me in my sleep, any little sound would irritate and enrage me... etc... it was so bad in junior high/high school that I would say I slept MAYBE 3 hours a night. if that. I actuallly gave up for awhile and would just read all night till I passed out while reading. Then I started sleep training myself. It was something I came up with myself and the best thing i can compare it to is pavlovs dog. The dog drools when it hears the bell. I fall asleep when I follow a certain procedure and think of certain things when I get into bed. Is it self hypnosis? Maybe, DKDC. It worked, I have no problems falling asleep each and every night. It takes me no longer than 5 minutes to fall asleep when I get into bed, and I would say most nights I'm out with in 30 seconds. Occasionally, if there is a lot of noise I can't, I can't clear noise because noise is a real physical thing, my thoughts are not. But I can mitigate the noise with ear plugs...

I have had sleep problems all my life. Apparently, I didn't sleep through the night until I was 4. Normal me doesn't require much sleep at all. I routinely used to go on 5-6 hours of sleep and never was tired. Sadly, this all changed when I was 16. That is when I started needing naps after school. It slowly escalated to me being tired all the time and sleeping whenever I was able to do so. I now have the diagnosis of idiopathic hypersomnia, and it's horrible, especially for somebody who doesn't naturally need sleep.

I blame my hypersomnia condition on taking SSRIs in the past. I never had a problem until I started Zoloft, which was the first psychiatric medication I took for my OCD. I later took Lexapro and Prozac, which also caused extreme tiredness. I think that the SSRIs permanently screwed up my serotonin system, making my sleeping patterns permanently damaged, as well. And none ever helped my OCD to begin with. The only reason I am able to function in the world nowadays is because I am prescribed Daytrana transdermal (methylphenidate) patches. If I don't wear my patch, I will literally sleep all day. Even with the patch, I still have this "background tiredness" that never goes away, but I can keep my eyes open and function, at least. The Daytrana is why I'm able to hold down a job. But the tiredness interferes with my free time a lot, because it's so hard to stay awake to read or watch TV or do projects.

I also have been diagnosed with "circadian rhythm disorder- irregular sleep-wake type." Basically, this means that I frequently nap throughout the day, at irregular times, and I can wake up at irregular times. Like, in college, the way that I managed keeping up with my coursework despite sleeping so much was that I'd wake up at, like, 3 in the morning and work until 5 am or so. Then, I'd go back to sleep for a while before getting up for my morning classes.

And even with my hypersomnia, I still frequently have nights where it's hard for me to go to sleep and "slow down" because my thoughts are racing and I'm overstimulated.