SPD and Sleep Disorder

I've always been envious of people that can go to sleep anywhere and anytime. My mother is like that and it just baffles me over and over again. She needs two alarms to wake up and often I have to get up and go and turn them off as she just doesn't wake up.

I need to be in my own bed, I need complete silence and I have to be very comfortable in order to sleep, and I often have to fantasize about something specific to achieve it. Usually I just start thinking about something and after a while I will loose control over my thoughts and then I'll be asleep.

I haven't got insomnia, but my sleeping habit is really strange, unless I'm on medication. I seem to have something like 24-30 hours-day. To be more precise: I'm awake for 24-30 hours then sleep for 8-10 hours.

I have a hard time falling asleep. If I try to keep a strict schedule and go to bed before I'm sleepy, I will usually lay awake until the next morning.

I take medication now and it's working okay. I have a normal sleeping habit now of around 8 hours of sleep each night, although I seem to push my time for getting sleepy an hour forward every day, so I usually end up with a very frustrating result and have to skip a nights sleep in order to get back on track.

Right now I'm unemployed, but when I was working I had a real hard time getting sleep, even when taking medication. I would go to sleep every night at around 11-12 and my mind would be racing completely, never settling on specific thoughts or fantasy's. I would usually get 0-3 hours of sleep before workdays and go on like that for 3-4 days until I called in sick and slept for 12-14 hours.

Plastpose:

Your situation is a perfect description of mine before the transition I went through that I described in my previous post. The change was completely unplanned.

After all this happened I read that we all have 90 to 110 minute cycle of wakefulness and sleepiness superimposed on the daily cycle of night and day. During the night the sleepiness cycle corresponds to the deeper REM sleep. If you can stabilize your time of getting up and then click it back one notch (say 100 minutes) you might find that you get sleepy in the evening and wish to go to bed. You will fall asleep easily and get up easily and your sleep period will not tend to drift forward. I get only 6.5 hours of sleep at night but I make up for it with a short nap in late afternoon. If I skip the nap I sometimes go to bed at 9pm instead of 10. My usual schedule of 10pm to 4:30am might not work for you if you live at home but the same method should work.

So you're saying I should sleep a little bit less then I do now? I guess it makes sense. I have no reason to get up so I sleep until I awaken, which is usually around 8 hours. I'll try that for a little while and see if it helps. Thanks for the advice.

My main concern with this though is that I love sitting up at night. I got the habit when I was at uni living with four other guys for three years.

Before I clicked back I was in bed 8 hours but I certainly wasn't asleep all that time, maybe only a little more than now. I hated lying in bed for so long waiting to fall asleep.

I know what you mean about sitting up at night, I used to do that all the time. Now I enjoy the morning just as much. As it is now, my sleep period tends to drift back in time, if I clicked forward a notch I think it would drift forward again. To stay on schedule I now have to force myself to stay up in the evenings by moving around or doing something, but at least that is something that can be done; you can't force yourself to sleep (except with sleeping pills) in order to prevent forward drift. I occasionally use a fraction of a sleeping pill if I don't fall asleep fairly soon. Anyway my schedule is as good as it gets for me; there is much less of the frustration of feeling tired all day and then lying awake for so long at night.

>do any schizoid here have sleep disorder like waking up at night >and waking up very early in the morning and also very hard to >get up of bed?

>and do any here dont have motivation to take the shower?



I always sleep until about 4 or 5, then keep waking up every half hour or so until it's time to get up (not sure, I may just be dozing), and, yes, I have always found it extremely difficult to get up. I start work at 8am and everyone laughs at me cos I look like i've been out all night- no one believes me when I say I never go out.
On my days off, I can only get up at 10.30, no matter how much sleep i've had.
I don't like showers as it dries the skin (i have eczema), so I have baths. I only have a couple a week but luckily i'm not a naturally smelly person. I think

xx

Phineas, sorry for not replying, I completely forgot it. I tried cutting my sleep short for a while. I think I tried it for around ten days, although I didn't go to bed 10ish like you, but kept with my most usual bedtime, around 1-2, and I went to bed at that time each night even though I wasn't sleepy.

During the first 3-4 nights nothing really changed, except I was very tired during the day and I would "wake up" when the evening was approaching. I managed to get to sleep relatively quickly, but I'm pretty sure I owe that to the ADs I take. The fifth night it kinda crashed. I layed awake for hours until I got up, saw some movies and went back to bed and slept for like 12-13 hours, sleeping through the alarm (or rather shutting it off without being awake). I started over the next night, but the cycle repeated itself, although not identical.

I kinda gave up and forgot about it after that. If this is going to work I think I'll have to stop taking the meds (something I'm already considering for various reasons) as I seem to crave much more sleep with them than without, and they were probably the reason why I was so tired during the day.

Plastpose:

Well It was worth a try. It may be something that works only in middle age. When I was younger I kept much later hours.

As I said earlier, this just happened spontaneously, you may not be able to force it.

I think I have pretty much normal sleep. I don't sleep until 4 am lately. I have a hard time falling asleep sometimes takes awhile. Seems like I'm wasting time if I do, so it's hard to get me there. I sleep a long time, I could sleep early one day and might not still wake up until I normally do. When I was younger and going to school though I'd usually wake up 30 minutes before the alarm ever went off.

I have a sleeping disorder. I've learned how to deal with it and how to improve my sleep, but there are times when I wake up several times every night, I have trouble falling asleep, I don't sleep well and when the alarm clock rings in the morning I feel like I've barely slept at all.

As for showers, it's like I go through different phases. Sometimes I love taking a shower and do it almost daily and enjoy it. Then there are times when I hate taking a shower and avoid it as I can and just shower once or twice per week for the sake of not stinking terribly.