All things neurodivergent and relating to the broader neurodivergent community (and communities).
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chronotypes are real. But there's no type that stays up all night. You'll just get tired a few hours later and thus wake up a few hours later max.
Try getting enough sunlight during the day, avoid bright light after sundown. Sleep in total darkness. Maybe try a light therapy lamp for 15 minutes after wakeup in the morning. Avoid coffee during the day. Physical activity, even light one, helps a LOT.
You should notice a difference after 2-3 weeks. If in doubt, ask a doctor.
So is 2-10 (about what I default to) highly abnormal?
When I work the best I find I can do is 1-9.
8 hours sleep is pretty normal but your inner clock is off a bit. There are tons of reasons I've heard off over the time (not an expert, just hating alarm clocks).
Some of those reasons are:
If any of these fit for you, try working on it and see, if it changes after a few days/weeks.
If not: Chronobiology is still kind of a young field and not all doctors know about it. You could try to give your local university a call/visit if they have chronobiologists. They will have excellent sources and probably can name doctors near you or even might be interested in you as subject to study.
The reason I post here on neurodivergence is because, yes I know these things, but also I can’t stick to a habit for more than a week that requires executive function. I will always relapse on exercise, diet, sleep, work, or social life. Idk how people do all 5.
well, breaking old habits...
Try small steps, starting with the most important ones. For me, switching from coffee to tea and using apps, that increase red and decrease blue spectrum on PC, mobile, TV etc. did a great impact.
Getting 15-20 Minutes of sunlight aswell. I started doing groceries bi-daily by foot instead of weekly by car.
I'm pretty sure you can do it (if you don't have to work late shifts, have small kids, etc.) but it's not trivial and change comes slowly.
Also, doctors might be able to help with medication if nothing else works. (wouldn't do it without a doctor since it can make things worse in the long term, appearantly)
I’m off adderall of 20y. Yes it does make things worse in the long term lol.
I have recently learned that this is called Delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS) and is very common in many people 'on the spectrum'. I think it's nonsense to call it a syndrome but that's modern society for you.
Anyway, I usually don't sleep before 4am, often even later. It's rough 😬
How do you deal with it?
I kinda.. don't lol. But I work just 4 days a week and on 3 of those I start relatively late (10:30), so that helps a bit.
Oh, I’m also on the spectrum. Interesting 😅
Is it worth it? Yes. Staying up late is bad for you in many different ways. Daylight hours are important for your health. Even divorced entirely from capitalist society and the need to work 8 hours a day, its still bad for your mental and physical health. I struggle with it too, but it absolutely is worth it to work on it.
I've had a couple of jobs where I worked nights, and I was never, ever able to properly adjust to it.
It was nice to have my free time during the day, but I always felt off while I was working.
Absolutely believe in chronotypes. Retired now, thank god. But my best REM sleep has always happened somewhere between 5 am and 9 am. Even when I had to follow everyone else's schedule, I absolutely had to be able to sleep in Saturday morning. If I didn't, at some point I'd have to go off in a corner later in the week and just sort of waking-dream to catch up on REM.
I have a little time-triggered recording of a nice voice telling me to wind down and another nice voice in the morning telling me to get up and take a shower. I'm surprised how much it's been helping me out. Prior to doing this, I'd regularly either go to sleep at 4 am or not at all (then crashing sometime around noon the next day). Alarms were only annoying and I'd very easily turn them off.
That being said, I also don't have to deal with normal business routines since I make my own schedule. If you are able, I'd highly recommend finding yourself in a situation like that.
For me this is a huge problem: sometimes I even end up going to sleep at 6 am or later!
But, then, to be completely honest, I often genuinely don't want to go to sleep. So I don't know how much of this is a 'natural predisposition'.
I have ADHD and find that I either have very early rising or very late rising. I can't do getting up a 7am very well, I feel sick and don't really wake for many hours if I try to do so. But getting up at 430am? Sure, POP, I'm up, no worries. Or go to sleep at 9am? Sure, no worries, I will pop up at 5pm and be ready to go, no issues.
I used to work a shift work job in IT and it was pretty awful because the roster rotated over 11 weeks. You would start at 7am for a week or two, then shift forward into a mix of 8am to 11am for a while, then shift forward to 12pm to 2pm, then everyone on 3pm, and finally the rotation back to 7am with a small subset of the team doing the 11pm to 7am shift. Just as you would get used to one sleep pattern you would have to shift forward so you could never really get used to anything. I also lived 2-2.5 hours away depending on the transport, so an 8 hour shift was a 12-13 hour day, along with me frequently taking overtime up to 65 hours a week.
Now I work a more manual job driving a truck and doing multi-drop deliveries and I have found that much better. I start at around 530am, load a truck, drive around my town dropping off stuff, and finish around lunch time. The exercise is great for my ADHD, I have packed on muscle, and I have way fewer sensory issues with a supposedly loud truck (earplugs) than I did with an office environment (headset).
I fought against my nature for years and tried the "push through the pain" method for most of my career. I burnt out of yet another job at the beginning of this year and decided I never wanted to work 9-5 again. I retrained to be a teacher and now I give afternoon and evening classes. I do sub work on the occasional morning but I won't do two days in a row.
I'm finding a lot of my executive functioning is better now that I've had enough sleep! I'm no longer living in survival mode constantly.
The improvement in my quality of life is incredible. I feel like one of those people who starts their day at 5am now. I have time in the morning to eat, exercise and get ready for the day before I head in to work. But instead of getting up at 5 I'm getting up around 10 instead. It's glorious.
I don't know. But I do know that I'm a night owl and an early bird. Go to bed late, get up early, get as little sleep as needed not feel awful during the day. (I got it wrong last night though and didn't get enough)