Hi all,

I have had a sleeping issue since I was 16 years old. The earliest I can remember my sleeping issue starting and the trigger for it might be that I started working in a gas station on the weekends and I would stay awake till 2 am no Saturday and Sunday and on Monday I would have to wake up at 8 am. Now this might have been the starting point of my insomnia, but at this point it was very mild. I would be troubled for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, then I would fall back to sleeping at 12am and be able to get 7 hours sleep.

Now the real problem started when I graduated from High school and moved to post secondary. At this time I had gotten used to staying up late till 1-2 am either studying or playing video games and then waking up around 8-9 am to go to school. It's weird that I would wake up with a headache and inability to poor memory/recall and lack of concentration, but as the day progressed my brain would start working better. And when it came time to sleep around 12-1am, I would be fully awake and not tired.

Anyways I know that I taught my body poor sleeping patterns for 8-9 years because of busy/erratic schedule with school and work and not really giving importance to proper sleep due to ignorance. I was very hard worker and usually stayed pretty stressed out and thought that it's OK to lose sleep if you want to be successful. However, the harder I worked, the more tired/stressed/spaced out/slow my brain became. It came to a point that if I tried paying attention to lectures, a loud painful throbbing would start in my head and would only go away If I stopped thinking and stopped paying attention. I was convinced I was going to die of stroke soon. Needless to say my grades suffered tremendously for 3 years and I became very depressed and suicidal. There would be some moments (2 weeks) where for some unknown reason to me, my sleep schedule would become normal and I would get 8 hours regular quality sleep. Then it would all fall apart again.

At present moment, I have graduated with a degree for 8 months and haven't really looked for any job since I can't really think straight and I have the poorest recall. I usually wake up with a headache in the morning and very tired body. I try to go to sleep at night and usually I can fall asleep, but I cannot attain deep REM sleep for the full 8 hours. I usually wake up after 4 hours of poor sleep and I cannot go back to sleep. However, I still stay in bed till 11 am to try to force myself to sleep and go in and out of sleep. I am usually aware of what's happening around me even though people think that I'm sleeping. Basically half my brain sleeps and half seems to be awake. Sometimes I wake up because it's too cold/hot in my room. I cannot seem to understand what temperature my body likes because sometimes I would be able to fall asleep in a certain temperature and other times the same temperature seems too cold or too hot.

Also the thing is that after being awake for 4 hours in the daytime, my brain gets really really tired and then if I go to sleep, I can get about 3 hours of deep sleep which feels really good and my brain feels refreshed after I wake up. Basically this is the kind of sleep I need, but at night time.

I have researched many sleep articles and they tell me not to take a nap, but if I don't take a nap then I just feel really tired and unable to do any kind of work. I'm a computer programmer and my work involves thinking about and solving problems and learning new information quickly and I cannot do any of that with a tired mind. Although I'm not working right now, I still try to review my lecture material so I can be prepared for job interview and I cannot do any of that if I have a tired mind. However, I have now given up taking a nap for long term benifits, but even though I haven't taken naps for the past 2 days, I still wake up after 4-5 hours of sleep at night.

I just need to teach my body that night is the time to sleep and proper sleep is to sleep 8 hours a day and then not be sleepy during the daytime. Please give me tips on what I should do.

I have gone to doctors and they have done blood and thyroid check and everything is normal. I don't want to take any drugs if I can fix it without the drugs.