[Galanoth]

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.

[MusicMike]

I'm not an expert on sleep hygiene but I do know of one system. You decide the average number of hours of sleep you are getting per day, then you block out a time of that number of hours. So let's say you are getting 6 hours of sleep - 3 at night and 3 in the afternoon. You block out a six hour stretch, say from midnight to 6 am, and you only stay in bed for that period. It's very difficult, but you don't sleep at any other time. Eventually your body will learn to stay asleep for six hours during that period. Then you extend it to seven hours and so forth like that. They call this sleep consolidation.

The usual stuff... no caffeine, no other stimulants.

Avoid looking at a computer screen late at night.. the light will tell your brain it's daytime. I have a hard time avoiding computers entirely so I use blue-blocker sunglasses while I work on the computer for the last few hours before bed.

That's all I know about but there is a great deal more information on sleep hygiene.

[Thunder Bow]

Anxiety is affecting your sleep. Seeing a therapist to work through your anxiety might help.

[superfly47]

It is very difficult to function when your sleep is really bad.

You should keep a sleep log, so you can tell if you're getting improvements if you try different approaches. Any example of one is: http://www.sleepny.com/sites/www.sle.../Sleep_Log.pdf

You can search online for others too. Record when/if you take caffeine, exercise, medication if you take any.

Mike advice is good. When you increase sleep do it by 15 intervals once you get set.

When you get up in the morning, try to get some sun right away so your body gets programmed to learn that this is morning. Even if it's cloudy out, the sun through clouds is far more powerful than lights.

Make sure your bedroom is completely dark, even the light from a charging phone can disrupt sleep, you can put a sweeter or anything over it to cover it up.

8 hours of sleep is a guide and generalization. Some people may need more, others less, you may end up only needing 7. If you happen to need significantly less than you're spending in bed your body will drag out your sleep, making it less efficient. This can cause you to spend more time in bed, which causes your sleep to be dragged out and even more efficient and the cycle keeps getting worse.