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Hi,
How often do you sleep? are you on a 24-hour circadian cycle i.e. sleep every night?
As for me without the help of sleep aids I only sleep every 3 days. Not because I stay up intentionally, but rather because of Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder and anxiety. What about you? ^^
I sleep about 7-9 hours every night and usually take an hour-long nap in the afternoon.
Nothing special, really. I go to sleep around 11:00pm-12:00am on workdays (got university) and wake up somewhere between 6:40am-10:00am depending on when classes start. On weekends I stay up a little bit longer, 12:00-2:00 am. Obviously I sleep longer on weekends, up to 11:00 am, sometimes even more. Because of that I struggle with sunday night insomnia, can't really fall asleep before 2:00am-3:00am altough I still go to bed at regular hour.
Not very healthy sleep schedule but a very common one, I guess. Can't do much when there's school. Maybe at some point after graduating I'll be able to fix all that.
Oh wow, that sounds terrible.Quote:
Originally Posted by lucidbunnie
Oh it is, but I try to look at the bright side of it - I get lot of things done since I'm awake more and get REM rebound all the time when I do sleep. XDQuote:
Originally Posted by Maslak
Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder is mostly about going to sleep later and so waking up later, from what I know. But I guess it ain't possible with school/work/whatever.
And what sort of anxiety do you mean? I always try to picture sleep as a soothing experience. Well, unless the anxiety is about sleeping itself.
Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder could also apply when you have longer circadian cycle than the norm. For example, I'm on 72-hour circadian cycle than 24-hour like most people. There are people like me who's biological clock is way out of sync with the day/night cycle. This was the same long before my anxiety issues.
I love sleep. I have no anxiety about sleep itself. In fact, it's the opposite. I look forward to sleeping and experiencing dreams. I'll be grateful if I can naturally sleep everyday without the aid of melatonin etc. As for my anxiety issues, it's a bit complicated. I'm not sure if I want to share it, but here it goes, I have frequent anxiety and panic attacks since my significant other passed away. Usually when PTSD strikes I try to meditate and control myself. Sometimes I'm able to lessen it's impact by focusing on all the good times, but in worst case scenario I end up fainting, throwing up, etc. Overall, not a fun experience. I lost track of how many times I have ended up in hospital after more serious episodes. I'm on daily antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds, they help a bit. However, I have anxiety almost all the time which makes relaxing hard.Quote:
And what sort of anxiety do you mean? I always try to picture sleep as a soothing experience. Well, unless the anxiety is about sleeping itself.
Hi lucidbunnie! On a good night I fall asleep around 8, sleep 3-5 hours, wake up, record dreams, take 15-30 minutes to fall back asleep, sleep an hour, wake up, record dreams, etc until 7 or 8 A M. It's not 12 hours of sleep though because I sleep the first 4 and then its 1 on, 1 off, until morning. I don't even use alarms.
But I don't get a good night very often. A lot of times I will be up much longer after that first 3-5 hours.
Once in a while I will nap during the day. Like a few days ago I napped 2 hours. That was kinda cool. But then 2 nights later I had 2-3 hours of insomnia. I don't know if it was connected.
I wish I always slept perfectly and I think it would help me make progress with dreaming stuff. But I still do alright.
Good idea for a thread! I think difficulties with sleep are pretty common now adays.
Well everyone is different and so with be our sleep cycles. Even if your in sync with day/night cycle and get to sleep everyday, it doesn't mean you are on a perfect 24-hour circadian cycle - maybe it's like 21-hours or 27-hours. That can affect you some days. You can go on sleeping well most days but face insomnia during some days. It might be confusing, but it's because of our biological clock. Unfortunately there is no one device or medical test that gives us an exact circadian circadian. We can measure it by comparing sleep-wake cycle (movements in sleep etc), nutritional-cycle, body temperature, blood pressure and the like. Who knows maybe study in this area may become more important in future when dreams and lucid dreaming start to have more active roles in our lives. Knowing your circadian cycle may become just as important as knowing your blood type, for example. It has a lot of role not only in sleep, but our whole well-being as well.
That's actually a good way to wake up. Mental clocks and alarms are fun to experiment with. If I wake up from alarm I'll not be able to go back to sleep. I'm a very light sleeper. Setting mental alarms has helped me get up at specific times. In fact, both my mom and I can tell the time of the day without looking at clocks. Of course, we can only say the range like "Around 3:30 PM" but it'll be 3:35 PM or so. ^^Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles3
I'm very sorry for asking, I hope I didn't make it any harder for you.
My sleep rhythm has been… rather weird. ;)
I've spent most of my life since teenage years as a night owl (despite my best efforts). About a decade ago, I ended up developing a non-24 rhythm that I got stuck with for the next several years. Often that “rhythm” became quite chaotic. I could be up anywhere from a few to maybe 30+ hours and sleep anywhere from a few to more than 24 hours at a time. This pretty much became “normal” for me for a long time.
During the last few years, things seemed to get quite a bit more stable, but my circadian rhythm always seemed to be more geared toward 25- or 26-hour days. Every so often I'd attempt to sync back to a 24-hour schedule, but sooner or later I'd always advance too quickly and couldn't maintain it. But over time, it seemed like my forward drift possibly was slowing very gradually, and early last year I tried one of my usual “just for kicks” attempts and actually managed to stay on a more-or-less 24-hour schedule since then (it's been over a year now). (This all was before I had anything like melatonin to try, so it was entirely without any help.)
But after all that, I'm still a night owl by nature, and my circadian rhythm still tends to drift forward, albeit much more slowly now. Every few months or so, I end up using melatonin for a week or two when I need to recalibrate it backward again. But ultimately, I still often feel my body would rather have 25–27-hour days and that 24 hours is pretty close to the very limit of how short a cycle I can just barely sync to. :)
I sleep 6-7 hours everynight