Skip to main content

Sleep is Hard

A leg stretched out, resting on a dog
     
Sleep is a difficult thing to come by, and it's not just me. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have categorized insufficient sleep as a "public health problem" due to its prevalence and consequences. Among those consequences are difficulty concentrating, remembering, participating in hobbies, driving or taking public transportation, managing finances, and/or working.
[Source]

Problems with sleep are even more common in people, like me, who are autistic, mentally ill, chronically ill, or trauma survivors. This is especially frustrating since many of us already struggle with concentration, memory, travel, finances, work, etc.

Sometimes, pain, cluster headaches, or asthma keep me from sleeping at night. Here's what cluster headaches look like:
Shoulders-up view of a person with a cloth over their eyes laying in a bed
They feel a lot like migraines for me but are accompanied by restlessness. Other times, it's flashbacks, nightmares, paranoia or delusions that get in the way. I'm also a really light sleeper, and I tend to toss and turn and wake up a lot throughout the night. 

I'll probably never sleep as well as neurotypical people, but I have found some ways to sleep better over the years. Here are some of them:
  • A weighted blanket- A weighted blanket that is sufficiently heavy helps decrease the amount that I stim and tic at night. I used to end up knocking my limbs into the walls and waking myself up when it was bad.
  • My service dog- I realize this isn't an option for everyone, but her presence is comforting, and she'll often wake me up from nightmares. She also responds to the phrase "who's there" by letting me know if anyone/ anything is actually in the house, or if I'm experiencing paranoia.
  • A noise cancelling, drawstring headband from PangeaMea- It's pretty comfy, although not super flattering. I also use it to cover my eyes if I want to block out light.
  • A light filter, like F.lux, on my laptop and phone- This blocks out blue light in the evening to help with sleep.
  • Melatonin- This helps more with falling asleep than staying asleep.
  • ASMR- A quick Youtube search should provide plenty of videos.
  • Naps- I've realized that I can't sleep through the night whether I nap or not, so, if I have time and my body can sleep, I go with it. 
Everyone has different preferences and needs, but hopefully some of these things can help other people, too. 
[I wasn't paid to link anything in this blog post]





Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Ordered a Walker

lly have mixe    This is the model. I really have mixed feelings about this decision. I'm choosing to get the walker due to intense pain that's been worsening for about the last year. The cause turns out to be EDS , or at least that's what the doctors are saying. EDS is a connective tissue disorder that I don't yet fully understand, but it was explained to my that my connective tissue at my joints is too stretchy, and it's leading to my pain, fatigue, and susceptibility to joint injury. I was also provisionally diagnosed with POTS , in which blood pools in some areas while I'm seated or laying down, and my heart rate goes up too much trying to get the blood back to my heart and brain when I stand. If this process is inefficient enough, I can faint. Apparently, the doctor didn't do the proper testing for this, so I'm going to take this diagnosis with a grain of salt and just call it unexplained near-fainting episodes for now. Regardless of what causes...
2 comments
Read more

Dear Unnamed Friend

Dear unnamed friend, I carefully hoarded enough spoons to do the activity you suggested at the time you suggested. I went to bed super early and planned NOTHING for tomorrow to be able to do it. I just got discharged from psych this week, and the meds still aren’t all the way in my system, so I’m foggy-minded and emotional. I also woke up every 90 minutes last night for 30-45 minutes due to nightmares about the hospital that joined my normal nightmares. I told you I’d let you know around 9am today, when my alarm was set to sound, whether I could come to the 1pm event today, and I texted you that yes, I could come, but I needed to sleep until 10 to regain spoons. You texted me 4-5 times between 9:15 and 10, effectively cancelling any change I had to sleep, since it takes me at least 2 hours to wake all the way up. You tried to change the plans to pick me up around 10:15am, and I understand why. You were already in the area for something and didn’t want to drive all the w...
1 comment
Read more

Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills Part 4

All posts in this series reference working through DBT® Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition , and all quotes come from that book unless otherwise specified. This blog post continues to chronicle my takeaways from the Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills section of my DBT workbook. Parts of this section either did not work for my autism or my agnosticism, but on the whole, I found it helpful. Dialectics The next section of interpersonal effectiveness skills is dialectics. Dialectics are all about balancing opposites. This has spiritual applications noted in the book (talk of the universe, etc.), but that doesn't work very well for me with trauma and psychosis surrounding spiritual things. However, dialectics can also help us see both sides of a situation, embrace change in our lives, be aware of our connection to others, and see that we are both impacted by and impacters on our environments. The book then lists some beliefs that are dialectics, and a few w...
Post a Comment
Read more