{"id":9291,"date":"2016-03-02T02:22:30","date_gmt":"2016-03-02T02:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/2016\/03\/02\/psa-delayed-sleep-phase-disorder-is-a-thing\/"},"modified":"2016-03-02T02:22:30","modified_gmt":"2016-03-02T02:22:30","slug":"psa-delayed-sleep-phase-disorder-is-a-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/2016\/03\/02\/psa-delayed-sleep-phase-disorder-is-a-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"psa: delayed sleep phase disorder is a thing"},"content":{"rendered":"

andieblogs<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

so i\u2019ve only ever talked about this with a handful of people before so for some reason it\u2019s making me nervous to put it out there EVEN THOUGH IT\u2019S NOTHING REMOTELY BAD. but i\u2019m hoping to connect with people who know what this is about and since whenever i talk about this, i always find people who say \u201cSERIOUSLY, THIS IS A THING? ME TOO!\u201d <\/b>then maybe this might help someone.<\/p>\n

for most of my life i\u2019ve told people i \u201chave chronic insomnia\u201d or that i\u2019m \u201cnot a morning person\u201d (which is a euphemism, at best). i\u2019ve described myself as a \u201cnight owl\u201d since i was a very young child, but i\u2019ve learned in the last year or so that i\u2019m actually NOT an insomniac at all – i\u00a0have chronic severe delayed sleep phase disorder.<\/b><\/p>\n

insomnia is difficulty falling and\/or staying asleep; i have no trouble whatsoever falling and staying asleep. but no matter what I do, i physically cannot fall asleep before 2-3AM.<\/b> i\u2019m actually happiest going to bed somewhere between 4 and 5AM. i actually have no trouble at all staying up until sunrise if left to my own devices. usually somewhere between 3 and 5AM, i start to get tired. if i try to sleep before then, i toss and turn for hours regardless of how tired i am, and going past 5AM is always pushing past my limits, but i have no trouble at all falling asleep within that time frame.<\/p>\n

if this sounds like you, i want you to know something: you\u2019re not like this due to\u00a0laziness or a failure of willpower.<\/b>\u00a0i say this as someone who\u2019s tried for the better part of two decades to change my circadian cycles and nothing has made even a minor difference. this is normal for people with dspd<\/b>. we\u2019re just wired this way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

according to what I\u2019ve been reading, there\u2019s a strong genetic correlation to specific genes and your sleep-phase type,<\/b> and people with DSPS especially in the severe form like i have tend to have an abnormality in the way that their brains process daylight and evening light. for most people, daylight wakes them up and evening light suppresses alertness. that isn\u2019t a thing for me and that\u2019s why i\u2019m writing this at midnight and trying to decide which tv show i\u2019m gonna watch on netflix for the next few hours \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

also not helpful: <\/b>self-induced sleep deprivation (tried that over and over – i just spend weeks at a time miserable and exhausted); sleep aids – i hadn\u2019t realized that was a thing for most people with DSPS – they just make us groggy and dizzy but don\u2019t actually make us sleep. We are perpetually misdiagnosed as having primary insomnia or some kind of psychiatric disorder. Excellent bedtime routines don\u2019t help. Meditation, nightcaps, having no devices, caffeine boycotts – not a shred of difference.<\/b><\/p>\n

the bad news is that it\u2019s permanent and incurable. both personal experience and the collective body of current medical evidence points to the fact that it\u2019s VERY hard to even make a dent in your natural sleep phase cycles <\/b>and the best you can ever hope for is a small dent (e.g., if i work very hard at it for the rest of my life – cause y\u2019all know frequent relapse is a thing here –<\/b>\u00a0i may <\/i>be able to move my bed time to 2:30AM instead of 4AM).<\/p>\n

the good news is that people with DSPS can live totally normal healthy lives –\u00a0<\/b>if they can find a job and a lifestyle AND FRIENDS that accommodates our preferred sleep patterns which – hey, look at that, I HAVE ALL THAT! hence why i\u2019ve been working from home for most of my adult life. the best jobs i\u2019ve ever had have been graveyard shifts. we tend to gravitate toward those. for example, people who work overnight in emergency rooms tend to categorically be dspd folks. lots of us are self-employed and happy and successful that way. (my favorite clients are aussies. 1AM skype meetings= GREAT!)<\/p>\n

evolutionary biologists have a theory that us night owls are descended from a long and noble line of early ancestors<\/b> – basically, that one guy amidst our cave ancestors who got night duty. basically, while the rest of the tribe snored away, that one guy had to stay up and make sure the fire kept going and keep watch so that the rest of the tribe wouldn\u2019t freeze to death and no giant sloths or prehistoric dingos ate the cavebabies. be proud; our species literally couldn\u2019t have survived without night owls like us.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

so if you\u2019re a chronic night owl, embrace who you are because you are okay. it\u2019s not inherently healthier, wiser, or in any way better to be a morning person.<\/b> so don\u2019t beat yourself up because you don\u2019t\/can\u2019t get up at dawn to exercise (exercise still counts if you do it at night – god bless 24-hour gyms). plan around it if you can. pick careers that let you sleep in until noon. don\u2019t sign up for morning hikes or crack of dawn college classes or deprive yourself of sleep in order to exhaust yourself into magically morphing into a morning person. take it from personal experience. it won\u2019t work<\/b>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

you\u2019re just wired that way, and there\u2019s nothing wrong with that.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

andieblogs: so i\u2019ve only ever talked about this with a handful of people before so for some reason it\u2019s making me nervous to put it out there EVEN THOUGH IT\u2019S NOTHING REMOTELY BAD. but i\u2019m hoping to connect with people who know what this is about and since whenever i talk about this, i always … Continue reading psa: delayed sleep phase disorder is a thing<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3362,91,154],"class_list":["post-9291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-friggin","tag-omg","tag-yes","without-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archive.gabapple.com\/tumblr\/gabapple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}