For me the worst thing about not sleeping during the night is not having my mornings. It does my head in.
When I was younger, I was always one of those people who used to get up at 6am and be in the office by 7.30am or 8am. My activity level in the mornings was always phenomenal. I always had a hit list of things to be done each day and usually had most of them done by midday.
Nowadays, with my sleeping pattern running from about 3am to 10am and most mornings waking with a migraine, I rarely get anything productive done before "lunchtime". More like "breakfast time" as far as I'm concerned.
Not only that. Living on my own, there is no routine in the house. When things were very bad and I often just didn't sleep at night at all, it felt as though I was in some sort of netherworld and really wasn't part of human society. It was horrible, quite bizarre. I felt so isolated as even when I was awake, I was so spaced out and exhausted that I couldn't really do anything productive at all. At one point my sleeping hours were running from about 5pm to midnight, just frightening. The consultant wondered why I laughed when he told me to get out of bed at 8am every day no matter how badly I'd slept.
I know that my condition now is much improved and most days, I'm able to get a decent amount of productive stuff done in the afternoons and evenings. I do try to avoid doing "work" in the evenings, but on a good day I can get a decent 5 - 6 hours done between midday and 7pm ish and often do an hour or two in the late evening/early morning. Occasionally I get nothing done, but most days at least a couple of hours.
I think it's important to try to have some sort of normal routine that makes you feel at least part of the human race. Even if I can't control my mornings, and sometimes don't get much done in the afternoons because I'm very exhausted or my head just hurts too much, having a traditional evening with a normal meal and relaxing and knitting/watching tv makes life a lot more bearable.
But I still really miss the mornings. I miss those walks to the office or the railway station or the bus stop in the early morning, especially when the sun was coming up or shining on a crisp cold dawn.
Hope you get some decent sleep tonight!
Marie
Hi Bernadette/Marie - confusing but I think I know who you are!
ReplyDeleteMy experience of sleep troubles stems from the way my brain refuses to get into the deep dream period. So I spend the night in the light, interactive dream state that is utterly exhausting and often terrifying. Trust me, it is better to forget your nightmares.
So for many years I've taken just one anti-depressant tablet at around 10pm as I have never been an early to bed person. In fact, I am a creative night owl so aiming for a midnight bedtime works well as I can be creative before the days ends. I then read in bed for maybe as much as an hour and zonk out for 6 or 7 hours unconscious kip.
If I am troubled over anything, the waking hour is far earlier and means I either get up and start my day knowing I'll be shattered by lunchtime or, preferably for me, I have a cuppa, my morning tablets at 6 and zonk off again.
Like you, this robs me of my mornings and I am not happy when I awake and find it is nearly lunch time but a few days of that and I am usually back on track.
Whatever is happening with my sleep, I always find morning appointments, business, leisure or medical, hard to cope with. You just never know how much sleep will come before that alarm clock starts the day.
The is an interesting blog, so keep at it! Maybe you could point us to recent research?