Autistic Sleeping Habits
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- Опубліковано 5 вер 2024
- super fun time to talk about not loving just being unconscious for half my life and also not being able to get there
didn't even go into the fact I don't dream
/ dana_._andersen
/ danaoandersen
ko-fi.com/dana...
/ dana_._andersen
I can sleep everywhere anytime, this is my superpower. My family didn't respect sleep at all, they were noisy and could come in a room where I was sleeping and didn't even try to be quiet. So my sleep was often disrupted, and I learned how to sleep in school, in a bus, on a bench, everywhere. Now I can fall asleep in 5 minutes
I struggle with falling asleep on command. I can only fall asleep when I'm tired and basically am falling asleep while watching UA-cam videos or a scrolling online.
I needed to wake up extremely early to be at work at 6am for a while and it was hell.
I also require at least 9 hours of sleep to be functional and emotionally stable. I also have an extensive morning routine, which means that I have to get up at least 2 hours before leaving the house.
As a kid I would get angry when being woken up for school. I hated school and I hated sleep disturbance.
I need to wear earplugs and can't sleep with my cats in the same room. I also need it to be completely dark.
I can't sleep during the day unless I'm sick, but even then it's almost impossible.
I can't fall asleep when I'm stressed. I need to process the day beforehand, otherwise I'm laying awake for a long time or waking up multiple times during the night.
I love sleep, it just has to be right.
"I also have an extensive morning routine, which means that I have to get up at least 2 hours before leaving the house." Make that 4 hours. No extensive routine, more like VERY SLOW routine in my case.
Personally, it’s hard for me to sleep without my cats. The thing that’s annoying though is how they’re constantly in and out of the room.
I've been getting up around 1 pm recently as well. There's always an initial feeling of guilt about it, like wtf am I doing... but it's mostly been from staying up until 4-5 am being productive while it's quiet and distraction-free. I can just as well lie awake for hours at night before falling asleep, but pretty much any other time of day fall asleep without trouble. I think it does have something to do with anxiety and having background noise--no need to be alert if other people are awake and keeping watch.
I used to love pulling all-nighters in college. Why stop and sleep if you're in the flow and getting something done, right??
Yes indeed 😊
I would also WOULDN'T be able to sleep at school even though I BARELY am able to stay awake
Thank you SO MUCH for creating this video, you made my day. I feel less alone because you explained a MAJOR chunk of my life
I guess I am one of the lucky ones who is autistic but rarely have had sleep issues. I really struggled to sleep during the pandemic and when I had to fight to get disability, as that was very stressful and overwhelming. I literally had the same sleep pattern as you alluded to during that time (about two years ago), it is very dificult to get out of as you say, it is very exhausting. I guess what changed for me was that I found something that I could enjoy doing even when burned out and trying to find something to look forward as that gives me my energy. For some reason, riding a bus or a train at a quieter time of day like midday or at night and reading or watching something at the same time helps me, also a small amount of exercise helps me sleep better if anxious. I know it is different for everyone, but something physical or something that taxes the brain to burn that excess energy, that you like doing, seem to help with a sleep pattern, at least in my experience.
Also even in the depths of winter, I must have a fan on as background noise, as I don't sleep so well without it, good to know I am not the only who does this!
My sleeping habits are completely wild due to adhd. I have some good sleeping phases, when everything works well, but the slightest thing like stress, exams, going to bed late because of an event will through my sleeping rhythm into chaos. (Not even speaking about the progress of getting myself into bed to sleep, that is often an even bigger problem.)
I take sleeping pills for the occasional nights where I can't sleep because of stress and to get into a normal rythm again, its extremely helpful. Even if I have to make sure not to get dependent on them, so I have to be really careful with them, but the z-drugs do put me to sleep like nothing else.
I was briefly prescribed sleeping pills ‘to help me set a more usual rhythm’ and they knocked me out for like 18 hours the first time I took them, so I’ve been entirely put off trying anything like that again myself 😂 It’s a shame bcus there’s probably one that’d actually work to help me get a solid 8 hours, but the experience just freaked me out
@@DanaAndersen yeah thats understandable, 18 hours is kind of scary 😅 I only take half or 1/4 tablet of 7,5mg zopiclone, thats usually enough for me, if I would take a whole tablet I would probably get high or something 😂
Did you already try melatonin, magnesium and all that stuff? For me it helps a bit, but not when I have a bad sleeping phase.
yupp
@@octopiinthesky44 For me, I have tried the Melatonin and Magnesium and they work and I take them daily. I take the same dose except on weekends when I stay up later ( but YET I STILL wake up at the SAME time as if it were to be a weekday).
If I decrease the dose and have an unexpected stressor that is HEAVY I will have an insomnia episode.
Even the dose is the same but if the stressor is RATHER intense, I wiill have an episode
I do not know what you actually call this state so if there is a better more accurate/concise term, let me know
And thank you so much for commenting and Dana for creating this LOVELLY video and making me feel less alone in my insomnia episodes
I used to make the paper mache stuff as a child and I also learned that I could read most of the night with a torch under my bedcovers. I still struggle to sleep and it sucks as its expected that I get up early regardless in order to set my sleep routine but people don't understand that I can try it for weeks and still not get to sleep before 3am until eventually I crash and can't do anything but recover in bed (only starting to get basic routine done after crashing September 2021). I have to do breathing exercises just to be able to stay in bed enough to relax x
I would LOVE to do that, teach me how do u do that without feeling like you are choking up.
Although a book will only make me more awake and ruin any chance I have at going BACK to sleep
Talking and walking around the room for two hours will help ALOT more and along with a guided meditation
Don't know if this is normal for autistic people but when I go to bed and try to fall asleep I am acutely aware of noises that gets me anxious and nervous. Like for example I hear my upstairs neighbour getting up to go to his bathroom and I hear every footstep and I am thinking I hope I don't have an intruder in my flat. I hear doors and windows being slammed shut from the other flats next to me. I hear what I think is a door being scraped across the floor upstairs or something being dragged across the floor upstairs and it keeps me awake, and heart racing. I sometimes hear my next door neighbour snoring(the bedrooms are next to each other). I live in a block of one bedroom flats, 4 ground floor and 4 first floor, I live in the middle ground floor flat. They are for the most part friendly neighbours but I hate them a little if you know what I mean.
I’m the exact same and have been told it’s anxiety and a possible sign of OCD, but I’d argue that both come along with being autistic a majority of the time anyway!
It’s gotten a bit better for me by having cats, so I can always tell myself ‘it’s just the cats’, and a housemate I trust, so I can also blame any noises on him/assume he’d deal with an intruder 😂
@@DanaAndersen I am getting help with some home support and I am social anxiety too. I have a mild form of OCD, always washing my hands. Can't stand having cream on me and since I started transitioning I got dry hands and dry lips and have to use some moisturiser and that drives me crazy. I even dreamed about intruders and I think I saw a shadow person once but am told that is just sleep paralysis.
I got a dog but I still hear all the noises. It can take me several hours before I actually fall asleep. I used to sleep with a fan going which drowned out all the noises until it broke after 15 years of use. I wouldn't hear a thing with a fan going on maximum which meant sometimes I would miss a delivery(you could be banging on my front door and I wouldn't hear you, really should think about buying a new fan). Raining outside helps somewhat. Several trips to the toilet through the night doesn't help me either.
YUPP the insomnia thing is SUCH a pet peeve to be honest!!
I fall asleep easily, but I often wake up during the night
I also REALLY struggle to fall asleep in silence.
Most of the time I turn on a meditation but sometimes if I am too hyper I will turn on a podcast
Although I mostly fall asleep with a meditation, sometimes I am SO TIRED on weekend nights that I FORGET to turn the meditation on so I end up sleeping in silence
Silence keeps me awake. Been like this since a child (bad childhood). Now I have tinnitus so that’s all I can focus on if there’s nothing playing in the background. Listening to calm speaking sends me to sleep.
I swear I'm having such difficulty sleeping right now. Here it is 430 am and I'm wide awake even though I tried going to bed around 1030 pm last night.
I recently watched a video on how an individual on the spectrum also had difficulty sleeping due to their brain causing a disruption in the wave pattern responsible for producing sleepiness in the neurotypical brain.
I always wake up between 3:30 and 4:30 AM no matter what time I go to bed. I can't sleep in silence, I need a TV or podcast playing in the background. Even then, I wake up frequently. Recently I have started to drinking chamomile tea before going to bed. Now, at least I fall asleep fast and stay asleep. I still get up very early, but that is OK.
I decided to try chamomile tea, can’t stand the smell of it enough to taste it 🥴
@@DanaAndersen It's an acquired taste. 😊
Your sleeping habits pretty much describe mine. In my teens my dad knocked down a wall next to my bedroom and I slept through it. He used to tip my bed up to get me up but I just continued sleeping on the floor until my body was ready to get up. I wasn't diagnosed until I was in my fifties.
I need ticking clocks 🙂 I hear the clock is ticking, SO nothing terrible can be happening and it is safe for me to sleep. Right? Although even a ticking clock does not always drown out the buzzing of the charger after the mobile phone has become fully charged. Therefore, I try not to put the phone to charge at night, so as not to wake up later because of the charger.
In the burnt-out state, the problem is to force yourself to go to bed, and not to watch UA-cam instead. Falling asleep is not a problem. Well at least when the brain doesn't want to know anything
If I wake up at night, then I go straight to the toilet. I realized this only 35+ and before that I woke up and could no longer fall asleep, not realizing that I just needed to go to the toilet.
If the brain wants to get an answer to a strange question (how do giraffes vomit? etc.), then you need to Google/find out the answer right away - the brain won't let you fall asleep until it gets an answer, anyway. So it's better to immediately help the brain find the answer to the question it is interested in.
I did something similar- I’d be up in the night making people out of toilet rolls with loo roll maché hairstyles! And I was such a creeper, it’s like I didn’t know I was doing it until I got caught but I spent a lot of time tiptoe-in around doing god knows what. I didn’t mean to be “naughty” but just kept doing it.
I agree about late nights feeling so free - all the pressure is finally off
Honestly relate to all of this. It’s crazy.
On the other hand I love sleeping
1pm is early for me >< lol 🤣