Trouble with sleep

[Connor L]

Hi! I'm new to the forum and trying to better understand my autistic friends. One thing I've noticed a lot is that they struggle with sleep and was wondering how that affected them and their families.

What has your experience been with sleep and sleep schedules? When was it the hardest? What things have you tried and what was most effective?

If you'd be willing to chat, please message me here or email me at [email protected].

 

[tree]

Some threads that might be of interest.

Insomnia
Chronic Insomnia
Are you an early bird or a night owl?

 

[Nervous Rex]

My brain is slow to shut down and slow to start up.

• Going to sleep has always been an issue. I can't shut down my brain. I'm very jealous of those people who can just lay down and go right to sleep.
  • It regularly takes me 30-45 minutes to go to sleep.
  • Often, I'll be half asleep, then wake up because some thought occurred to me.
  • Other times, I will consciously recognize the disassociation from reality that comes with falling asleep, and think, "Oh, good. I'm finally going to sleep." ... then I have to deliberately choose to let it happen.
  • Most of the time, I choose a single thing to think about as I go to sleep. For me, that's either a poem I've memorized or am currently working on memorizing, or a light but interesting math problem (math and poetry, being two of my particular obsessions). That usually quiets all the other noise in my head long enough for me to go to sleep.

• Waking up takes time. It can be hours until I feel like I'm fully functional. I try to organize my day so that I can do the mentally "light" tasks first, while I'm still waking up. "Light" can be easy work or something I am enthusiastic about, which makes it easy for me to do even when I'm tired.

• I seem to require more sleep than the average person.
  • The amount of sleep I get directly affects my executive function. When I'm tired, I can't focus or do even the simplest tasks. I often tell people jokingly that every hour of sleep I miss out on cuts my IQ in half.
  • Fatigue greatly inhibits my ability to regulate my emotions, too. When I am very tired, I react much more negatively to things, have a much harder time dealing with change, and my thoughts are overall darker and more negative.
  • My speech functions shut down when I am tired. My first sign of being tired is that I "lose" words - in the middle of a sentence, I find myself unable to remember basic and simple words, or names.
  • For me, being alert vs being tired is literally a Jekyll and Hyde difference.

I understand that R.E.M. is the phase of sleep in which we dream, and that it occurs toward the end of the 90-minute human sleep cycle. But when I'm extremely tired, I can close my eyes briefly and "micro-sleep", and have a split-second dream. Before that micro-sleep, I usually recognize that my brain is disassociating from reality and that I can't trust myself to say anything out loud.

 

[onlything]

I tend to tire myself out as much as possible before lying down - in this way I can just fall asleep instead of lying doing nothing or worse, letting my brain make noise. It often means going to bed quite late, though I am working on a routine atm. Going to sleep early is just counterproductive. If I lie down at 10 pm instead of midnight, for example, I typically won't sleep until at least 1 am.

But even if I go to sleep early, I don't sleep well. Also, I won't fall asleep if there are any disturbing sounds around - or at least I won't sleep well. For example, last night I woke up once because I was thirsty, once because I had an annoying dream, once because I was too hot, once because of a dog barking and twice or so because the wind made shutters hit the window and make noise. I can also be easily woken up by any kind of snoring, shuffling, closing of doors or steps, so I just tend to sleep with earplugs or earphones in.

I used to think that I need more sleep than others but what I realised after getting some sleep analysis hardware was that I have on average at most half an hour of deep sleep per night, doesn't matter how long I sleep. An average healthy human should have between 1-2 hours of deep sleep per night. I'm working on building it up by tracking the amount of sleep in comparison to the things I try out. For example, I get on average 20 minutes of deep sleep if I have earplugs, 10 min more if I don't eat at least three hours before bed and get my deep sleep severely cut off if I drink any kind of caffeine less than 7 hours before sleep.

I once got 1,5 hrs deep sleep and felt really refreshed despite sleeping an hour less than normal. Can't say how it happened though, I can only guess that it was because of moved sleeping hours - I got the most deep sleep between 4 am and 5 am (24 min), as well as 8 am and 10 am (47 min), with some scattered single minutes in other parts of the night. Normally I wake up at 6 or 7 am for work, but that was my day off.

I dream very rarely too and I used to track any dreams I had, so I can guess that it's difficult for me to fully finish the 90 min cycle.

Proper sleep is very important to me. If I don't sleep well, I feel dysregulated.

 

[Ezra]

I have a pretty unusual sleep pattern of sleeping for a couple of hours, waking for a while, sleeping for 1 or 2 hours, waking for a while again, repeat, throughout the night.

 

[Connor L]

Thanks everyone for your responses! This has been really helpful.

What have you found most helpful for improving your sleep? I've heard a lot about routines, not eating too late, listening to music, etc.?

Also, do you keep track of what you're trying to improve your sleep and it's effect? Do you keep some type of log or use an app or something?

 

[onlything]

Thanks everyone for your responses! This has been really helpful.

What have you found most helpful for improving your sleep? I've heard a lot about routines, not eating too late, listening to music, etc.?

Also, do you keep track of what you're trying to improve your sleep and it's effect? Do you keep some type of log or use an app or something?

1. Earplugs, definitely. Literal lifesavers. Can't understand how I dealt with sleeping before, it was awful, especially when I had a snoring roommate. Though electric noise is still annoying and won't let me sleep even with earplugs (that buzz of a TV on standby for example).
Also, making sure the room is completely dark at night - so no street lights, laptop lights, phone lights etc, it has to be dark. If you can't do in your room, you can always try using a good and soft sleep mask, especially useful when traveling. Meditation or herbal tea and relaxing music before sleep help, no blue light at least an hour before if possible (even blue light filters help, I have one that gradually turns down the amount of blue light starting with a specific hour). Also, water in a bottle next to the bed. Other than that, the things I mentioned in my previous post.

2. Private notebook. For tracking of the mood depending on sleep, I found helpful Moodpath and Daylio. Moodpath is quite nice since it has additional mechanisms to track how your mood changes over the span of the day.

 

[Aspie_With_Attitude]

I had almost 12 months ago uploaded a video about sleep for my 51st video upload on "Aspie With Attitude". Please see if this video helps if anyone is looking for more information.