Maybe Your Sleep Problem Isn’t a Problem

I'm not a sleep expert or a neuroscientist, but I take issue with being branded into a sleep-band that is "hard-written" into my DNA. I perform at my worst when I wake at times other than my current habit allows for - whether that is early or late.

I don't believe this leaves me in the 30% of in-between people. It just means that my habits are most telling of my performance. Don't assume my chronotype.

I will say some of these articles sometimes read satirically. Notably, they have a diagnosis for people who can't sleep at 'normal' hours: Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome.

I have been struggling with being unable to sleep during normal hours my entire life. My parents would yank the covers off of me in the morning, or maybe my mother would start vacuuming my room at 8 AM frustrated that I wasn't already up. All through my school years, from elementary to HS I was barely functional. I was often late or missed the bus because I was a walking zombie, struggling to get dressed and out of the house without falling asleep.

Keep in mind that I'm 45, none of this was due to too much TV time or smart phone use. (One TV in the house, no such thing as notebooks, ipads, or smart phones back then).

No matter how much I struggled through the day to just stay awake, and how much I was looking forward to going to bed that night, at 9 PM I would be fully awake. I laid in bed night after night watching the click tick by as I tried to unsuccessfully "just go to sleep". Then, when my alarm went off I'd be exhausted again and struggle to get up and out the door. I was a terrible student to say the least.

You're told for years that you're lazy, unmotivated, a slacker, etc.

During my High School summers, I would get into a pattern of going to sleep at between 3 and 6 AM, waking at noon. I was a fully functioning human being. I had the most creative and productive days (evenings) of my life as an artist. I was naturally alert and creative Ispent the wee hours of the morning drawing, painting, reading.

Then I'd be plunged back into misery when the school year began. I once again drove my teachers crazy. I got in trouble for falling asleep in class. I was told again that I was a lazy slacker. I don't know how many times I was spoken to by faculty about not living up to my potential.

When you're told your whole life that you're only problem is that you're lazy, and you can't figure out why you can't find the motivation to do the things you want to do, you start to believe it.

After HS, I had a few menial jobs, stumbling into one where I worked from 8 PM to 4 AM. It was great, except for the fact that my mother still harassed my by trying to wake me up at 9 AM because... I don't know. I guess she just didn't want some lazy slacker sleeping the day away?

Later I worked my way into tech and had jobs requiring normal office hours. I was self medicating by drinking most nights, trying to get to sleep to maintain a normal-ish schedule. It didn't work all that well.

I was working at a company as a technical lead that I'd help get up and running with a couple of friends from school, and even though we were supposed to be "flex" hours, not surprisingly the morning people kept setting up 8 AM meetings that I was almost always late for and sometimes missed.

Out of frustration I spoke to my Dr about it, and he sent me to a a medical sleep center. I had a couple of sleep studies done, electrodes glued to my head and all that. The Dr told me I had DSPS, something I'd never heard of, nor sought a diagnosis of. This was roughly 20 years ago. I looked it up, and found that it was a real thing.

So, I told my friends that I'd started that company with what was up... I had thing thing called "DSPS" and what it was, how it worked and all that.

And I'll never forget how my best friend looked me square in the eye and told me he basically had lost all respect for me, for coming to them with some kind of bullshit made up medical diagnosis, trying to excuse my inability to keep the same schedule as everybody else. The relationship between the two of us quickly went down hill.

I spent some time after that out of tech, working jobs that were more amenable to later hours. For the last 6 I've been back in it, and it's still a frustrating struggle to stay on "normal" hours. In an effort to go to sleep when I should, I take benadryl and melatonin almost every night. Sometimes it works, sometimes it seems to have no effect.

I know that I'm not as effective at my job as I could be, my mind is often in a fog during the day. And again... I spend the whole day looking forward to climbing into bed at 9 PM to get a good night's rest, only to have my brain begin firing on all cylinders that night. I get tremendously motivated to do all of the things I was too tired to accomplish all day, and I have to try to shut it down by taking that benadryl and melatonin cocktail so I don't stay up all night. Then I get into bed and toss and turn, unable to sleep usually until 1 or 2 AM.

My paternal grandmother had it. I have it. One of my four children has it.

The article linked to here says that genetic mutations have been found that are linked to it.

And still, you make a comment illustrating society's skeptical attitude toward DSPS. You obviously don't believe that it's real.

That's what we deal with, and I don't expect that it will change any time soon.