the alarm clock ¬_¬

Post Reply New Topic

I'm wondering if other people have similar issues and how they have combated it, if they have.

Every so often, my brain gets used to my alarm clock and when it goes off in a morning, my brain very cleverly within it's still asleep state will reach for the alarm and switch it off entirely instead of hitting snooze. It's an action that I am not conscious of, therefore not something I can make a conscious decision not to do.

Another thing that happens sometimes is that I will get used to the alarm sound so much so that it no longer wakes me, but instead i continue to dream while incorporating the sound of the alarm into my dream. I try to combat this by changing my alarm sound regularly (though this is not 100% effective).

As you can imagine, this leaves me physically waking up late and causing me to be late for work.

I have tried placing my phone away from my bed, but i very often forget which is much easier to do when i am tired at night before sleep and my only thought is getting into bed and going to sleep as placing my phone in a different location is currently not part of my routine. I have tried increasing the volume, past radio alarms have caused complaints from neighbours, phone alarms just don't seem to have a high enough volume. With alarms that make you solve puzzles to turn them off, my brain has sneakily found ways of turning them off without solving the puzzle.

It doesn't happen very often, but it's a pain in the @ss when it does because it means i have to change my alarm routine ¬_¬

I use an alarm on my phone, and I also charge my phone at night. My charger is plugged in far enough from my bed that I cannot reach it from my bed. Although I have never had the problem you describe (quite the opposite, actually - I had to change my alarm sound to speech because the alarm sound would cause me to panic), the position of my charger means that I remember to put my phone in the same place every night.

Maybe that would help, if you have some incentive to put it there?

I do this, too. I think the first time I did it, was at my friend's house, and I made him late for work. Oops. I don't even know how I managed it, since I had no idea how to turn his alarm off.

For a while, I would set the TV to wake me up, and then throw my remote across the room.

Now I just sleep through my alarm most of the time =/ Though I've recently started using the Mario Clock on the 3DS to wake me, and that's been working okay. I don't like it as much as the built-in alarm that was on the original DS (which starts quiet and gets louder), but I don't have to worry about the battery dying while I'm sleeping.

Used to be a big problem for me too, I did have three different alarms that were set to go off staggered by a couple of minutes.

Yes if youd see my alarm clock list on the phone...none of it helps exccept the sound of a rooster. Its anoying enough to get up but if im depressed no alarm clock will do its magic.

I work very erratic shift patterns. This morning I started work at 0445. I have three different alarms.

The first is just my watch alarm which can easily be turned off with one hand. My phone alarm is set to go off two minutes later. This is much harder to turn off one handed. If they both fail I have a good old fashioned wind-up alarm clock which I would have to get out of bed to silence. Most of the time though I wake up shortly before my watch alarm is due to go off. On the rare occasions that I am still asleep I have never needed the two backups.

Sleeping through alarms happens to me easily too. I've always had the feeling that when I wake up (and more so from over-stimulation shutdowns) parts of my brain do things "on autopilot" without me being conscious of them. Same as you, the obvious things like changing to a different alarm and moving it around don't really help much - I'm quite amazed sometimes at what complex actions my "autopilot" is capable of.

I wonder, how is your sleep generally? Do you get to sleep easily? Do you feel "foggy" for a long time after waking? If part of the problem is with the "alarm sound in the dream", it suggests that your brain is probably not rested enough from sleep to be ready to wake up, or that the time of waking is out of sync with the deep-sleep/dream-sleep cycles that normally happen a few times during the night. If it is a problem with sleep cycle synchronisation, it might be worth trying to tackle the problem from the other end - experimenting with different bed-times so that you're not trying to wake from a dream-sleep phase. I have found at times that, paradoxically, going to bed a bit later than I would normally can help, and I awake feeling more "switched on".

I have also heard that this is quite common for "night owls" (like me). Most people wake up refreshed and ready for the day, and then their arousal levels gradually decline until it is time to go to bed. But many night owls have the reverse; taking a long time to fully wake, then having a period of greater arousal in the evening before suddenly crashing or simply not being able to get to sleep early enough for sleep cycles to be properly completed before the alarm goes off.

In any case, I think it's definitely worth considering why it is that your brain simply isn't ready to wake up at the time that you need to, including things like anxiety or depression, which can commonly cause insomnia or hyper-somnia.

Excellent point above, regarding quantity and quality of your sleep.

New alarm clock with different sounding alarm?

I have to set 5 phone alarms to go off every 2 minutes.

Long ago I stopped using an alarm clock or alarm function on devices like mobile phones and instead I have used a timeswitch to bring on a light, which works much better with the way brains and bodies have evolved to wake when light is available. To make it more effective I have made the light a good an approximation to daylight as I could - back in the day CTblue gel around the light and these days a 10 watt Daylight White LED floodlight.