Trouble Making Myself Go To Bed

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I have never been a huge fan of sleep. When left to my own devices, with no job and the ability to watch my shows whenever I want, I have tended to stay up till mid morning and sleep till late afternoon, getting about five or six hours. When I had a job I never wanted to go to bed but I forced myself and eventually found a normal sleeping pattern. Recently it has become more erratic again.

Since this year began I have had a lot going on. I wrote an academic paper in January and that was when my sleep troubles began. I started staying up till morning, sleeping some of the day, getting up late afternoon etc. I started lying awake in bed, remembering that I will die one day and terrified that it would be here before I knew it. I started drinking crazy amounts of coffee to stay awake.

After the paper was done I had a couple of good nights, caught up on some sleep. But now I'm back to staying up again. I've started a blog. I'm emailing people about my PhD application. I watch TV and watch videos of Amanda Palmer on YouTube. I'm reading 3 books. I can't switch off.

To make things even worse, I am now working evenings. I started today. I have to get up at 11am to watch Gilmore Girls. Then at 12:30 I shower and check emails, facebook etc. There isn't really enough time to do much more. I leave my house at 3pm for work and I get home at 11pm. Today, at that point, I felt like my day had only just begun, the part that's mine. So I'm still up now, at 4:30am. I need to be up at 11 because if I miss Gilmore Girls I will feel very off. Plus I have lots of stuff to do in town before work. Argh!

This isn't insomnia. If I got into bed right now, sure I would lie there thinking of death for a while, but I would fall asleep pretty quickly because I'm exhausted. I just can't force myself to go to bed. And oddly, I'm not posting this because I want someone to tell me a way to get more sleep, because I don't. I'm hoping for someone to say they feel the same way, I suppose. Or maybe tell me why I do this.

I feel like this every day of my life. There just isn't enough time in any day ever. I can't go to sleep there is just too much information to find and look at online. Too many of my favorite games to play, too much history to discover. I spend hours and hours online just reading about different subjects. Even if i'm tired as hell I won't go to sleep and I wonder what's wrong with me. Last night I went to sleep at 3:30am, I had to be up at 7am and I spent my entire day feeling tired. i should be getting ready for sleep right now, instead i've got 8 tabs open in my browser just occupying myself with stuff. I have to be at my full time job from 8:30 - 5:30 every day. I have no idea how I manage to get up every day and still function at work when I spent all night awake. Even having a job and responsibilities I find it very very hard to go to sleep when I need to.

I have trouble too. Maybe part of it is that I feel like sleep is wasted time? It's time that I could be using to get something done- more reading or special interest projects or something. My schedule is pretty much the same as yours- leave for work by 3:15, get home by 12 (on a good day) or 1 (most days). I have a job that is really people intensive and it seems to take me a while to transition back into being home so I wander for an hour or so. Then even if I am physically tired, my mind kicks in and runs at warp speed. Some nights I will be up until 5 or 6 am.

I find that I have to be exhausted physically and mentally to the point of not functioning in order to get myself to sleep. The crazy part is that when this happens, my body seems to do a 'fast recharge' and I will wake up 4 hours later wide awake and unable to fall back asleep, even though I know my body needs more rest and that I will crash in the afternoon if I get up right then. I find that melatonin helps but I have to plan well to make sure I have at least 8 hours to sleep- so I can't have any responsibilities to take care of the next day other than getting up and ready to go back to work. It's really hard to naturally exhaust both my body and mind on the same timetable, and the two sleep options are drawbacks either way: 1. stay up and try to get things done but not have quite the physical energy to facilitate real productivity which inevitably leads to feeling frustrated, unproductive, inadequate and ultimately tired the next day or, 2. take melatonin and throw any chance of getting anything done at all, thus leading to feeling frustrated, unproductive and inadequate.

Pretend a dragon is chasing you and the only way you can escape it is by going to bed?
Ha, my mum also has this problem. She works all day and stays up until 1 or 2am, to my displeasure. My sensitive ears can hear everything that goes on outside my door, no matter how quiet you try to be.

Why don't you just download Gilmore Girls and watch it whenever you please?

Another example of being on the wrong planet? The rhythm everyone else uses for sleep does not work for me.

yeah i usually have trouble too. i just got done watching the stephen king movie christine which probably won't help

I feel exactly the same way, word for word. I'll stay up not because I can't go to sleep but because I'd rather stay up and do things, and to be honest I like it and I don't really want it to change. I'm usually somewhat productive about work when I'm up late. I'll concentrate on something meaningful for a few hours, then maybe something else that's useful, then I'll watch television or read random things online for a while, then one of those things again.

I don't know. I like being awake. I like being alive. Sleeping isn't always consistent with that.

On the other hand, when I actually go to sleep it feels pretty good. I can force myself to go to sleep at more normal times too, although if I'm not careful I can occasionally oversleep and miss an obligation.

I find myself doing pretty much the same thing, to a certain extent. I find that I get to bed at a decent time. Something happens around three in the morning, and than I'm up for a while. If I don't work that day, I go back to bed at 6. If I work that morning, I go back to bed at 9, or else I'll have a tea or coffee. I don't drink energy drinks anymore.

I feel exactly the same, i'm shocked i manage to function at times with so little sleep but it's just wasted time.

I totally get what you said about not wanting help to go to bed as well, i stay up becuase i choose to, every single night. What i want i guess is help making me want to go to bed. Techniques to make me go to bed are useless becuase i just feel i wasted the evening and the next day is here too soon.

Spending so much of our lives unconscious is just so inefficient.

We are but older children, dear,
Who fret to find our bedtime near
[Lewis Carroll]

I used to find it almost impossible to go to bed until I felt I'd done something that was fun or at least got some work done that might eventually lead to fun. I just didn't like to let the sun go down on a crappy day without trying to turn it round. Just a small indication that I'd cleared a stumbling block with a project would do the trick. But these days I've stopped worrying about it, and when I feel like sleeping, I just go to bed. I still don't like feeling that I have to be up for work and have to be reasonably alert just for the day job, and it'll be interesting to see what I'm like when I retire, when I'll be able to start and end my sleeping whenever I feel like it.

I get this exactly! It is most definitely not insomnia, since I fall asleep within a few minutes of my head hitting the pillow & sleep until the alarm goes off in the morning. For me, it is an issue with starting the subroutine that will cause me to get up from my chair, go into the bathroom, brush my teeth, go into the bedroom & lie down. It is executive dysfunction, pure and simple (and luckily, this is the only way that executive dysfunction affects my life.)

I've been pretty successful with giving myself a "mandatory" bedtime - but if the rest of my daily schedule has been disrupted in any way, it can also keep me from starting the bedtime subroutine.

I think with the issue of missing Gilmore Girls, time-shifting with a VCR or DVR might be the answer. Get your "fix" at t time that is more convenient to your new schedule.

I used to think I was lazy (I still do, actually) but being too lazy to fall asleep seems like a stretch.
I wonder if NTs have this too.
Maybe I should start a thread.

Circadian rhythm sleep disorder. Treated with melatonin. Still only under tenuous control.