What are your sleeping patterns like?

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What are your sleeping patterns like and how do you relate it to your ASD?

I've never had any kind of proper sleeping pattern, I mean like in my whole life...
It makes life difficult for me. Sometimes I have a good spell of sleeping regular, good hours every night, but it never lasts more than a couple of weeks or so.
Then for some reason I have a change in pattern and cant get any more than 2 or 3 hours at a time, again this will last a while before it changes again.
For example...
I work all week and every night I get a good 8 or 9 hours, then along comes the weekend and I can't sleep as well because I'm not so tired because of the change in my routine from the working week. I go back to work the next week and for some reason I cant change my sleeping habit back to what it was the previous week, and get stuck on the weekend pattern.
Please believe me that is just an example to emphasise what its like for me, not what it is actually like for me!

What its actually like can vary from day to day depending on how the day has gone and how much I have had to deal with..

Does anyone else suffer the same?

hello,

i had no overnight routine. I use to sleep at odd times, and i didn't really know "what to do".

In the end, i brought a clock. Its called a Gro clock. It does not tell the time.

I go to be at between 10pm-11pm. At this point i set the clock. Put my phone away.
i have an iPod for use in bed.
The clock goes blue, and shows a star. Blue = stay in bed. Use iPod.
The clock counts down to the morning using 12 stars.
When clock goes yellow = i can get up and start my morning routine.
when the clock goes off, i must be out of bed to and to started my routine.

The sleep routine has really helped. I still don't sleep regular, but i do sleep well.

Here is my review of the clock: http://spacedoutandsmiling.com/reviews/ ... leep-timer

I also don't have any semblance of a "normal" sleep schedule either. Even when I was younger, I'd never been the normal 8 hour sleeper. My usual sleep is between 4-6 hours of sleep about 2 hours at a time. I will also take 30 minutes to a full hour to fall asleep. I have tried all sorts of changes to sleep behaviors, positions, and bedding, but it would never change from that my normal. I used to try to fight this and sleep more, however about a year ago I realized something while talking to my family about the medical "normal" body temperature.

Think about it this way, the 98.6 "normal" body temperature was obtained by measuring the mean temperature of healthy individuals of the human race. This means obviously some people ran hotter and some ran colder, but the majority ran around 98 degrees Fahrenheit. This became what is is now treated as the medical "normal" temperature even though it's just a very large mathematical average. This reasoning may also be the driving factor behind the 8 hours of sleep standard as well. For me personally I may only sleep 60% of the accepted normal time, but I still awake refreshed and ready to get on with my day. I also make it through the entire day without even feeling the slightest bit tired. Sometimes it will take 20+ hours before I can even go to bed after 4 hours of sleep. I will literally lay in the bed and just not be able fall asleep until I'm physically tired.

Many of us on this board are neurodiverse, I don't find it so hard to believe that along with the non "normal" wiring in our heads that other physical aspects of our bodies are also far from the "normal" standards.

I usually go to bed around 10. It takes me a couple hours to get to sleep, but then I sleep well. I usually wake up once or twice in the morning and then fall back asleep. I like to sleep in until 10-ish.

Not great. At my advanced age (80) I have to get up in the middle of the night to piddle. And even without that, I can't seem to get more that 6.5 hours of sleep a night. The good news is that I dream frequently and I am a lucid dreamer which means I can control the dream a bit.

I tend to go to bed around 4 but sometimes it's earlier or later & sleep about 8 to 10 hours when I don't have to get up early. I don't think my AS has much of an effect on my pattern nowadays thou in the past I would stay up late because I'd get caught up in things. I'd have sleeping problems because I'd have stuff going on that would make me anxious or I was lonely & didn't like sleeping alone.

I go in and out of periods of good and bad sleep. Right now, I'm in and have been in a period of bad sleep for a long time. I can't even remember the last time I had good sleep. It's broken up. I can't remember my last dream. When I did dream, I was a decent lucid dreamer when I chose to be.

Not now. Out of whack body systems are in full affect all over right now. Ugggghhhh.....

Appetite is gone. I think the milk is the only thing really sustaining me. What I've eaten in the last week would be less than the average adult calorie count for just one day. No sleep, or bad sleep.....No dreams I am aware of. That's odd for me.

Sometimes I wake up every couple of hours or am fully awake after only around five hours. Other times I sleep a solid 8 to 10 hours.

I guess it's odd that I actually have a very good sleep schedule.

I fall asleep about 21:30/22:00, I usually fall asleep within 15 minutes, then I sleep until I wake up, usually sometime between 5:30 and 6:30. I don't set an alarm.

Lately, though, I've been falling asleep on the couch around 21:30/22:00 so I can cuddle with the dogs (they're not allowed on the bed), and then my husband sends me to the actual bed... whenever he thinks of it, which could be anywhere between 23:00 and 3:00. I've found that I'm more tired when I do that, but I really like my puppy cuddle time

I can only sleep when I'm very very tired, apart from that there is no real pattern. I have to get up for work at 7:30, so when I get to sleep determines how much time I have. If I haven't got to sleep by say 3am then I'll probably sleep as soon as I get in from work and wake up in the night.

I sleep a lot. Whether I have a 30-minute nap or a 3-hour nap in the day, I still get a good 8-9 hours of solid sleep a night, well, except for when I wake up a couple of times in the night to go to the bathroom.

Thanks people, its taken a while to reply because sleep mode was finally engaged today!! ! .... whoop whoop... (8 days with just 4 hours a day, followed by a full 14 hours today)
Its really nice to know that I'm not alone.
I wish you all the very happiest and sweet dreams . Xx

I'm recovering from a burnout, so part of my rehabilitation was to get my sleep back on track. I stick with a schedule of going to bed always at the same time (23:30) and always wake up at the same time (8:30), ensuring that I get my 8-9h sleep. If I end up going to bed late, I have to wake up at the same time, and if I have to wake up earlier one day, I got to bed at the same time as usual.

At first this was quite exhausting, but then it started to work properly. I feel sleepy earlier (instead of 3 in the morning), and wake up often refreshed, but if I get off the schedule a bit, it all gets messed up again. So it is really important to me to stick to this schedule, because I cannot function properly without good sleep.