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Sleep and fatigue

The tiredness has a shape and I mapped it

Started 5 October 2024 · 16 replies · 182 hearts · read 3.7k times

NorahDerry, NI · 5 October 2024
1.8 years ago

Something I have been sitting with: The tiredness has a shape and I mapped it Not looking for advice so much as other people's experience.

Before anyone says it: yes, I have an appointment booked. I would still like to hear from people who have had this.

Squeamish subject, so I am going to be plain about it and get it over with. It has been going on for long enough now that I would like to know whether it is ordinary.

I have had a fortnight of this and then three good days and then another fortnight, and the pattern is the bit I would most like to understand.

No advice needed if you would rather not. Recognition is genuinely enough.

61

KezWigan, UK
#1

Coming back to say the fatigue lifted at about the four-month mark and has not come back. I wanted to leave that here for anybody currently in it.

8

HuwWrexham, UK
#2

The four o'clock waking was the thing I could not solve. I have found nothing that fixes it and I have found it helps to know I am not the only one.

15me too 5

NettieBarrow, UK
#3

My sleep needed a completely different shape from the one it had before. Earlier, longer, and less negotiable, and it took me months to accept that.

10

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK
#4

I am going to gently push back on the drift towards reassurance. The person who asked described something specific and deserves an accurate answer rather than a comfortable one.

26

TychoLeiden, NL
#5

I had assumed the fatigue was psychological and it turned out to be worth a set of bloods. Something unrelated came up and it was fixable.

11

TorrinAberdeen, UK
#6

Mine was much worse for the first three days after each step up and then fine. Once I saw that pattern in my notes I planned around it.

7

OssianTromsø, NO
#7

Saying it out loud helps other people say it too. Thank you.

11

RillaAberdeen, UK
#8

Torrin has already said most of this and I want to add the one part that was different for me.

What helped was scheduling the tiredness rather than fighting it. I moved the demanding parts of my week to mornings and stopped pretending afternoons were productive.

6

SamPortland, OR
#9

Light in the morning was the thing that helped most and cost nothing. Twenty minutes outside before nine, most days, and my nights changed within a fortnight.

8

GildaTrieste, IT
#10

Reading Ossian, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

The bit I underestimated was how much the fatigue affected my mood, and how much I then attributed to my mood that was actually just being tired.

11

HollisBath, UK
#11

I was tired for about eight weeks and then I was not. I have no explanation. I offer it as data because the eight-week accounts are what I needed at week three.

9me too 2

NikolaiSofia, BG
#12

Mine improved when I fixed something completely unrelated, which had been quietly wrecking my nights for a year. Worth casting a wide net.

14

PeggyRotherham, UK
#13

Reading Nikolai, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

What worked was accepting that I had less in the day than I used to, temporarily, and taking things out of the week rather than trying to do them tired.

7

NoahHull, UK
#14

The vivid dreams caught me completely off guard. Nobody had mentioned them and about a third of this circle seems to have had them.

12

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK
#15

I want to slow this down. There are five suggestions on this page and none of us knows this person's other medications, which is precisely why we describe rather than prescribe.

19

AshSunderland, UK
#16

I would say do not soldier on with this silently for months. I did five months and my GP's first response was to ask why I had not come sooner.

8