Sleeping through my alarm for the first time in twenty years

Started 20 May 2024 · 24 replies · 301 hearts · read 4k times

RunaAarhus, DK · 20 May 2024

2.2 years ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: Sleeping through my alarm for the first time in twenty years

Squeamish subject, so I am going to be plain about it and get it over with.

I want to describe this accurately rather than politely, because the polite version is what I said at my last appointment and it got me nowhere.

Something is going on and I would like to know whether other people have had it, mostly so I know whether to raise it or wait it out.

The number in the title is exact. Twenty years, counted from the diary, which is the only reason I can answer questions about myself at all.

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

100

SunnivaBodø, NO

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

SinéadCork, IE

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.

GigiNaples, IT

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

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK

Noting for anybody reading later: where the person who asked has come back with what happened, that post is usually worth more than everything offered before it, and it is never the one at the top.

17me too 9

NikolaiSofia, BG

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.

OrrinGlasgow, UK

What Gigi described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

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.

TychoLeiden, NL

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.

PeggyRotherham, UK

Mine was worst in winter and much better in summer, and I now think a good half of it was seasonal and would have happened anyway.

Ollie OPeterhead, UK

The exhaustion is real and it is not laziness, and I spent a month calling it laziness before somebody here corrected me kindly.

HollisBath, UK

#10

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

My honest experience: my sleep is now noticeably better than it was before any of this, which was not something I expected or was aiming for.

13me too 6

LeifTrondheim, NO

#11

Sleep got better for me before it got worse. Two good months, then a strange stretch, then it settled at something new.

RuthieLeicester, UK

#12

The thing I would raise with somebody qualified is fatigue that is not improving over months rather than weeks. Mine was, so I did, and it was worth it.

14me too 3

NettieBarrow, UK

#13

I was waking at three or four, wide awake, for about six weeks. It stopped as suddenly as it started and I never worked out why.

SamPortland, OR

#14

Leif said something I want to sit with for a second.

What I found was that eating something earlier in the evening changed my nights more than anything I did about sleep directly.

RillaAberdeen, UK

#15

What Nettie described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

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.

TorrinAberdeen, UK

#16

My tiredness arrived without warning at about week five and lasted a month. It was not dramatic, it was just that everything took more out of me than it should have.

GildaTrieste, IT

#17

I read this twice. The second time was for the last paragraph.

TobySwindon, UK

#18

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.

MarenBremen, DE

#19

I raised fatigue at a review and was taken seriously, tested, and reassured. I had expected to be told it was normal and left there.

AshSunderland, UK

#20

Gently disagreeing with Gilda, or rather adding the other half of it.

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.

OssianTromsø, NO

#21

Picking up Maren’s point rather than starting a new one.

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.

TorinBelfast, NI

#22

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.

11me too 4

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK

#23

Facilitator note: pharmacists are the most underused people in this whole business and several of the questions on this page are ones they answer in ten minutes at a counter.

NorahDerry, NI

#24

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

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.