Living with Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome

I have had DSPS my entire life. Not that I knew what it was before I saw a documentary film on sleep disorders that mentioned it, and I decided to do some research.

Even earlier than my youngest memories of childhood start, my father tells stories of urging babysitters to keep me awake during the days.

School was pure torture, from the start. Elementary started at 9 ish, as I remember, and I could just barely be up for that, but I definitely couldn’t get up in time to eat breakfast or do anything besides the bare minimum. Middle school was progressively worse, and high school was pure punishment, starting at 7:25. I had good attendance, but there are first period classes that I honestly do not remember taking. It scares me to think that I was driving myself to school in that state, and I NEVER arrived before 7:24. Once I had enough seniority, I started scheduling myself to start at second hour and skip my lunch hour. 8:10 was slightly less punishingly early, so I took it, and just went hungry till I could go home. Summers were the only season I liked, purely because I didn’t have school.

As a child who had never experienced any other kind of life, and didn’t have the perspective that comes from having any control over your circumstances, I grew up believing that life was torture and supposed to be miserable. My father would scream at me to go to bed, then scream at me to get up in the morning (it was only my father around once it hit its worst in middle and high school, my mother died when I was 11.) I was miserable and hated every day of the only life I had ever experienced, so of course I had no friends. And I couldn’t get myself up early enough to do all the “mandatory” high school girl grooming, so I’d get made fun of for not wearing the right makeup or having my hair done, which now that I’m 30 seems so trivial, but was socially ostracizing at the time, especially compounded with the severe depression I was also experiencing and my generally terrible fit with anything that was mandatory in my life. Its really a wonder I never tried to kill myself, looking back on it. Its really a miserable way to spend your formative years, and has led to a lifelong set-point of deep depression that I’m still trying to work my way out of.

When it was night time, no matter no matter what, I would be wide awake at 10 pm. When I was about 12 or 13 I actually raided the basement for electronics and rigged myself up a tv made from an old computer screen and an old closed caption box, because it was 1 am and I was wide awake and bored. No one, especially not my father, ever believed me that even if I went to bed at a “normal” time, I would just lie awake to toss and turn.

College was actually not so bad, since I really could go to class in my pjs, so I would schedule my classes early to not “waste” any of my good awake/coherent time on something as useless as lectures. All my good energy went into having a good time, its lucky that I’m smart and still did well, and I carefully chose profs that graded on big finals, not on homework and attendance.

I’ve always been able to let alarms snooze for hours, often I don’t remember them at all. The best alarm clock I’ve ever had was a coffee pot with a timer in it, by setting that in addition to my other alarms, getting up wasn’t quite so punishing. I also kind of like my ipod compatible alarm clock, I set it to wake me up to a motivational podcast or some energetic music.

Interestingly, I’ve been doing my own chronotherapy regularly thru adulthood, even tho I didn’t know the name for it. I called it “hitting reset”. I would just stay up all night and all the next day, then I would be able to maintain a normal schedule for a little while, then get off again, and have to do it again. This would happen maybe once a month or so when I was working full time. It helped me cope with the 9-5 (what a misnomer! More like 8-6! Bah!) Winters are miserable, getting up in the dark and leaving work in the dark, and I know I’ve also been diagnosed with SAD. I would have to “hit reset” a lot more often thru the winter.

At the urging of the counselor I’m seeing for my depression, I currently usually manage to get to bed “early” at around 12 - 12:30 am, by having a cup of camomile tea, practicing calming yoga sequences and progressive muscle relaxation, and daytime cardio exercise. Its really a lot of work! I spend almost 45 minutes trying to wind down. Its good for my sleep discipline that I don’t have a job or social life or children to place demands on my time, I recognize this would be purely impossible for lots of people.

Even tho I’m unemployed now, I still set 2 different alarms to get myself up by 9, just to be on a somewhat similar schedule as my in-bed-at-10, jumps-awake-with-no-alarm-at-6:30 boyfriend. He is relatively understanding of me, but he still occasionally says I should just go to bed earlier. I usually stick my tongue out at him and ask him if he wants me tossing and turning keeping him up all night. Plus, I currently live such a boring, mundane, suburban existence. Its conducive to an early to bed lifestyle, but its driving me crazy, it feels like a life with all the alive parts removed. It doesn’t fit.