For nearly seven months straight...

[hmpf]

I've been getting up early in the morning to go to work (even if it wasn't paid work), etc. - and falling asleep at fairly 'normal' times. Now, barely a week into proper unemployed life, I'm already severely insomniac again, and completely unable to get up in the morning. In fact, I've been unable to visit the appropriate agencies because I haven't been able to make myself get up at a time when they're open (which is usually between 8 and 12:30 or so in the morning). It's not the depression often attributed to the unemployed - in fact, I kind of dread finding a job more than being unemployed at the moment, although I do know a job is necessary. My sense of self-worth and so on are not tied to having a job. It's quite simply an inability to submit to a normal diurnal rhythm without some *strong* outside force. As soon as the responsibility for my sleeping pattern lies only with me, with no pressure from an employer to get me out of bed, it decays.

This wouldn't be so bad if it really were the case that I can do everything I want and need to do in a given day at night just as well as in the morning. But of course that isn't true. I want to make jewellery, and that's noisy - so that's something I can only do during normal 'business hours'. Same goes, of course, for all the necessary bureaucratic stuff of daily life, especially unemployed life. There's even the fact that I *like* mornings, I like daylight, and I want to go for walks in the park and so on - and I won't be getting much daylight if I only get up in the afternoon, now that it's autumn. It gets dark early, here.

This is exasperating. I don't know what to do. Can somebody please force me out of bed at, say, 9:30 a.m.? That would be a more than humane time to get up by anyone's standards, yet I can't seem to manage it (and I can't seem to go to sleep before 6 a.m.)

Comments

[dune-drd.livejournal.com]

Put an alarm clock somewhere where you have to get out of bed to shut it off?

or something stronger

[(Anonymous)]

I have found that just placing the alarm clock away from the bed is often insufficient. I'll get up, turn it off, maybe go to the toilet and then straight to bed again.

As far as alarm clocks are concerned I've found the classic mechanical alarm clocks to be most effective. The big ones. They are LOUD! They are TERRIBLE! When they go off, it's a shock. I am immediately wide awake and my heart is beating like mad.

Hmpf, are you suffering from winter depression? Having a hard time getting out of bed is quite during the dark time of the year. It's something that affects me very strongly, or used to. This year I'm actively fighting against it. I do the following:

* Sleep with my windows uncovered. No shades, no curtains. The morning sun is a great and very healthy way to be awakened.

* During breakfast I place a bright light therapy lamp close to me on the table. Daily use of these lamps is proven to help with winter depression.

* Eat stuff that's supposed to promote a good mood. I eat Hirsebrei for breakfast and cooked Hirse for lunch. It's supposed to make people happy. I also eat bananas for the same reason.

Something else you can try:

* If you have difficulty controlling the time you get up, maybe you find it easier to control the time you go to sleep. Try going to bed real early (9 o'clock), maybe with the aid of melatonin or something. A healthy person cannot stretch her resting time arbitrarily. It would be quite unnatural to stay in bed even from 9 to 9 (12 hours!!) Maybe that way you can shift your rhythm back.

* Put a glass of water next to your bed and dissolve a caffeine tablet (real cheap, available at any pharmacy) in it. When your alarm clock wakes you, drink the water.

Matthias

Nah, no depression. Just year-round sleep problems.

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

(If I sound a bit depressed here sometimes that's because for much of the last three years I've been stressed out - and for more than a year now I've been looking unsuccessfully for a job. Neither is really conducive to an overly cheerful mood. But while I'm absolutely horrible at dealing with stress, I deal better with joblessness than some - so I'm reasonably confident I will not sink in the swamp of despondency or something, now. *g*)

Doesn't work.

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

It takes a good quarter of an hour or so for my brain to really wake up. Before that I'm like a zombie, without much conscious will. So what happens is, I get out of bed, locate the alarm clock, switch it off, and stagger back to bed to collapse there again. Then, two hours later, I wake up again and feel like kicking my own ass for my lack of willpower.