sleep and circadian rhythms

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That is something that has plagued me my whole life. I couldn't understand how other people could do things like wake up early and turn up at their jobs every day. (I also have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.) I always assumed they were more stoic than I am and that it was my fault, that I was weak in some way, lazy, or just unwilling and unable to put in the proper effort.

I tend to have a better day if I keep to a routine for everything.

I'm pretty sure I have delayed sleep-phase disorder. When I'm in school, it's very hard for me to get enough sleep because I have a very hard time falling asleep before 12:00 AM and waking up before around 8:30 AM. I always feel like crap when I'm on this schedule. However, if I go to bed at about 1:30 AM and wake up at about 9:00 AM, I feel well rested. I can also only sleep when I'm lying down. I cannot sleep sitting up, meaning I can't sleep on buses or airplanes.

I am exactly like this.

Well at least we now know different. I think this just shows how easy daily life is for an NT. If they can ignore a bad nights sleep and get on with the day and deal with people then they really must have a natural way of learning social situations. For them its not scary. So a bad nights sleep is nothing to worry about. For us we have to go out into the world half cocked with less energy and it makes it more confusing.

i'm more like this, like my day actually has 26 hours in it. and i will sleep different amounts all the time too. i don't wake up naturally at any particular time, even after doing it forcibly for months because a job requires it (which leaves me with little to no sleep before long), and not even if i go to sleep at the same time every night. it's a mess.

i'm more likely to be up all night than anything else, but there is so much variation i've given up trying to control or make sense of it.

yes. they just have a tired day or a bad day and return to normal.

when i'm working and have to be around people every day (in addition to the fatigue from being unable to force a sleep schedule) i start out ok and then the life drains out of me a little every day until i'm ill. it takes about three weeks.

I haven't been able to work because of chronic fatigue, but when I was working it was the same way for me. I would just get more and more tired day after day until I couldn't do it anymore. My limit back then was about 6 weeks. That was when I waws briefly teaching high school. Later I got part time jobs in retail where I could go in the afternoon, and those lasted much longer (4 years was the longest).

I have to wonder if my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome was not somehow caused by the toll that AS takes, including the inability to sleep. It has always been more exhausting for me to carry on a conversation with someone I don't know well than doing light physical tasks.

I am exactly the same when working. You are right about the fatigue and tiredness. My GP is very understanding about it and says that we suffer exhaustion because we have to keep up an act at work. And it is difficult to do this for a long time.

Yeah we suffer exhaustion because of our AS. My jobs typically last about 1 year to 18 months. I have been off work now for about 10 months and still feel tired.

i have out of sync sleep patterns- maybe a 30 hr cycle- and it makes me ill to be awake too much in the morning, bedtime is always around 2-3am, whatever amount of sleep i get. that's just how my body is programmed.

i thought this was common in as.??

Even daylight savings time screws me up for over a week.

I'm very sensitive to lack of sleep. It can make me cry very easily.

I have a regular circadian rhythm. The problem is that I do not sleep well. Chiropractic adjustment helps. I need to work out and take melatonin in order to sleep.

I do have some oddities with my circadian rhythm, yes (severe insomnia, barely any fatigue, especially at night, night-time hyperactivity), but it either might be due to the fact that my best ideas come at night, or that my family members have sleep problems (or, at least my cousin does).

I have what's called "irregular sleep-wake pattern".

http://www.sleepeducation.com/Disorder.aspx?id=60
http://web.uni-marburg.de/sleep/enn/dat ... def1c3.htm

Despite these things saying it's really rare, it's actually more common among autistic people, and among people with Parkinson's (I don't have that but I have a motor issue in the same family).

And I don't experience it as a good thing. I think it's great that Michelle can sleep whenever she wants. Unless I take medication, I just sleep at random times with very little ability to control it. And unless I take medication and sleep longer than that (I still don't quite have a circadian rhythm but at least taking meds once a day it helps make me sleep longer and sleep at night more often), I feel really cruddy all the time.