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chronotherapy
Aug. 31st, 2005 09:36 amI can tell it's 5am - there's so little external sound that the noise of the computer fans in this room seem deafening, and I feel as though restarting the CD will be loud enough to wake the entire street.
I am awake because I am resetting my bodyclock. Long-term readers of this journal will know that my bodyclock is broken at the best of times. I have delayed sleep phase syndrome, which is basically like permanent jetlag. ( DSPS explained... )
Having been ill for a while and sleeping all over the place, 18 hours some days, my sleep patterns have stabilised. At falling asleep at 8am and waking up at 6pm. This is non-ideal for the purposes of getting just about anything done. So I need to drag myself back round to falling asleep at 2am and waking up at 10am. Because I have DSPS, most of the usual techniques for doing this don't work. The only one that does is chronotherapy, where rather than trying to pull back, you deliberately advance the sleep phase.
So, today I cannot fall asleep until 12 noon. I can then sleep until about midnight (it's sensible for me to allow myself 12 hours, as I have to compensate for staying up longer - yes, I have learnt this through repeated chronotherapy adjustments). I will be awake from midnight until 4pm on Thursday, sleep from 4pm on Thursday until about 4am on Friday, awake from 4am until 8pm on Friday, asleep from 8pm on Friday until about 8am on Saturday, and then I will attempt to maintain getting up in the morning. It won't last, because it never does, but I should be able to stick with 10am starts for a while.
Ergh. People with functioning bodyclocks don't know how lucky they are. I'm so jealous.
I am awake because I am resetting my bodyclock. Long-term readers of this journal will know that my bodyclock is broken at the best of times. I have delayed sleep phase syndrome, which is basically like permanent jetlag. ( DSPS explained... )
Having been ill for a while and sleeping all over the place, 18 hours some days, my sleep patterns have stabilised. At falling asleep at 8am and waking up at 6pm. This is non-ideal for the purposes of getting just about anything done. So I need to drag myself back round to falling asleep at 2am and waking up at 10am. Because I have DSPS, most of the usual techniques for doing this don't work. The only one that does is chronotherapy, where rather than trying to pull back, you deliberately advance the sleep phase.
So, today I cannot fall asleep until 12 noon. I can then sleep until about midnight (it's sensible for me to allow myself 12 hours, as I have to compensate for staying up longer - yes, I have learnt this through repeated chronotherapy adjustments). I will be awake from midnight until 4pm on Thursday, sleep from 4pm on Thursday until about 4am on Friday, awake from 4am until 8pm on Friday, asleep from 8pm on Friday until about 8am on Saturday, and then I will attempt to maintain getting up in the morning. It won't last, because it never does, but I should be able to stick with 10am starts for a while.
Ergh. People with functioning bodyclocks don't know how lucky they are. I'm so jealous.
