I’ve had weird sleep all my life. My parents said when I was a baby it was like my body was not on a normal clock. I couldn’t sleep unless I was awake a certain amount of time…and then I needed to sleep some amount of time or I’d be cranky. But those two times didn’t add up to 24 hours they were always playing catch-up.

As a kid, going to sleep was hard and would stress me out. I remember my parents even took me to a psychologist to help. Mornings were equally tough.

As a teen and 20 something I struggled to wake up/get to class or work on time. I have literally not taken jobs bc I knew I wouldn’t be able to be on time. And I’ve definitely almost lost jobs for this over the years. If I didn’t have an alarm and would just sleep until I naturally woke up, I would sleep about 12 hours. Sometimes 10…on occasion 14.

Nowadays the work from home life and technology has allowed me to not fight my natural instincts as much. I’m late 30s. If left to my own devices with no alarm I’ll usually sleep 9-10 hours (11-12 on occasion). I usually get a second wind around 10pm and I’ll often do work and just use the “delay email” function so that my coworkers/clients/bosses think that I’m working earlier in the day than I really am. I’m usually going to bed sometime between 1am and 4am.

I’ve tried on many occasions to reset my sleep cycle. Sometimes for example I’ll have an early meeting so I’ll get just a few hours sleep, get to my meeting, and then attempt to stay awake all day and go to bed at a “reasonable time”. Usually I end up falling asleep like 6pm sleeping for 2-3 hours and then I’m back to being awake until 4am…it’s like my body just wants to be on its own rhythm. Other times I will succeed in getting through the day/going ti bed at a normal time….then the weekend comes and I’m back to square one.

I’ve tried so many things over the years. Alarm clocks have never worked well for me. I feel like my brain is not really “on” just bc I’m awake. For example, there have been times I’ve set an alarm bc I have somewhere to be and when the alarm goes off I forget that I have somewhere to be and turn off the alarm. It’s like my body reacts before my brain can. Is that normal?

I actually had a sleep study done years ago bc a dr thought maybe I had narcolepsy…I didn’t sleep well for the study so I’m not sure how accurate the results were. But they didn’t find anything wrong.

There was always a joke in my family about my aunt sleeping late. My aunt was kind of the black sheep of the family and the messaging was definitely that she was lazy and that’s why she slept so late. I remember her saying to me “you like to sleep late like me” and I remember feeling icky about that. My sister also has some similar sleep issues so I wonder if this is a physical/genetic thing vs just bad habits. Natures vs nurture.

My mom is a morning person. My dad is just a normal sleeper. And then there’s me and my sister.

Thanks for letting me vent. I’d love to find tools to help. Or anything that would help me explain why I am this way. I’ve tried various alarm clock over the years without luck…my brain seems to be smart enough to figure out how to turn off any alarm before I even realize what I’m doing.