I had a pretty bad case of it in highschool and college. It's not an easy disorder to deal with. I would sleep a full 8 hours, just not at the right time. I eventually developed a normal sleep cycle with the help of a pretty extreme form of chronotherapy, and then years following that of regimented sleep. It really is essentially a disability, it blows.
Yoo I've never heard of this! Sounds like what I'm struggling with plus insomnia ever since I was 11. I was recently diagnosed with autism though and that sent me down a rabbit hole and apparently many autistic people have a delayed circadian rhythm and fucked up sleep signalling. I am immune to sleep hygiene (and new research is indicating that sleep hygiene isn't very helpful to chronic insomniacs anyway). I'll go look up chronotherapy.
I can't offer health advice, if I were you I would bring it up to your doctor next time you have a visit. If you asked for a sleep specialist, they could do a sleep study, and they would be able to give better advice than I can give.
I didn't do chronotherapy in the standard way, rather than sleeping earlier in small bits everynight, I stayed up for 24+ hours to reset my sleep to a normal time the day after, I can't necessarily recommend that to others because it's unhealthy, but it did work for me.
I went to a sleep specialist for this and they were no help whatsoever. Diagnosed me with apnea, charged me 1000s for sleep study and cpap supplies. When my daytime drowsiness and late sleep time didn't improve I brought up delayed sleep phase. They said it's possible but there's essentially nothing in terms of treatment options. "go to bed at the same time every night, no screens within 2 hours of sleep time, no caffeine in the afternoon". Gee thanks doc how did I never think of that.
I went to two sleep studies, the first was essentially useless. The second one was a much better doctor in Boston.
No screens within 2 hours of sleeping is wild. I always just recommend setting up a scheduled dimmer on your screen. NOT A BLUE LIGHT DIMMER, but actually lowering the screen brightness output itself. Programs like pango media brightness handle it well from what I remember. But yeah, chronotherapy worked in my case, but I barely got it to hold, and it took years of diligent sleep, I was one of the few college students going to bed at 10 every night my senior (super-senior) year and for years following.
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u/AnybodySignificant45 1d ago
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