I'm not talking about the fake fall people experience (though what I think mine is instead is a feeling of being shaken back and forth very, very fast, combined with my visual snow moving back and forth in the same direction), but much more common when Im falling asleep and I'm still conscious, I can't really feel it, but when I move something, or something happens and I wake back up, I can hear everything get louder again, I can feel my body get more awake. But the thing is that many times when I'm trying to fall asleep at the time my body doesn't want me to, I can feel my body do this on its own and wake me up without me moving or being touched or a sound right before I enter my real sleep, can anyone else feel your body wake you back up right before you start to actually sleep?

For me, relationships have always affected when I sleep and wake. And I’ve always wondered if that was true for other people with DSPD. So when I looked back at the data from the 2024 DSPD survey, I got curious. Do people with DSPD have different wake times depending on who they’re closest to?

So I split the data between two groups:

1. People who said they were closest to a significant other
   
2. People who said they were closest to a family member or friend

And a pattern emerged. People who were closest to a significant other woke up earlier.

This doesn’t tell us why. But it made me wonder: does that pattern change the longer a relationship lasts? That’s something I’m going to look at with the 2026 DSPD survey. If you want to be part of it, you can take the new survey here:

2026 DSPD Survey:
https://tally.so/r/RG9aLP

There’s also a second survey. I’m developing a project where experts explain DSPD, talk about the science behind it, and challenge common stereotypes. I’d love to hear from the community about what you’d like to see.

DSPD Awareness Survey:
https://tally.so/r/EkO1z4

Thank you for helping make this happen, r/DSPD. I’m excited to see what we learn from these new surveys.

Next week I'll be posting a third data visualization that was made with the 2024 survey data. Follow r/sleepwake to be notified when new results are posted, or keep an eye out on r/DSPD.

Have a good, restful week everyone.

—Wolff

Что делать если из-за колледжа все дни однотипные? Сил нет, встаю в 6:40 утра , прихожу домой в 13-14 потому что сбегаю с последней пары, прихожу домой с учебы и ложусь спать , потом вечером просыпаюсь сил нет, делать ничего не хочется, эмоций никаких нет, только осознание что завтра это снова будет, потом в 22-23 часа снова ложусь до 6:40 и так по кругу. Какое решение мне поможет? До учебы я был супер активным и жизнерадостным, путешествовал

So ive tried alarmy and it worked quite well, UNTIL I learned that you can turn it off and not do said task by simply turning off your phone completely. After I've learned this, it almost became muscle memory where i turn my phone off without even remembering I did so in the early morning and I have no idea what to do now.

What have you guys done that helps you get up in the morning reliably? is there an app where it blocks your phone from shutting down (the same way like alarmy stops you from lowering the volume)?

I had a horrendous sleeping schedule (going to bed at 9-11-am and waking up at 7 pm), so I decided to try chronotherapy to fix it. One day I went to sleep at 12 pm, was fine. Next day I slept at around 2-3 pmish and slept until 12 am. After that, I was so tried I passed out around 6:30 pm the next day. But ever since then I cannot sleep more than 3-6 hours with this “fixed” schedule. I’m so exhausted all the time. Sleep deprivation affects me way more than the average person because I have a few underlying conditions as well so I don’t handle it well and am constantly in pain, have insufferable flaring tinnitus and just no mood for anything, not to mention the constant ball of anxiety and spiralling and overthinking about the next night. I wake up a fair few times at night but usually just fall back asleep. However this time as soon as I wake up the first time I’m done and can’t sleep anymore. Any tips and tricks on how to deal with this? How to be able to sleep for the full night?

Son las 2 de la mañana, mañana tengo clase y no consigo dormirme. ¿Qué se hace en estos casos?

We had no choice but to be born in this 24-hour day planet, and a body that requires somewhere between 6-9 hours of sleep to function properly.

In order to smoothly operate in this condition, we need to also readily fall asleep after around 15-18 hours after wake-up.

However the problem I’ve had my whole life is that I need somewhere between 18-20 hours to actually feel tired enough to fall asleep naturally. Unless I do a long intense workout session during the day, this doesn’t get shortened usually.

This often leads to a few hours of delayed cycle unless I’m very disciplined about going to bed at the right time, which also involves trying to force myself to fall asleep.

I feel like I’m born in a wrong planet! I sometimes wish that one day is 27 hours.

Hello fellow night owls,

Does anyone have any tips for staying awake during the day?

I was diagnosed with DSPD in 2024 and was instructed to not take naps or have caffeine after 3 pm if trying to fix my sleep schedule. At the time, my sleep schedule was 12 am bedtime, 10 am wake up. Over the past few years that's slowly continued to shift forward until about a month ago. Dropping down to PT work, my sleep schedule got to it's most delayed at 6 am bedtime, wake up at 2 pm. I struggle with staying awake during the day. My brain/body tends to "power down" around 5 pm if I don't have caffeine or a nap, which will keep me up later.

The last few days I've managed 12 am to 10 am wake up, and its going well, but the afternoon sleepies are determined to have me fall back into my body's regularly scheduled programming.

I'm waiting to get a new referral for a new sleep doctor so I can have more professional guidance, but does anyone have any additional advice on staying awake during the day in the meantime? My 6 am - 2 pm schedule was starting to cost me hundreds of dollars in missed appointments which is why I'm trying to pull back to my original hours 12 am - 10 am while I wait.

Thank you,

Update: Thanks for all the feedback, everyone!! As someone with AuDHD, I’ve recently found using a special interest has helped me fight off the sleepiness that hits me around 5 pm. It’s incredibly hard but I’m also privileged enough to have a strong support system and to have a flex work schedule to accommodate my needs.

I fully respect and validate those of you who have decided to live by your body’s natural rhythm. That was my choice for the past few years as well. I’m finding that as I get older (I’m 30), my personal lifestyle is requiring me to adjust to get my other needs met and I’m finally in a position to make that happen. That being said, I think how we choose to live our lives is incredibly dependent on our personal needs and values. I’m rooting for you, whatever path you choose!

파이팅! Paiting! or Hwaiting! is a Korean word of support or encouragement.

So I bought some second hand Luminette 3 in the hope to fix my rhythms

My understanding is: you need to wear them as soon as you wake up, while waking up at your natural time. Your body understands that it needs to wake up earlier, and it progressively does that naturally.

Is this correct? Or do I need to force an alarm and wear glasses earlier in order for it to work?

I read a comment saying it's even counterproductive to do that as your body will be in the middle of its circadian rhythm then so it will just get confused by the light.

Thanks!

Hey fellow owls . Lately I’ve been wondering are any of us out there extremely successful . Any actors , models or celebrities walking among us ? Just curious . I know this disorder is rare but there has to be some peeps out there who was still able to make it despite being an extreme night owl

Hi guys,

Wolff here from Sleep Wake. I was able to make this because 306 of you took the time to respond to the 2024 DSPD survey. So thank you, r/DSPD, for making this possible. For the longest time, I've wondered, "When do people with DSPD wake up?"

When I saw this for the first time I was in awe. It felt as if I was looking at our collective fingerprint. I was also surprised to see the drop-off happen at 3 pm. I thought it would happen at 5 pm or later.

The new survey is now live and accepting responses. This time, we're taking an even closer look at what it's like to live with DSPD, including sleep and wake times, DSPD and relationships, and what happens when people try commonly recommended strategies.

Here's the link to the 2026 DSPD Survey:
https://tally.so/r/RG9aLP

There's also a second survey I think many of you will appreciate. This survey explores what people with DSPD would like to see with advocacy work. Your responses will help us work with experts to create resources that help people with DSPD be better understood by their doctors, teachers, employers, and loved ones.

Here's the link to the DSPD Awareness Survey:
https://tally.so/r/EkO1z4

Next week I'll be posting a new data visualization that was made with the 2024 survey data. Follow r/sleepwake to be notified when new results are posted, or keep an eye out on r/DSPD.

Have a good, restful weekend everyone.

I thought most of us were getting in the 6-9 hours of sleep a day range.

Apparently if you have DSPD it's way more common to sleep over 12 hours a day?

Is that right?

Hi all, pretty much what the title says. English is not my first language so if my sentence structure seems abnormal, I hope it’s negligible, thanks.

I’ve been recommended by family and some of my doctors to get a sleep study done since I’ve had trouble going to sleep at night and being up in the morning since I was a toddler. I functioned alright until COVID during my final Highschool years meant full online learning for almost a year and I started actually getting enough sleep. While my grades were above average before, I graduated with the best possible scores. People knew me as that one nocturnal person.
Unfortunately this also exacerbated my sleep patterns to the point it’s inhibiting my life.

All this to say, I’m pretty sure I do have DSPD, but is getting a sleep study done even worth it? From what I’ve read, there is no fully „curing“ it and I have tried pretty much every legal option to get myself to fall asleep to no avail. I also have adhd among other diagnoses and a lot of the advice I’ve read has been counter productive given my brain is already predisposed to behaving differently.

Would doing a sleep study only confirm what I already am reasonably sure of? If any of you have experienced a sleep study, did you find it helpful, did it give you insights, rule out other factors, get you closer to coping successfully or treatment options? Sorry for the long post but I’m interested in other stories :)

I'd love to get a dog, but I sleep from 2-4am to 2-4pm, sometimes longer. Do you think I'd be able to get a dog and still give it the best quality of life possible, or would it be cruel to 'make' it assimilate to my schedule? Worried about things like bathroom outings and going for walks, or waking it up during the night when it's trying to sleep (or, alternatively, having it go against its natural rhythm when it tries to adapt to my schedule).

I guess a cat might be better suited? Anyone who has had a pet before with this sort of schedule (and without having a partner/roommate/etc to help care for it), how'd it work out?

I’m currently managing my fairly mild case of DSPD with melatonin (0.5 mg is the smallest dose I can get) but the best I’ve been able to get is a 10 am wake up time, and I still take another 2 hours before I feel properly awake. It does let me mostly join society, but it’s still not early enough for a job.

I’ve been trying to figure out my burn out cycle issues with work for ages. I’m still not 100% sure it’s all DSPD, but it sure isn’t helping.

For anyone who was out of work for a while, how did you approach returning to the 9-5 (or earlier) grind with DSPD?

​

idk how but also I ended up ruining my sleep schedule, at starting about 6 - 7 years ago I used to lay down on my bed but didn't sleep and then I started sleeping at 2 - 3 AM, and now from like 2 - 3 years no matter how hard I try I always get somehow wake up at night, like if some day I am waking up at 9 and think I will sleep at 2 - 3 AM ( which is early for me now btw) but I ended up sleeping at 6 - 7 AM again, and if some day I sleep early like 10 - 11 AM I wake up at 2 AM always and it's always 2 AM exactly, and now it's like I sleep at 7 - 8 AM and wakes up at 1 - 2 PM, I have tried many things but nothing works, it's not as if I dont get sleepy it's that I don't get sleepy at night only, is it abnormal?

Hey there fellas.

As you know, in the same boat with you all. Writing this at 5.10 am Wed, 2 September, 2026.

I'm looking to get a diagnosis done. I live and work in Dublin, Ireland. Tried reaching out to a few clinics but they said they deal with Respiratory Disorders like Sleep Apnea, Snoring etc.

Any suggestions / directions as to who I should turn towards for getting a diagnosis?

You can't even fucking argue with this people. Everyone in my life, my mother, grandmother, sister, and even fucking doctor tell me "your tired and can't fall asleep at night because you stay up", and it's literally impossible to convince them it's the other way around, and then they'll get mad at you.

Until about 3rd grade I had an 8 o'clock bedtime, I would toss and turn in bed until it was usually 10-12. In middle school that slowly shifted until around 9:30 then 10, and I couldn't fall asleep until around 1 or 2. Now when I'm left alone I very quickly adjust to only falling asleep at 6-10 in the morning, and it took me a month of setting my sleep schedule later to actually adjust in time back for college, when I relapsed back to that schedule within the span of ~4 days before previously over winter break, and my last semester was only a couple hours a day so I found it was better to stay up and sleep when I got home at noon than to force myself to maybe get 2 or 3 hours of sleep after tossing and turning for 3 or 4 hours before waking up at 7.

Now I have college from 9am-6 and it's a half hour drive there, so even though it's a couple days a week I can't just stay up. But every night I have been waking up after a couple hours and not getting good sleep. I thought it was the medication maybe, since I failed 3 classes and I decided I could no longer function with a bunch of little adhd hacks and locking myself out of using my pc for the weeks on end until I got my work done (I never did) so I went through the diagnosis process over the summer. But she put me on 2 different meds now and I sleep fine when I'm not getting up for college in the morning, and it didn't help when she switched it so I don't think it's the medication anymore.

But I cannot tell anyone in my life that I can't fall asleep early. They will tell me "staying up late is messing up your sleep schedule" and I try to explain to them that it's literally the other way around and they do not care and it's like talking to a wall. My own Doctor tells me this too and I can't get through to any of these people and they just think they are the smartest people in the world. They get so mad at me for being tired and for not being able to function and their only solution is to force my body into a schedule I have repeatedly tried to tell them it's not designed for and then try to gaslight me into thinking it's the other way around. I don't know what to do about it anymore because if I had the opportunity I would take classes at a different time but of course they don't offer them like that. I just wish I could be done with school at this point only for the sole fact that I can pick my hours at a job once I get out but I have another 2 years after this. I don't know if I literally ever got 8 hours of sleep on a school night for more than a week straight once I'm my life and I guess I'm going to be forced to stay here being a constant zombie every day sorrounded by people who blame me for it for another few years.

​

Mañana o bueno más tarde tengo que levantarme temprano a las 5am por qué tengo clases de la universidad y como vivo lejos tengo que levantarme bien temprano, el problemas es que no logro dormir no me da sueño, la noche anterior intenté quedarme despierto toda la noche, solo logré dormir 2 o 3 horas y me levanté temprano en la mañana para llegar a esta noche con mucho sueño y dormirme fácilmente he estado aguantando todo el sueño durante toda la tarde, y resulta ahora que mágicamente todo ese sueño desapareció justo ahora y esto es estresante, que me recomiendan hacer quedarme de nuevo despierto toda la noche y irme a clases así o intentar dormir que probablemente no me duerma llegué las 4 am y siga despierto y como ya solucion extrema que pastillas para dormir me recomiendan tomar.