I have had DPSD my whole life (at least since age 5) but am undiagnosed. I work a demanding job where I have a skill that is so rare that my DPSD is somewhat tolerated. It’s been a rough year and I’ve currently got my day and night flipped, ie sleeping about 6 am to 5 pm, waking/working 5 pm to 6 am.

It is destroying my marriage and relationship with my kids, morning larks who live mostly with their other parent. I’m also moderately afraid work is nearly fed-up enough to fire me. AI can do some of my job so I haven’t felt as secure lately.

I’ve been unable to get my act together on the job because it’s not easy work. I have to be awake and very focused to do it. I have awful sleep inertia that stops me while trying to shift my schedule. I am not rational while waking up, and cannot be reasoned with. I’ll often hop back in bed even after hours of stumbling around awake.

I took two weeks of medical leave to try and fix this. A week in and I’m failing. during the day, I fall asleep whenever, wherever. Seated at my desk and I drop my phone, especially while watching media. I feel tired literally every waking second but have stray bursts of energy between midnight and 5 and end up not sleeping.

So

Has anyone succeeded in something like this? If so, how?

I spent 7 years in college getting a BS and a MS. I've been working a "9 - 5" schedule for over 10 years and tunneled myself into a field that has no flexibility for night work.

Every morning I wake up with only minutes to quickly throw my work clothes on and run out the door so that I'm not late. Sometimes I don't even pack a lunch just to spend a couple of extra minutes sleeping. I can't imagine actually having time to do stuff before work.

I took a new position a couple of months ago. I found out recently that I will soon be required to be up around 5am - 6am to start the day. When I had to wake up around 7 - 8am, I was fine... Just exhausted. I feel nauseous and full of anxiety anytime I wake up before that and it takes hours for the sleep interia to wear off.

There's a factory in my home town that offers double what I'm making and, of course, a night shift schedule. I'm so conflicted though because I spent so many years in school and so much money on loans, just to toss that degree aside. I could have saved so much debt, but I'm so tired of waking up early.

I don't know what to do. It would take me decades to reach the level of pay I'd be making in just two years at this factory. The shifts are 12 hours and overtime is sometimes mandatory. I'll also have to work weekends again which I swore away. So many pros and cons but sleeping in my natural window is almost beyond comprehension since I've never experienced that. I feel like it would benefit me so much.

i realised i had DSWPD late in life but..taking melatonin kinda helps me, i just need to time it correctly, if i take it at 8-9 PM it works and i can sleep at 11 PM but curse my ADHD, I forget to take melatonin until 2-3 AM...having ADHD and DSWPD is like having the ultimate tag team. I also use glycine powder before sleep and i have found that whenever i take glycine powder, i wake up super refreshed, melatonin helps me sleep and glycine powder helps me feel refreshed

I (F 47) have had this and severe insomnia since I was young. I noticed I had insomnia when I'd go to bed "on time" and just laid there for hours. My ideal sleep schedule would start at 6 or 7 am. Unfortunately I work 8-5, but I work from home. Now here is where the "laziness" comes in. People will invite me to coffee or this and that at 9am, which I guess is a normal time. And if I say, " no way, I can't get up and be there at 9!" I seem like a lazy, petulant teenager. They don't understand that asking me to do something at 9 am is the same as me inviting them somewhere at 2 am. I'm not sleeping in, I'm not too lazy to get up. My internal clock is literally haywire. I'm so sorry that societal norms have made people with this disorder appear to be lazy. You're fast asleep when I want to do whatever at 1 am, but I don't consider you lazy. I don't like how staying up late and sleeping later (when I can) is seen as immature teenage behavior.
Edit: typos

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I'm sleepy and ik i can sleep but i can't i do procrastinate to sleep cuz I've to share the room and it's hard. So i stay up too late I'm going insane. Idk how to fix my sleep schedule.

Worried I’m gonna crash out and sleep at work and get fired

Is this considered DSPD? or Chronic fatigue? Or sleep apnea?

Please advise.

One thing, reading this, honestly, was: “We are a whole society designed around being a night owl, not a morning type. We build all these behaviours around influencing and reinforcing being a night owl – and of course a night owl is never going to wake up at the same time every day."

From the so-called sleep expert.

Errr... since when has society been build around that?

Yup. 👍

Has anyone got on SSDI/SSI for Delayed Sleep Wake Phase Disorder? Many of us have other neurodivergences as well. I want to pursue this route.

I became fascinated with circadian rhythms and biological clocks after digging into the research, hoping to understand why none of the strategies prescribed by my doctors had fixed my sleep schedule. What I found went deeper than I imagined.

The human body doesn't have just one clock, but an entire ecosystem of clocks that guide us throughout the day and night. In this teaser, you'll see DNA interacting with CLOCK:BMAL1, delayed melatonin, non-24 sleep, and light-sensing cells.

I'll be sharing more about the project soon, including behind the scenes of how I made these animations and what I'm working toward next.

r/sleepwake

Hi there, I wake up after 6 hours, no matter when I go to sleep (2 to 4 am), and go back to sleep about 1 hour later for 2 to 4 hours.

mm which basically makes my sleep window from 2AM to 1PM.

... then I feel human. If I miss the second sleep, I am in zombie mode.

Anyone else?

dspd no doubt :p my friend say I am drifting, recording sleep at the moment and pretty funny - just waiting for one month to see the graphs on paper.

I’ve had dspd / possible non 24 ever since I could remember . Do any of you go to sleep around 6-10 am everyday or is it just me ? I feel like mine is a rare case 😭

Hey everyone,

My sleep schedule has been getting really bad lately. These days, I don't seem to feel sleepy until after 11 AM. Just yesterday, I ended up falling asleep at around 12:30 PM.

My employer was kind enough to accommodate me by allowing me to start work a little later, after lunch. That arrangement worked reasonably well for a few months, but lately, my sleep schedule has been shifting quite a lot, making things difficult again.

I'm struggling to understand why my sleep timing keeps moving later and later, even with the accommodation.

Has anyone else with DSPD experienced such significant shifts in their sleep schedule? Does your sleep timing remain relatively stable, or does it keep drifting over time?

I'd really appreciate hearing about your experiences and how you've managed this, especially while holding down a regular job.

Should I try light therapy? Will it work and slightly advance my sleep back to my usual sleep time of around 4 am? If yes, how long it takes?

I think our phenotype were the tribe members who stayed up late to watch out for predators.. it explains the hyper vigilance/ OCD rumination trait.. we heard a noise and immediately went into fight or flight.

I’ve been sleeping ok I guess on my severely late dspd /non 24 schedule of 8-5pm , however the other day I came home and walked in to my partner using my 10k lux light box, unknowingly as a light for a green screen . After standing in front of it for about 2 mins I realized that it was my light therapy box and that I was starting to feel the buzzing energy that comes from light therapy . This happened around 2:30 / 3 am . Ever since , I have not been able to fall sleep at all and I’m releying on sleep medicine and getting about 5-7 hours on that versus my 8-11 hours before this hell started . My question is do you guys think that 2 mins of light therapy at the wrong time could cause an even worse delay or is this permanent? I’m currently panicking and going crazy !

I heard melatonin 4 hours before your natural bed time is effective for DSPD. Is that true? Does it actually advance your sleep phase?

I’m on the autism spectrum and back in 2020 I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety disorder and Major Depressive Disorder. Then a few months ago I was diagnosed with DSPD and Chronic Insomnia. The first time I went to the sleep doctor, I was given the same old advice about using sleep hygiene which was frustrating. It actually made my sleep worse. What’s also annoying is that my natural rhythm doesn’t start until like 9-11 am to 4 pm and all these doctor and sleep therapist appointments are right in the middle of when my body thinks I’m supposed to be sleeping. I’ve also been having suicidal thoughts. Going through treatment for this disorder has made me feel more depressed than I have felt in a while.

Guys, I don’t think I can accept that for the rest of my life I’ll be sleeping for a good portion of the daylight… someone has got to have figured this out….There must be a peptide or device out there.

Hi, I've noticed that shifting to -6 to -5 hours behind my actual time zone makes me way more conscious of time and fits my natural rhythm, without the guilt of "being behind" on everything regarding daily life and work and the stress that I should be keeping up. People are more open to the idea, I explain that I live on a different timezone and it makes sense to them (it maybe freaks them out to picture having to wake up at 3am every morning, with bright day light above their head, so they empathize more with you). Just the computer is set to my local timezone for work. I sleep more and better. I work local timezone from 6pm to 2am.

Hope it helps.

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I am 23 F.. just finished med school and i m about to give step 1 for which i need to study extremely hard... i even took out time from my internship to deeicatedly study for it but insomnia due to my messed up sleep schedule is completely ruining it for me..

It started at age 15 when i started staying up all night just because of anxiety and racing thoughts and I would just keep using my phone to rid myself of those thoughts... since then I've tried not using my phone in bed and going to sleep early but even when i do i wake up at 2/3 am and then i m unable to fall asleep till atleast 6/7 am..

I am extremely sensitive to anti allergics and can fall asleep and have a v good sleep on them even the non sedating ones but I can't use them every night and they make me sleep 14+ hours which i really don't want in this situation..

I don't understand if it is just a psychological/mood disorder or just DSPD

Last night i was in bed by 11 pm after waking up at 3 pm and being tired the entire day.. when i was in bed i just started making plans about studying the next day and just had very racing thoughts and kept tossing and turning till 2 am which is when i eventually pulled out my phone.. stayed up till 8 am and i just woke up at 2 pm with the worst headache of my life...

I also think when I have some routine in my life i.e I have to go work in the morning.. my sleep situation becomes better and I can sleep better at nights.. insomnia gets triggered when I am at home and stay up a few nights watching seaons/shows and then it just snowballs into chronic insomnia the more i stay home..

I can sleep easily in the day but it is literally the worst most unrestful migraine inducing sleep and my restful sleep is only in the night....

If anyone has been through this please provide some insight to how did u make it better? I wanna avoid sleep aids because i really have to study for my exam..

Someone in the insomnia sub suggested that i should just get up in the morning despite getting zero sleep the night before and just raw dog it for 2/3 days and i ll just start crashing at night...

So as the title says i have issue of going to bed before 12 as ill wake up at around 12 or 1, n wana wake up with 8 hours of sleep but at 6 am, ive taken medication before but it doesnt seem to work alot of the time, looking if someone else has the same issue (edit) glad im not a special case

I’m going to make a lot more data visualizations. So if you’d like to be part of the next one, you can check out the survey here:

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

Aside from the first few boring questions, I designed the survey around topics we often discuss. So it should be interesting.

Have a good week everyone.

r/sleepwake