Written by Rebecca Eby

You see the memes – one person is awake, brain racing with the chores and the other is fast asleep. You laugh because you relate to one and your partner to the other. It is meant to be a joke as it seems extreme, but what if it isn’t?

During my autism-spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis, my therapist asked me a question I couldn’t quite answer: how do I fall asleep? After explaining how hard it was to fall and stay asleep, the best I could come up with was that I wore myself out — which isn’t really an answer so much as an admission.

I explained I had tried meditating, breathing exercises, counting sheep, spelling out a word, then using the last letter to find a new word, spell that, rinse and repeat, singing music in my head, tea, reading, all the tricks and nothing worked. My mind would either see it as a challenge that needed to be conquered, or get bored or excited and spiral off on tangents.

And this is just the beginning. Then there is the “3:00 AM wake up call.” No, not for the restroom, this is when my brain decides it has solved a challenge and wakes me up so I can remember and write it down. Yes, the problems are actually solved. In my career I would come up with these wild – and successful – solutions to ongoing challenges and the jokes would be:

• “3:00 AM Rebecca and her ideas”
• “Needed time for the computer to compute, huh?”
• “What 3:00 AM idea did you get last night?”

While funny, and I appreciate that this has contributed to my success, it takes a toll on the actual sleep I need to function. I have learned if I do not get at least three hours of REM and Deep Sleep combined, I am not a very functional human overall and it is just that much harder to interact with people.

Studies have shown there is a link between my type of neurodivergence and sleep: insomnia, delayed melatonin release, sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome and more. All this affects REM sleep, which your brain needs to rest and recover, and neurodivergent people tend to need more overall hours of sleep to recover. This is not always possible due to, well, life, especially when North American society is based around an eight-hour sleep schedule. I track my sleep, and the reality is this eight-hour sleep schedule really only affords me six-ish hours of actual sleep, and usually less than two hours of REM and deep combined.

So, what does this mean? As an adult with no children it means I take one weekend day and sleep in, as much as I want, and I don’t feel guilty. This means I could be getting up at 9:00 AM, or even 1:00 PM if the prior week was very “peopley”. I have had the conversation with my husband so he knows I need this time and we try to avoid scheduling anything on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Anyone who read my previous interview with ROSE will know that I like information — my brain likes to figure out puzzles. As much as this is my life, having the information — the data — has made it much easier for me to accept this is the way it is. I feel less guilt when I need more hours of sleep, and have conversations about it with the people in my life. Do I sometimes wish there were a magical button that would give me all the perks of my neurodivergence (which have contributed to my success) and still keep to a sleep schedule? Sure, just like I wish socializing didn’t exhaust me the way it does — that is not my reality though. My friends understand when I say no to an outing if I feel it’s too much and I need the time to sleep so I can function the following days.

So how do I fall asleep? If my legs are restless I moisturize and stretch, maybe take an ibuprofen if it is really bad. I know if I have a bad night and wake up feeling anxious, maybe I sleep a little longer and take a sick day or work from home. Tracking my sleep cycles gives me data and information so that appeases my need for information, as then I can plan conversations and set expectations. 

Adding in quiet time during the week has helped as well. An hour or so of just silence, doing a puzzle, reading, Lego. No music, no TV, no electronics. This has made the resting part of my week more manageable — not quite sensory deprivation but just focusing on one thing, one space, one goal.

What does this mean? I go to bed at 8:00 PM to relax, phone game, read, watch TV, whatever. Yes, I know about the blue light from electronics. I have found it has not made a significant difference and my husband likes a TV show before bed. Lights out around 9:30 PM-10:00 PM, asleep around 10:30 PM-11:00 PM and alarm at 6:30 AM. I don’t fight the thoughts that keep me awake and I have fewer frequencies of 3:00 AM wake-ups. I touch base with those in my personal and professional life when I need a little more space, and plan for rest.

So maybe that meme isn’t so extreme after all. And maybe the answer isn’t to fix the person who’s awake, but to understand why they are. I spent a lot time thinking I needed to be fixed — I didn’t, but I needed more information. Once I accepted that I was wired differently, rest became easier to find.

Besides, who doesn’t like to sleep-in on a weekend?