Sleeping with ADD

Monday, November 05, 2007

Sleeping with ADD
Often a symptom of ADD is having trouble sleeping. And guess what, being overtired will definitely exacerbate your inattentiveness the next day. It doesn't take long before you're in a vicious cycle of not sleeping at night and not functioning during the day.
Here are some tricks to getting to sleep and getting the most sleep you can if you have ADD:
1. Take a notebook to bed. If you have a control notebook like I describe here, that much the better. Bring it. If you have thoughts whirling about inside your head that you can't lose, write them down. It will take you five or ten minutes to write down what's bugging you, so you can stop thinking about it and go to sleep. If you don't write it down and stop thinking about it, you'll be up on-and-off for much of the night.
2. Take something to focus on to bed with you. When I was younger, I used to take fiction to bed and read until the book fell out of my hand. I couldn't just read until I was sleepy, because by the time I set down the book and turned off the light, my thoughts would be racing again, and sleepy or no, I was awake. The book had to literally fall out of my hand. If you use this method, it's good to have a housemate turn off your light for you, or set it on a timer.
These days, I use my MP3 player with a good book downloaded. Luckily, I can get audiobooks free with my library card in my city. I set my player to turn off automatically in 30 minutes, lay back, get comfortable, and listen to a good story until I'm asleep.
3. Turn off the lights and get rid of the noise. Take a few minutes to figure out how to get it very dark and very quiet in your bedroom. Because if you're like me, if a noise or light wakes you up, your thoughts start racing all over again and you're up. If you must read to get to sleep, put your light on a timer. Try a white noise machine or a fan if you have household or street noise you need to block out.
4. Figure out a way to get back to sleep quickly if you wake up in the middle of the night. I have to have my MP3 player handy and put it back on right away if I'm awakened in the middle of the night (for example, when the baby needs to nurse). I latch on the baby, and push play on my audio book, before my mind has time to think of anything else that will keep me awake and worrying my thoughts. Likewise, if you read to sleep, keep a flashlight or book light nearby so you don't have to turn your bright lamp back on.
5. Go to bed and get up at as close to the same time every day as possible. Get a routine going at night (I know, I know, ADD + routine?!?) so your body gets the same signal every night that it's time to wind down.
6. Keep the temperature cool in the bedroom. It's easier to stay asleep in a cooler room, under a warm blanket.
7. Keep your clock turned to the wall and don't sit and stress about being up late/being up in the middle of the night/being up. The more you think about it and stress about it, the harder it will be to get back to sleep. Don't think about how you're going to feel like crap in the morning. Remember that you will get through your day, it won't be as bad as you think, and calmly return your mind to where it needs to be to fall back asleep.
If you can do everything you can to STAY asleep once you get asleep, you'll enable your body to go through all its sleep cycles. This is imperative to feeling well-rested and able to function the next day.