I am currently struggling heavily with depression. Which impacts my quality of sleep. Sleep now has never been a talent of mine. So I generally make up for it by napping. I used to absolutely love it. Both the initial and the waking up (feeling well rested). But lately the waking up part is getting more and more difficult. It then feels like someone hung an anchor on my mental health. I am at that point in absolute disarray and so depressed it makes me feel anxious it’s so bad.
This may be above lemmy’s pay grade but still here goes. Should I stop taking naps? Also I’m thinking of taking antidepressants, anyone here have any experience?
Edit: Thank you all for the replies. I currently in talks with a therapist about taking antidepressants. For the mean time I have found that if when I wake up from a nap and just immediately get out of bed and go into the other room. It helps alleviate the “depressional” fall out that would normally follow.
Are you on any medication?
I ask because SSRIs completely paralyzed me and made me sleep a lot.
Usually the recommendation is to take short, no longer than 30 minutes naps. Supposedly, after 30 minutes you go into deep sleep and waking up will make you feel tired. I haven’t reviewed the scientific validity of the claims, but it has always worked for me.
What works for me is: lay down and relax, close your eyes, but try to not fall asleep, think about stuff you did, about stuff you want to do. If you manage to maintain a good balance between not relaxing too much and not stressing too much (that’s the tricky psrt), you’ll stay in a semi-awake state. Rest for 20-30 minutes and you should feel better
That’s an intriguing idea.
It probably explains why napping works for me - that little bastard in my head pulling the strings takes forever to sit down and shut up, so I kind of nap like this already. It takes most of 20 minutes before he sits down, I barely fall asleep and my alarm goes off.
I’m not an expert, but I think you should consider talking with a therapist about it. Talking to someone can be a great way to work through things and feel better. They can offer a listening ear and different perspectives.
Regarding the sleep, consistency is quite important. Your body operates on a biological schedule and is important to your health. During the day try spending some time outdoors, normalize your meals times and limit coffee in the afternoon. Also avoid all-nighter and at late night reduce lighting and (this one is hard for me too) avoiding to use electronic devices (phone, pc, tv, ecc) during bed time.
Take some vitamin D.
That’s one hell of a pickup line?
/s
Hahahaha, smart to add the /s
Not sure why you’re being downvoted.
Swedish(?) studies show probably 86%+ of people are D deficient, and most significantly deficient. And low D causes all sorts of dysfunction. (For example IIRC, it has an important role in glucose metabolism, which affects everything).
We just don’t go outside as much as we need to.
Only takes minutes a day in most locales, and don’t need a lot of skin exposed.
There’s an app (definitely on Android, but think it’s also on iOS) called D-minder to find the time of day you can get proper exposure for your body to produce D.
Supplements can help, but they fall short of the effectiveness of sun exposure.
I have a sleep disorder. I can no longer nap, have alcohol (at all), caffeine after 9am, and so on.
I also love napping and have napped my entire life when possible until recently.
Since I can’t nap anymore without ruining my sleep I now sit or lay quietly with my eyes closed and just rest. I set an alarm for 5-10 minutes and snooze for a few minutes over and over until I “get up”. I never really fall asleep so (reluctantly) ending this rest period is not that hard.
This doesn’t give you that same rested feeling but I can destress, lower anxiety, and so on. This absolutely has led to me sleeping more deeply at night, getting drowsy before bed, etc.
A little like meditation but mostly just taking a break.
Consider a sleep study. I found out I have sleep apnea this way, and did a follow up study with a CPAP machine where I just felt 100x better rested than usual. Ask your doctor for a referral.
If you’re struggling heavily with depression, you should definitely speak to your doctor. Antidepressants are a great measure to make things a bit more manageable while you get things back on track, get therapy, etc.
The napping during the day is almost certainly feeding back into worse night time sleep, which makes you need daytime naps, etc. I would do everything in your power to not only stop taking daytime naps, but also to establish a consistent sleep routine and bedtime ritual. You can essentially train your body to know it is bedtime, and a bedtime routine goes a long way with that. Pick a time you’re going to go to sleep every day (including weekends) and a time you’re going to wake up (and be awake) every day, including weekends. Treat them as law (within reason) and you should find it easier and easier to feel sleepy and get to sleep.
Consider using a sleep app (like sleep for android). It tracks your motion while you sleep, and can detect (roughly) your sleep cycles, as well as when you’re awake. If you set an alarm with a “smart period”(which you decide upon, mine is half an hour) for the time you have decided to wake you up, it will track your position in your sleep cycle and try to wake you up when you’re at your lightest sleep, which improves how easy it is to wake up and feel rested.
I know everyone always says “no screens before bed” but like yeah, actually try to get away from screens before bed. Most things we do on screens are very stimulating, which keeps your brain in a more awake, alert state. If you “switch off” an hour before your decided upon bedtime, and go about your bedtime routine, you may find sleep comes a lot easier.
Something that helps me a lot as well with sleep is something I learned from an ex-army chap. While you’re lying down to sleep, find your comfortable position, and then, starting with your tongue (which is actually the most important to focus on in my experience) relax each muscle one by one. I find if I don’t think about it, my tongue will be basically glued to the roof of my mouth and under pressure. Relax your tongue, then your eyes, your brow, cheeks, face, mouth/lips, neck, shoulders, upper arms, lower arms, hands and fingers, your chest and back, then your lower back, unclench your butt (crass but necessary), your upper legs, lower legs, and feet. As you relax each one, just take inventory and make sure the ones you already relaxed are still relaxed, especially your tongue. If you’re finding it hard to “manually” relax a muscle, tense it really hard for 5-10 seconds and then release, it should be easier to just let it relax. This technique is fucking magic I swear to you.
Best of luck to you, internet stranger, and good luck with your mental health journey.
Just as a quick hope-it-works because it’s easy, try drinking a glass of water with just a tiny amount of sugar and salt (like literally you should not be able to taste it, should just taste slightly fishy) before your nap.
I’m with the others on seeing a therapist, though, and first-round antidepressants have had huge positive effects in my personal experience, so it’s not necessarily going to be this long mind warping journey that I think people are scared to start sometimes.
What’s the thinking behind the sugar-salt water?
It helps make sure it’s absorbed so you don’t have to pee right away. If you’ve just eaten you don’t have to
Ah, so kind of like Gatorade, makes sense.
When biking/skiing, etc, I found water alone just didn’t work, but a highly diluted Gatorade (75%+ water/25%- Gatorade) was far more effective for my sweats-like-a-horse metabolism.
Constant urges to nap and trouble getting up afterwards are both common (but in no way definitive) symptoms of depression. Definitely above Lemmy’s pay grade - you need to talk to a doctor/therapist. Absolutely do not take antidepressants without consulting them.
They’re also common symptoms of Apnea which is definitely something you should look at getting tested for!
If you are looking for a scientific approach try listening to Andrew Huberman’s 6-part series all about sleep with Dr Matt Walker.
Link to episode 1 on youtube, its also on Spotify: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OBCwiPPfEU
Huberman’s Sleep Toolkit: https://www.hubermanlab.com/newsletter/toolkit-for-sleep
Try to time your naps so that you are waking up at the correct part of your sleep cycle… I think the average time of a full cycle is ~90 min for most people, so if you set an alarm for 1.5 or 3 hours (or any other increment of 90 min) it shouldn’t feel as bad to wake up.
Same thing goes for sleeping at night as well.
I was in similar situation, where I would sleep off daytime, then it messed up my sleep schedule for years. I got better once I realized that I am a zombie in that state. I advise going for a walk. Try to go a bit further every day. Just stop outside, it’s funny to go home instantly, so have to walk for a minute. The this has two benefits - cardio on fresh air is good for physical health and makes you tired for the night, and for me it brought relief from mental pressure and gave space that I am safe to think about difficult stuff. There is something in act of moving that help with the head. It’s also nice anchor - you are in control of his much you walk, where you walk, just do it, like guy from memes.
Be kind to yourself <3
I learned this one from CGP Grey: Caffeine Naps. Drink a cup of coffee right before you nap. When you wake up, you dont feel groggy because of the caffeine
I use a rube goldberg machine to drop freshly-ground adderall into my nostrils about ten minutes before I need to wake up
Become an uber driver. I get to make my own schedule, and I don’t use alarm clocks any more. If I need to sleep, I just set the car on autopilot and the uber app to auto-accept rides, and when I wake up I’ve got money.
I am bi-polar. After positive changes in my life, I was living medication-free. During 2020, I resisted admitting to myself that I was horribly depressed because I didn’t want it to be real. When I finally got back on an anti-depressant, I could have kicked my own ass for waiting so long. See a doctor now. Depression can be treated and you might not need the meds forever. Get help.
My bi-polar also causes sleep issues. I take a medication for that, too. You might need the same. But lest you think I think pills are the answer to all problems, first stop taking naps and try to get more exercise to help with sleep.
But see someone about your depression. There’re solutions. Depression is the worst hell and it isn’t required.
