Help My naps always accidentally last 4 hours...

[ma0]

Hey fellas! I figued I'd post this here, since there's no real good answers online...

Anyway, I find myself wanting to nap constantly, and I always mean for them to take about 15 minutes at most, then I wake up and 4 hours have passed.

I always end up feeling really guilty afterwards, and I can't help but always remind myself about how I just wasted 4 hours of my day (I wasn't going to do anything with those hours, but still)

How the hell do I stop this from happening? Should I set an alarm maybe? I fucking hate alarms but that's the only way I can think of rn :<

PLEASE HELP!!!!!

 

[Praestat_Mori]

First of all we need a certain amount of sleep everyday. Do you have a regular sleeping schedule (night)? Without knowing more it's probably impossible to give an advice. Maybe it's just your body needs it. If it is within the natural avg. amount of sleeping hours I wouldn't fight it.

 

[J&L383]

I agree, I think your body needs to sleep, so don't be too hard on yourself. And actually I'm quite jealous, 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep would be nice!

 

[ma0]

First of all we need a certain amount of sleep everyday. Do you have a regular sleeping schedule (night)? Without knowing more it's probably impossible to give an advice. Maybe it's just your body needs it. If it is within the natural avg. amount of sleeping hours I wouldn't fight it.

no, i don't have a regular sleep schedule, i just kind of sleep whenever i want :P

that might be part of it...

 

[NoPoint2Life]

Hey fellas! I figued I'd post this here, since there's no real good answers online...

Anyway, I find myself wanting to nap constantly, and I always mean for them to take about 15 minutes at most, then I wake up and 4 hours have passed.

I always end up feeling really guilty afterwards, and I can't help but always remind myself about how I just wasted 4 hours of my day (I wasn't going to do anything with those hours, but still)

How the hell do I stop this from happening? Should I set an alarm maybe? I fucking hate alarms but that's the only way I can think of rn :<

PLEASE HELP!!!!!

Are you on any meds? Those can play a huge part. For a while I was doing the same thing as you and I was attributing it to being exhausted from going to the IOP I was in. But once I got off one of the meds, my mega naps stopped. I did try setting an alarm. I was so exhausted. I would get up to turn it off and immediately fall back asleep. Very frustrating I know.

 

[ma0]

Are you on any meds? Those can play a huge part. For a while I was doing the same thing as you and I was attributing it to being exhausted from going to the IOP I was in. But once I got off one of the meds, my mega naps stopped. I did try setting an alarm. I was so exhausted. I would get up to turn it off and immediately fall back asleep. Very frustrating I know.

I'm not on any meds, no :/

It's all to do with my own sleep, not influenced by anything.

 

[OptingOutSmiling]

I'm thinking if you want to nap, it may be your body or mind telling you that you are tired. If you think you are napping too much or sleeping in total too much, I'd suggest to rather try and go for a walk, or a swim or just getting some fresh air instead of dosing off. It may help to energise the body and mind and help to get into a more regular sleep pattern. Anyways, it helps for me sometimes just to get out, but you will know best and when to listen to your body.

 

[avoid]

Look into polyphasic sleep schedules, particularly the biphasic sleep schedule. [wiki]

Sleeping 4 hours instead of a 15-minute nap sounds like a sleep schedule problem. Similar to how someone can shift their sleep schedule a few hours ahead by going to bed at later hours for several consecutive days or weeks, someone can change their sleep schedule from monophasic sleep to biphasic sleep by changing the hours they sleep.

Speaking from personal experience, I have struggled with sleeping several hours during the day when I meant to rest my eyes for only a moment. Sometimes this snowballs into needing fewer hours of sleep at night, causing me to get sleepy in the afternoon the next day again because of my shorter night's rest. This becomes a cycle of splitting my sleep hours between the early afternoon and late night, resulting in a biphasic sleep schedule.

The way I change my sleep schedule back to monophasic sleep is by skipping a sleep moment to force my body to make up for the lost hours of sleep at night. Melatonin also helps to reset my sleep schedule because it acts as a biological marker of the sleep phase in the circadian rhythm.

Here's more reading material if you think your sleep schedule is biphasic. I think you have the "first and second sleep" schedule. This biphasic sleep schedule splits the modern-day monophasic sleep into two segments separated by an hour or two of awake time. Except in your case, the first sleep is your 4-hour nap during the day and the second sleep at night.

How to fix your sleep schedule

https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-hygiene/how-to-reset-your-sleep-routine​

Biphasic sleep: what it is and how it works

https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/biphasic-sleep​

Segmented sleep in Preindustrial Societies

https://doi.org/10.5665/sleep.5558​

Sleep, circadian rhythms and health

https://doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2019.0098
Table 3 in chapter 7 offers actions you can take to achieve better sleep​

 

[ma0]

Look into polyphasic sleep schedules, particularly the biphasic sleep schedule. [wiki]

Sleeping 4 hours instead of a 15-minute nap sounds like a sleep schedule problem. Similar to how someone can shift their sleep schedule a few hours ahead by going to bed at later hours for several consecutive days or weeks, someone can change their sleep schedule from monophasic sleep to biphasic sleep by changing the hours they sleep.

Speaking from personal experience, I have struggled with sleeping several hours during the day when I meant to rest my eyes for only a moment. Sometimes this snowballs into needing fewer hours of sleep at night, causing me to get sleepy in the afternoon the next day again because of my shorter night's rest. This becomes a cycle of splitting my sleep hours between the early afternoon and late night, resulting in a biphasic sleep schedule.

The way I change my sleep schedule back to monophasic sleep is by skipping a sleep moment to force my body to make up for the lost hours of sleep at night. Melatonin also helps to reset my sleep schedule because it acts as a biological marker of the sleep phase in the circadian rhythm.

Here's more reading material if you think your sleep schedule is biphasic. I think you have the "first and second sleep" schedule. This biphasic sleep schedule splits the modern-day monophasic sleep into two segments separated by an hour or two of awake time. Except in your case, the first sleep is your 4-hour nap during the day and the second sleep at night.

How to fix your sleep schedule

https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-hygiene/how-to-reset-your-sleep-routine​

Biphasic sleep: what it is and how it works

https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/biphasic-sleep​

Segmented sleep in Preindustrial Societies

https://doi.org/10.5665/sleep.5558​

Sleep, circadian rhythms and health

https://doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2019.0098
Table 3 in chapter 7 offers actions you can take to achieve better sleep​

This sounds like something I might have, thank you.

 

[yowai]

no, i don't have a regular sleep schedule, i just kind of sleep whenever i want :P

that might be part of it...

Definitely lol, try alarmy app, it can be really loud (I can hear it going off in my room that's on 2nd floor on the 1rst floor) and you can add tasks that have to be completed to turn the alarm off. Uses a lot of battery though so remember to charge your phone to the full