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> and that even severe sleep deprivation poses no real risk of poor performance, health troubles or early death. I struggle to see how anyone that has or even
by tjoff 9y ago
> and that even severe sleep deprivation poses no real risk of poor performance, health troubles or early death.
I struggle to see how anyone that has or even seen someone with severe sleep deprivation can say this with a straight face.
You stop functioning as a human. You can not think straight, and it's not "oh, silly me I forgot I needed to serialize access to this function" kind of thinking, but more like - "oh, have I always had foot on my left leg?".
Yes, often stress of not sleeping is the reason for not being able to sleep. I just have a hard time imagining that I could convince someone with sleep problems to actually believe that it isn't bad. Yet people in this thread seem to agree... So I might be wrong on that.
My mother used to work odd hours and always maintained that it isn't that bad to just rest rather than sleep if you're unable to. I truly wished I believed that but my experience has been quite the opposite. I could just as well run a marathon as lying awake in bed and I'd be equally exhausted the next day.
This is also in collision with something that has worked well for me, just get up if you can't sleep. Do not condition your brain that it is OK to lie down in bed awake. That's a habit you don't want to get into, better get up and do something for about an hour and try again. It sucks and it's hard to motivate yourself to get up 03:30 in the morning because you want to be able to sleep in the future, but in the long run it is worth it.
And that advice (echoed by many) is quite in collision course with the advice here.
Not saying that either is "right", but for me lying in bed awake just does not work. And I've really tried to commit to it.
- jhasse 9y ago> but for me lying in bed awake just does not work. Maybe because you're subconsciously thinking "I wont function as a human tomorrow" the whole time ;)
- mamcx 9y agoI already accept that I have bad sleep patterns and not worry about it, but still I get "brain-fog" most of the days and perform poorly. Wish to know how solve that!
- gameshot911 9y agoHave you tried getting more sleep? ;]
- mamcx 9y agoI sleep erratically but is common to sleep 12 hours!
- tjoff 9y agoThat is often very much part of it, yes. And knowing that a bad night paradoxically makes it harder to sleep next night sure doesn't help. But I can also have sleepless nights where I manage not to think, just lie there and exist. More pleasant but I can't say it makes any difference next day.
- barry-cotter 9y agoJust as you can be wildly off in your estimate of how much you slept during a night you can be wildly off in your estimation of your own alertness and mental state. You can be wrong about how you feel, for much the same reason placebos work or people are suggestible; we don’t actually have a privileged window into our own minds, we’re observers too.
- tjoff 9y agoI agree. I've tried to keep a detailed log of my sleep, including how I felt next morning and throughout the day and to my frustration I never figured out how to even remotely reliable measure sleep/rest. Is sleeping 8 hours better than sleeping 4 hours? Depends...
- bluntfang 9y ago>I just have a hard time imagining that I could convince someone with sleep problems to actually believe that it isn't bad. I think you might be missing the point. The goal isn't to convince people that not having sleep isn't bad, the goal is to let go of a circular thought pattern so that you can rest.
- tjoff 9y agoYes, but it is hard to break that pattern because you know it is bad. And "pretend it isn't bad" isn't very convincing to someone right in the middle of it.
- 0xcde4c3db 9y ago> I struggle to see how anyone that has or even seen someone with severe sleep deprivation can say this with a straight face. One of the things that sleep disruption or deprivation can impair is the ability to judge one's own alertness. That's arguably one of the reasons that it contributes to so many harmful accidents. If sleep-deprived people consistently realized how messed up their heads were, they might take fewer risks and do things more slowly, but they often try to proceed as if they were fully functioning.