I feel like I’m always the last person to learn about something, and that makes me reluctant to share things that now seem obvious to me. But I feel like a lot of y’all who read this page are similar to me in some ways, and maybe you’ll be glad to know about this, if you don’t already.
I saw a post on Tumblr about something called “revenge bedtime procrastination”. The original term in in a non-English language that I don’t speak or write, but that’s the closest we can get to a literal translation.
Revenge Bedtime Procrastination, which has a much more beautiful name in Chinese (the literal translation for revenge bedtime procrastination means “suffering through the night vengefully.”), is a phenomena unique to people who feel out of control in their daily lives, so we refuse to go to sleep early, to exert some control over our lives, and to enjoy some quiet time alone, when the rest of our people are sleeping.
I’ve always identified as a night owl. I’ve always had trouble falling asleep, and as long as I can remember, I prefer to sleep from about 0100 to about 0930 or 1000. I’ve been like that my whole life, and until I heard about this sleep revenge procrastination, I didn’t know why.
But now it all makes sense. When I was a kid, I lived in an environment where I was decidedly not in control, nor did I feel safe and loved. The man who was my father was a relentless bully who delighted in mocking me, teasing me, making me cry, as he made it crystal clear that he did not approve of, or love me. He made it very clear that I was not enough for him, through direct and indirect actions that have left me with a deeply painful wound that I don’t know will ever heal. Now, I know he had love to give, because he gave it freely to my siblings. He worshiped my brother, who grew up to be exactly like him, and I never saw him be cruel, dismissive, or disdainful toward my sister. It was just me, for some reason. And my mother did nothing to protect me, or to call out his emotionally abusive behavior. He was endlessly cruel and emotionally abusive to me, but they convinced themselves that, because he didn’t leave marks when he grabbed me in anger, he wasn’t actually, you know, abusive. Angrily shaking me by my shoulders, jabbing me in the sternum while he raged at me, calling me names like “dumb little fuck” all seems like abuse to me. They say I’m too sensitive. More than once, they told me I made it up.
News flash: the man who was my father was abusive to me, and my mother let it happen. Worse, she gaslighted me about it when I came to her for help.
So my waking hours in my childhood home just sucked. When I was a child, I’d retreat into my bedroom and read books, design D&D characters and dungeons, and escape into my imagination, but there was always the threat of that man walking in and mocking me for existing.
As a result, I developed this Revenge Bedtime Procrastination, which gave me truly free and quiet moments of relief from his cruelty and her manipulation, when they were asleep and I was the only person who was awake in the house. That’s when I could write, when I could read books, when I could listen to music, when I could exist as a human being who wasn’t always afraid.
Today, I love my life and my family. I couldn’t be happier about my career. I mean, right now things are generally not great for all of us, and I’m ready for our current trauma to be over, but if the dual traumas of pandemic and Fascism were removed, my life would be really great, in no small part because I have no relationship with my abusers.
And yet, I still struggle to fall asleep before 0100, even with the help of my CBD tinctures and meditation. It’s something I’ve lived with my whole life, and something I never truly understood, until I read this post I referenced above.
I don’t know if, now that I know this is a thing, I can start working to convince myself I don’t need that time like I did then, because I am in a house filled with love, shared with a partner who won’t ever hurt me. I don’t know if I’m going to ever be a person who can fall asleep easily, or before the middle of the night, but at least I know WHY I am the way that I am, and that makes me feel a little less broken and weird.
I actually think I have RBP. I’ve always been a night person but it seems like the less happy I am, the later I stay up. I have been calling it insomnia but Revenge Bedtime Procrastination seems like a better title since I don’t have trouble sleeping at all, just the trouble going to bed. Thanks for sharing because I had never heard of such a thing.
Wil, I had no idea, and had never heard of it. Thank you for educating me! Additionally, that is honestly kind of fascinating. So again, thank you for sharing.
Umm….. Holy shit.
This isn’t the first time you’ve shared a revelation that hit me like a ton of bricks. Thank you.
Thank goodness I’m seeing my therapist tomorrow.
Yeah, exactly what Josh said here. Though I did not grow up in a home where I was bullied, it was nearly all that which I faced outside the home. But I usually have the same issue where I can’t pull myself away from games/virtual worlds where I can be social with friends until I know I absolutely have to go to bed to be up early the next morning. Those days I don’t have to be up early the next day, oooh doggy… But yeah. Thank you for sharing this, Wil, and thank you for taking the words right out from my brain, Josh..
I spent every waking hour trying to stay out of sight. Being in one place long enough to relax and fall asleep ….. I suddenly realize that’s why I’ve had insomnia entire life.
Great post, Will. Made me sad to read about your childhood — especially thinking about all the joy you brought us on NG and knowing you were suffering much of the time. Thanks for telling us about this concept though! I completely relate to it as well, and the concept of procrastination fits perfectly with it, as I often procrastinate my work, I think, in ORDER to procrastinate my bedtime! Twisted, right? Cheers.
…huh.
I’ve always found that if I can actually pick hours, arbitrarily, it’s 5am-noon for me. Historically I’ve been able to get it to midnight-8amish, working really hard.
The last few years, the best I’ve managed is 2am-10am, and that’s incredibly difficult and I can’t maintain it. Right now, I’m at 3:30-11.
There’s an obvious connection here. I wonder if it’s real.
(The flip side is that those late hours are really, really productive hours. Christ I do good work that late. Literally the only problem is being out of sync with everyone else, and that’s the only reason I’ve even tried to control it.)
I’d never heard of that before either. It’s amazing. There is a /thing/ for everything! Thank you for sharing Wil. You continue to be one of the coolest people I don’t know.
I had never heard of this and wow does it make a ton of sense to me. Thank you very much for sharing Wil. I feel like I have learned something new about myself and I’m definitely going to read more about it.
Wow that is very interesting. What a discovery. I think I also have experienced a similar thing, although I fall asleep earlier now. Does that mean I feel safer than before? I hadn’t really thought about that. I feel like there are many other versions of Revenge Procrastination that apply to many facets of life (and are probably tied to their own origin trauma stories.) Thank you for sharing your story, which as you said, aligns with many of ours and we are glad to learn what you learn.
First I’ve heard of it, but it explains a lot. I’ve always been one to head to bed at a “decent” time, though everyone’s definition of decent is different granted. For most of my adult life I’ve held down a 9-to-5 type job so I had to get up with an alarm and head out. I’d sometimes stay up late on the weekends but for me I think sleep offered safety in its own way. For a period of time I can’t quite recall the duration of, we lived with my grandparents and my grandfather thought it was fun to molest me. However, if I was sound asleep I think he backed off; I don’t have any recollection of him waking me up for fun and games. But he had an uncanny ability to know when I was playing possum and when I was really asleep. Sleep became a refuge I couldn’t always find. Now, I’m up earlier than the household. I love the first few hours by myself, nursing a first mug of java and doing a little surfing or reading before I “commute” to the dining room to log onto work thanks to the pandemic.
Lately, I’ve been having trouble dropping off though. RBP may be rearing its head since I do often feel out of control these days. But on the plus side, only 919 more days till I can retire and RV full time.
Thanks for the info Wil. The more you know…
Wow… I wasn’t aware of RBP either, but it makes perfect sense out of my childhood insomnia, though I was lucky that my parents were not the ones making my life miserable… thank you for sharing it. And Wil, as always, I’m glad you found your way out of your abusive childhood and into a life with people who love you and whom you love!
Thank you for sharing this about RBP … i now have another acronym to add to my list of what makes sense. It helps to know why we do what we do. I was raised in a similar environment, so this resonated with me.
we must have had the same parents, Wil, because every time I read a description you write of your parents it is literally a carbon copy of my own. I feel at a molecular level the pain that you experienced. I want you to know so much that your experience was real from one survivor to another. Don’t ever doubt it. Ever. Still, you persevered and you can talk about it in this way today. Thanks for sharing this and your perspective on the ripples it has caused into your adult life. As Paul Gilmartin says on @mentalpod — it’s always about the ripples.
I hope your post helps people the way hearing the word and concept ‘limerance’ helped me. Once I knew what it was it totally lost it’s power over me.
I hope your post about RBP helps others!
In Japanese, it’s pronounced Houfukusei Iyoru, and the “f” is so soft it’s almost like an “h”. I just love it when languages have words/concepts that just can’t be directly spoken of in English.
Giving things a name, having a term (or in this case a lovely phrase) to describe what we go through makes us feel less alone. Someone out there somewhere has felt like we feel and done what we do for the same reasons as us. It’s humbling. It’s amazing.
I’d never heard of this before. I guess after the abuse I went through, I didn’t need it or it didn’t come to me as a defense mechanism.
I’m embarrassed to admit I have only read Just a Geek, so I don’t know if you’ve covered your family of origin elsewhere, but I am wounded on your behalf, reading how exposed you were, how nobody came to help you out of that house. No one helped my brother and myself, either, so I totally relate to the feeling of fear, 24/7.
I don’t think you’re broken. I think THEY are broken. I can’t say what would or could help heal you, get rid of that wound you carry around. It would be presumptuous of me to suggest anything; rather, keep your ear to the ground maybe, and if a spiritual practice comes into your awareness, or a counselor a friend suggests comes up, something that clicks with you, it couldn’t hurt to try it. You didn’t deserve any of that, nor what you still continue to experience.
One day, maybe a book on this subject would totally clear it out for you, let you release it. And then never think about them again.
You’re worth it. I’m glad you’re in the world.
Holy shit. I have never heard of this but it is so 100% me. My abuse was different than yours, but the reason for what I didn’t even know what a described thing before and which I just called insomnia is still abuse, still feeling unsafe and out of control, and still suffering from that decades later. Thank you for writing this blog and sharing your knowledge with me. I will take this into my own therapy and see what work I can do with it there. What an epiphany. A thousand times thank you.
Oh man. I have heard for a while that intentional sleep deprivation is an unconscious method of dealing with depression, but I’ve never heard it put this way. I had a similar emotionally/verbally abusive childhood (mom, with dad never stepping in; no siblings treated that way) and I LIVED for those safe night hours. Of course they still comfort me. Whoa. Thanks for sharing.
Uh…wow. Yes. As a child, I stayed awake all hours of the night after everyone was asleep. It was quiet and no one bothered me. It was the best time of my day. I’ve recently informed my parents of this, and they say they had no idea. Duuuuh.
This post was a revelation to me, too. I used to have the same kind of sleep schedule that you describe, but as the pandemic protocols go on and the abuse of all of us as a nation intensifies, my bed time has become later and later (or earlier and earlier depending on one’s perspective), and I am now unable to sleep until after dawn. I do think some of us are naturally night-owls even in the best of times and the happiest of situations, but the need “to exert some control over our lives, and to enjoy some quiet time alone, when the rest of our people are sleeping” is exactly what I seek in the wee small hours.
My sense of powerlessness has increased exponentially in the last few days, since the death of Justice Ginsburg. I live in a divided state, with one senator who obviously will not listen to the will of his constituents, who notoriously hid away from us and refused to hold town halls and meetings with the people he is supposed to represent. I worry we will not be able to recover from the damages that have been inflicted on us as a country and as individuals. How do any of us manage to sleep?
I’ve spoken to a lot of survivors, and the plural of anecdote is not data, but pretty much all of us feel like a thumb is being pressed into a bruise. It’s only gotten worse as these dual traumas have dragged on.
For what it’s worth, I see you.
Long time reader, first time commenting.
I have always done this. As an incredible introvert this time after my family has gone to sleep is my time to recharge and pursue my own interests. I did it as a kid after my parents went to sleep, and I do it now that I have my own family. I’ve never felt it unhealthy. While my loved ones are awake I maintain those relationships, while they sleep I maintain myself a bit. All I miss is maybe some sleep. I’ve found if I prioritize sleep over the other aspects of my life I’m better rested, but less happy. Even an hour of reading or a favorite movie or game gets me there. Worth an hour less of sleep. It’s not revenge, it’s just self-care.
When I watched TNG, I always felt you looked sad. I see the same face on my mother’s pictures when she was a little girl. Both her parents physically abused her. I recently watch the episode where Picard & Wesley get stranded in a cave where there’s a force field around the water. Wesley found Picard as a father figure. And wondered how much he really was in real life. He seems like a great man. My mother broke the chain of abuse and made a conscience decision that she would never abuse her children. I’m glad you are happy. No doubt you have your ups & downs but you wife no doubt helps you. God bless Wil.
I don’t think this comes just with abuse. I grew up with a mother with undiagnosed depression. My dad had to work to support the family, as a result most of the caring for the family was done by me. I have had an anxiety disorder all my life and as such at 43 I have never left home. Now my parents are both ailing and it has again fallen to me to care for them. The majority of my life the only time I’ve had for myself was the nights. When I could do what I wanted, read, watch television, do crafts. To this day I still have trouble sleeping early. No matter how hard I try. Medication helps but then I can’t get up in the mornings.
I’m sure it isn’t exclusive to abuse, but I also have depression, so I am not the best test subject.
I can’t even imagine being a caregiver. You have my respect.
I’ve never heard of it before, but I know I’ve experienced it. I remember when my kids were really small, I was very sleep deprived. Yet I needed to stay up later than them in order to have some time when I just got to be me.
Strange, cool, and very enlightening. Thank you for sharing, I enjoyed it very much! My daughter has something similar, not being able to go to sleep until the wee hours. Turns out she has some strange form of narcolepsy and now has a sleep therapist. Whoever knew there was such a thing! Thanks again!
I’d like to offer an alternative interpretation. Having grown up as a night owl myself, having observed it my entire life and having dealt with sleep issues with my patients I have my own thoughts.
This sleep pattern is a normal variation of human biology. It is an extremely common variation. We have imposed a cultural norm that sets normal rising and sleeping times to be within a certain range that made sense when sunlight was the primary light source and activity was more focused on daylight hours. The night owl variation was seen as abnormal and was given a negative moral connotation, while the “lark” variation of human biology was given a virtuous moral weight. This has become deeply inculturated which can be seen by the vast number of human resource write-ups for tardiness which is seen as a voluntary and correctable moral failing.
Interestingly, my patients with chronic illness and at the end of life almost universally reverted to a night owl rhythm even if they had been larks their entire lives. I had many requests for medication from exhausted caregivers who wanted me to drug them back to a “normal” schedule. spoiler alert It doesn’t work. My suggestion is to adopt the patient’s schedule when at all possible (acknowledging the difficulty in a world that still tends to 9-5 M-F schedules).
Having developed a chronic illness myself that prevents my being able to work any schedule (nursing is a great career for night owls!) I have had the freedom to experiment with my circadian rhythm. N of one and anecdotal evidence incoming – resetting it does not work for me at all. No matter what I do my body at some point says “bugger it” and I will wind up sleeping 12 hours and be back on the schedule it sees as normal.
So my message is this. You are normal just the way you are. What if your absolutely normal variation was just another thing your abusers could target as a failing because it is socially acceptable to do so? What if you – and everyone else with this variation was acknowledged as being normal virtuous beings whose circadian rhythm made them ideal for a swing shift or graveyard schedule? And if in a world of global timekeeping and artificial lights the business day worked around the clock and folks could find a schedule that suited them?
I encourage anyone who has spent their life being told they were lazy and just needed some discipline to stop and think about how normalizing their circadian schedule would change their view of themselves.
While I agree that variations in circadian rhythm are absolutely normal and that it makes some people good candidates for some jobs, this won’t fit everyone’s (complex) profile. I have DSPS but I also recognize myself when Wil talks about RBP. And I hate the last part. I don’t enjoy at all not being able to fall asleep when I’m tired from my day’s work because my brain thinks now is not the time to do so. I also do not want to work at night. When left to my own devices, I will disregard day/night shifts completely and it only makes me tired because the quality of sleep late in the morning or during the day is not necessarily the same I get at night. I encourage everybody to learn about circadian rhythms, learn about how their brain (and genetics) works, and know that they’re not alone, go to sleep doctors and therapists because this can be really informative and helpful, but let’s not pretend everyone can live their whole life like this is not issue, especially if you don’t live alone, have kids or other people to take care of, have limited job opportunities, need enough (natural) daylight to brighten your mood, etc.
Makes perfect sense to me. Perhaps that is why struggle to get to sleep at an earlier hour, like 11:00 p.m. instead of 2:00 a.m. or later. I would love to know how you found a partner who loves you and you love. That is allusive to me. My father told me I am unlovable. And that has stuck with me, I can’t seem to let go of that. It keeps me prisoner, unable to love myself, therefore, unable to trust that someone who is kind and loving could love me. I have not been successful and learning to love myself. How did you overcome that? Or were you able to love yourself from early on?
Some of this is just how we are wired. I have one son who has always been one to go to bed earlier and up earlier than his mom. My other son has been a night owl since the day he was born. My natural clock is to go to sleep about 3:00 a.m. and get up about 10:00 a.m., but I love the early morning and I love the late night. Sigh.
I was diagnosed in 1996 as being a classic case of someone with clinical depression and that it had been that way since childhood. I am now 67 and my husband of nearly 50 years passed away in 2019. Our marriage wasn’t perfect but I told him in all truthfulness that he had always been and would always be my best friend. He had a neurological disease that ran its course for eight years. I took care of him on my own for six and a half years. He then ended up in two different hospitals and finally a nursing home. Even when he was not physically with me, the responsibility for his care was still there and the worry. While we were still living under the same roof, I dreaded hearing him start to wake up in the morning and thought I was living in a nightmare. It was a matter of wondering what each day would bring: what would get broken, will he fall and need to go to the hospital to be checked over, and there was a lot of cleaning up to be done because of incontinency. The only time I felt relaxed was when he went to bed and even the dog had settled down. I did the same as you, enjoying the late hours as being all mine. Unfortunately, I would be dragging myself around the next day from lack of sleep. Another little trick was to go to the bathroom where I had puzzle books. Good to announce that you have to go and then not come out for an hour! I was wondering about any of you who were treated so badly physically and mentally by a parent or parents. When you got to an age where you could survive if you walked out the door, did you give back verbally or physically all of the hurt they had given you? I would be really tempted but maybe the best and safest thing to do is say “goodbye” and mean it. You just have to feel in your heart that your life won’t always be that way and you will do so much better when you have a family of your own. Bless you all for the crap you suffered when you couldn’t fight back.
Ive never heard of that, how awesome. I always have been more of a night owl, and definitely subscribe to the revenge nighttime procrastination. I had an insecure depressed mom and a workaholic bully for a dad. Not all bad. Not all good.
Although at this point in my life, it’s because I have young kids. It’s the only time of day I get to be alone. It’s peaceful and quiet and so relaxing.
I’m the only one up from 11pm to midnight and I fight sleep to enjoy the peace. It often leaves me dragging the next day because I don’t get to sleep in late either…. so it goes.
I’ve never gone to sleep before 2 am, not since I was 10 years old. I thought there was something wrong with me until I was finally diagnosed with fibromyalgia, which can cause this type of sleep cycle. Now, I have a job that accommodates this, and I’ve stopped trying to change this cycle. I’m much happier. It’s okay if you find that it’s very difficult to change your night-owl tendencies. There are lots of us like this and many of us are satisfied to be this way. You are good just as you are, even in your quest to improve.
Wil, it just breaks my heart to hear how you were treated as a child. You are one of the best people I know and I am so glad you met Anne and her wonderful sons – your sons. Nothing can make the hurt those evil people visited upon you disappear, but you have worked so much to overcome it. Keep it up! I actually prefer to stay up late and sleep in late, but I work in an office (currently home office) with office hours so it’s hard for me to stay awake during the day, and I also suffer from depression. I have good childhood memories, though, and I think there is just something broken in me. Medication helps, although the current situation is making it harder. I don’t have your strength, but I’m going to keep pushing forward because of your inspiration.
Well. If it’s any consolation, I’d never heard of “revenge bedtime procrastination” before now, either. I have had similar issues with sleep (going to bed after midnight) but they were caused by physiological rather than psychological triggers. I went for decades with undiagnosed non-Celiac gluten intolerance. My body was constantly on the attack against the gluten in my system. The non-stop inflammatory response meant that little things could trigger a migraine, including the act of lying down to sleep. If I slept more than 4-5 hours I’d wake up with a headache. The more I slept, the worse the headaches. Sleep wasn’t a respite, it was a necessary evil.
So I found myself procrastinating my bedtime later and later. I got some relief by elevating the head of my bed, but still couldn’t sleep a full night’s sleep without waking up with a terrible headache. Eventually I was properly diagnosed and gave up gluten which has been tremendously helpful in preventing headaches. But by then, the habit of going to bed late was so ingrained that I’ve struggled ever since to get back to a normal bed routine.
I’ve never understood what is so sacred about ‘early to bed, early to rise’ I grew up on a farm so it made sense there because most farm work needed daylight, but even then it wasn’t natural to me. I’ve always been a night owl, though even situations really too mild to be called ‘abuse’ have rarely have that much to do with it. Some of us are just wired that way. Difficulty sleeping doesn’t help, but I don’t think even that is required, and is often related to trying to sleep at a time one’s body just doesn’t prefer. Ironically I have a minor case of Sleep Deprivation Syndrome, even though I’m more likely to sleep through at least some fo the daylight hours – not in a darkened room though. As long as the sun isn’t directly on my face, I can sleep with it.
Abusive situations aside (that’s a matter for therapy!) if people need to sleep at hours considered outside of the norm (and now that we have lots of artificial light, there doesn’t need to be a ‘norm’) they should try to adjust their life to allow it, and not let anyone suggest it is weird! Since so much of the world is still running on a 9 to 5 mentality, this may be difficult to impossible, of course, but try. Not by going on a more natural schedule on weekends though, and then back to 9 to 5 during the week; this is just confusing for your body. At least stop feeling guilty, or weird; you’re not more weird than those who bounce out of bed at dawn. Both of you should just be quiet about it, and let the other sleep when they prefer.
Thank you for sharing this. I’ve said almost exactly the same thing about being the only one in the house that is awake.
I had never heard of this before, but it makes a lot of sense! All I can say is – as I write this comment at 1:40 AM – me too!
I thought something was wrong with me. I had a sleep study done, but it was normal. All I could think was that I have delayed circadian rhythms (since, no matter when I wake up, I’m not truly awake until 10 AM). But I have some childhood trauma too. As a teen, I would get up after everyone went to bed and read, watch TV, or get on the internet. It was my special time.
Now, with a family, night is still my me-time. I just can’t pull myself out of bed to do it before the kids get up, so I stay up too late every night.
I have trouble going to sleep, and trouble waking up. The only time I had anything like a “normal” schedule was when I traveled halfway across the globe, and then just after coming back. But it wasn’t long before a return to my night owl-ness.
The most rested I ever felt was when I worked swing shift: to bed at 7 AM, up at 3 PM. I ended up getting depressed from the lack of sun, but I sure felt rested!
I’m still blinking from the bright flash of the lightbulb moment over here. Thank you so much for sharing. Now I understand why I do this.
Thank you very much for sharing this, this is really an eye-opener. I’m a night owl for the same reason without ever realizing it. Thanks and all the best to you!
Interesting POV, didn’t know that.
Until 40 years old, I was a night owl too, for different reasons in different periods. Until 16, connecting to Bulletin Board Systems and to the beginning of the Internet. Dial up was cheaper from 8pm to 6am.
Started working at 16 and then the reason changed: too much work (used to wake up at 6, worked until 1am). In other words, work used to dictate when to wake up and when to sleep… until 25 (working on call in an ISP).
But from 25 to 40, I had more liberty to wake up later. Kept going to sleep at 1am but used to wake up at 8, most of the time.
Exception: my first depression crisis happened when I was 25 due to unemployment (Internet bubble). Started treatment with a psychiatrist that is a sleep specialist and I started paying more attention to sleep quality then quantity. It took years to adapt.
In fact, depression made me game a lot. CS, Ultima Online and specially, EVE-Online… so at first, it got worse: was going to sleep at 6 am and waking up at 12.
Got out of the first depression crisis at 28. Things got better and I returned to the old habbit of going to sleep at 1am and waking up at 8.
Then something changed.
At 40, I finally managed to get to bed earlier and waking up earlier happened naturally. Today, I feel in control exactly because of that and waking up at 5 feels really good (the period from 5 to 9am feels more productive).
I am unemployed again but everything feels different. I am reading a lot, wrote a book about depression and I am also producing content for the Internet to keep my mind active.
Thank you! Feeling less weird may take years. Understanding why I prefer the night makes me feel better. When asked years ago why I like nightime, I replied…because it is nice to feel the World at rest before people have a chance to f…it up. Today, reading your blog is a good day.
My home wasn’t as actively abusive but it was totally chaotic (dad was mentally ill). So I do the same thing. I’ve been slowly trying to train myself out of it but its hard.
You’ve talked about your parents, do you have any relationship with your siblings?
I grew up in a similar type of household. I lived in fear of my parents, but like you, they convinced me because I wasn’t being hit, I wasn’t being abused. My dad strictly enforced bedtime and would frequently check to make sure I wasn’t reading in my room or anything else besides sleeping. So I started going to bed early to escape him and getting up earlier than the rest of the family. That was my quiet time and I am like that to this day. Even if I am exhausted and stayed up past midnight. I struggle to sleep past 6am or so.
Thank you for being open and honest! I had a similar childhood and endured psychological and physiological abuse. Dinner time was the worst at my house. It was filled with anxiousness about whether or not my step father would berate my mom or me just because he was drunk and hungry. Now as a 50 year old I still work to not stress out at when it’s time for dinner.
Thank you for helping me to feel less weird❤️🙏🦋
❤ Sending love
Will, nice again you say exactly what I need to hear exactly when I need to hear it. This explains a pattern of self imposed sleep deprivation that I have suffered from all my life. Knowledge is power. Thanks!
Didn’t know about this either and just thought it was DSPS and anxiety disorder. I knew I liked being in control (goes with anxiety/depression disorder) and my psychiatrist quickly made the connection between being a night owl and my desire for control (and independence and freedom) for me but it didn’t really sink in that this could be linked to childhood issues. For very different reasons, I didn’t have the best childhood although I didn’t realize it was less than ideal until I was in my late 30s. Since then I’ve realized I started developing DSPS at a young age. I was both scared to fall asleep and later wanted to enjoy the quiet and time for me. I also saw it as a refuge from daily life. I’m also so used to fighting sleep that it feels like it’s something ingrained and I find it very hard to rewire my brain and thoughts. Thanks to therapy and continuous self-monitoring about my sleep routine and schedule I have less trouble falling asleep now but it still happens and I often wake in the middle of the night now.
I know this comment is all about me and I wish I could say I’m sorry about that but I’m not tbh. You’ve just opened my eyes to something important and I guess I had to talk (and get a good cry in ;). I’m so thankful though and very, very happy you got words to put on something you feel and experience as well and I wish you as much peace as possible.
Wow, Wil ! I didn’t know this had a name either! My experience has been the same. I’m depressed, irritable, and less able to function on days after NOT getting that “revenge” time. Now I know I’m not a freak!
It might not even be that. Some of us are just wired as night owls. My bedtime is now 1:30 AM – 10 AM, but I had to fight to get it to that time.
I stay up late programming. I bully the compiler sometimes…
I want to ask, I’m looking into immigrating to America, given all the protests and affirmative action and violence is this a viable option?
Without further details from you, yes, it is.
The unrest hasn’t really changed anything in the majority of the country, which is part of the point of said protests. Don’t confuse us hating our legislation and its enforcers for hating our country. I love the freedom to live where I loathe 50% of my fellow citizens, and say that I do. They say the same of me and mine.
Loads of questions to be answered though.
If you plan on coding, do you already have business connections? Go where they want you.
If you can do some coding remotely, just plop down in a rural area like Owego, NY. It may be mean to say, but pick a coastal state (either coast) and then make moves from there. That’s my bias.
There are loads of better sources than me, but I suspect you just wanted someone to riff on sociopolitical upheaval. It needs to get a lot worse before you write off moving to the USA. Maybe have an exit plan though?
Thanks for answering. I’m just taking in people’s stories and trying to understand the situation, and people answering honestly helps with that. The coastal thing is interesting, I’ll look into it, probably has to do with the air pressure and O2 levels making people less prone flipping out.
Yes I’m looking to understand what’s going on politically and where it is going. I’m from RSA, and we are very familiar with that sort of thing and gauging where things are going, so from this side, it’s a wise decision to make a move presently.
I don’t have business connections, just compiling an extensive list of companies to apply to.
I’m sorry you had to go through that. I’m glad you have a good life now.