washipaper

Hey everyone,

I still was rather recently diagnosed late in life. Some very helpful people already helped me on another topic, so I wanted to come to you all again:

I have had sleep issues for ages. I didn't get why, I tried pretty much all the neurotypical advice I was given my whole life or learned about. Sadly I am among the many that still have loads of sleep troubles. Not gonna lie, they broke my spirit more often than I could recount.

I have the full party going:

• Trouble falling asleep due to a few factors (among others: Negative thought spirals, sponanious ideas and impulse control to keep them in check, but mostly that - with hunger, thirst or pain - I just don't notice my own needs.
• Trouble sleeping longer than (3-4 h) and not being able to fall back asleep
• As consequences of the above I am usually not rested at all. Sometimes I just pass out after work, which makes things harder later at bed time.

As I learned, our bodies should usually sleep at night and our brain chemistry is built for that (duh). But sometimes with ADHD our whole bodily clock is just being off by a lot. That's apparently why some of us sleep from late at night till late in the morning. Per se fair enough, but not super healthy. And I personally couldn't find a job that starts at 12 a.m..

Also neurotypical people are apparently not supposed to be bored out of their mind, trying to fall asleep. Supposedly they can lie down, relax their thoughts and can be asleep between 10-20 minutes. My brain for once won't stop being flooded with thoughts, sensory inputs and such. Those 10-20 are more like 1-2 for me and only with a 25% chance I sleep more than 4 hours.

The only successes I had so far falling asleep when I wanted to, was with prescription meds (with serious health risk attached). The othet thing that works sometimes is, if I can focus, to go on mental adventures, which ideally keep me occupied till I doze off. And the worst thing that works is just having to sleep due to sheer exhaustion.

When we wakes up, apparently many of us can also struggle to fall back asleep. At least I know, wrong bad thought and that was it for the night.

I didn't know I had ADHD and didn't really know how it affects every part of me. Therefore i coulnd't treat my issues properly either. I am still learning lot, but quality adult ADHD resources suck, to be frank. Kinda sad how we are aware ADHD is rough in the mildest cases and you still have to filter all the pseudoscience and bullshit out, just for breadcrumbs of advice.

I must have tried basically all things of the neurotypical advice, I thought could help me. I think especially sleep hygenie is something all people can work on regularly, also us with our ADHD. Improving sleep hygiene might take many forms with ADHD., though. How does yours look?

I'd kindly ask everyone with some knowledge or personal advice to chip in. That's if and how you found ways to make it easier to sleep for youself. Would you share your stories, so we might all learn more?

Not all tools are for everyone, as we know. But I will give everything here a fair shake and your experiences can be very valuable to me and others too.

I don't mind starting with basics, mine are probably shoddy. If someone more knowledge or experienced could share their wisdom and get me pointed in the right direction. A bit of advice on where to start and maybe some resources would be appreciated greatly. I feel I fucked up so much treating the comorbid problems of my ADHD, I might have to start from scratch here with "how to human". I probably learned and adapted many things, which might make my sleep troubles even worse and gotta unlearn some.

Any and all comments are much appreciated, thank you.

Personally I'd like hear some of your experiences with different types of organizational software, no matter if it runs on a PC, phone or the cloud:

• What are you using and in what ways does it help you with the troubles you are facing with your ADHD?

• Do you use different tools for different use cases (e.g. one to organize and track bigger projects, one just for reminders or one as a knowledge base etc.)?

• Is there any software you would specifically avoid and how so (e.g. cause it is distracting, pricey or you due to lack of data privacy)?

• Or is there things you'd really recommend to try out, because it helped you immensely in a way?

To start it off: Personally I got diagnosed as an adult rather recently. I somehow have haphazardly kept my life together without meds and ADHD-Therapy/Counseling/Coaching so far, but got no idea how. I made use of all sorts of organization methods and tools without it ever occurring to me that I could have ADHD.

Looking back it became painfully clear, I never consciously took my brain being different into account at any point. Therefore I failed very often and very spectacularly with my organization. I still do, especially at work.

Personally I use synched calendars (Thunderbird & Fairmail synched over Nextcloud) on my phone and PC at the moment. I also found I use ToDoList-Apps a lot (currently TickTick) to put at least some structure to my chaos. I am really awful with reminders though: I have too many and not enough at the same time. There is no structure to the types of reminders I have and I geht them from too many different sources. And sometimes they are too distracting or worse yet, sometimes not noticeable enough (Looking at you there, Outlook).

What have your experiences been like?