By: Erin Rose Hennessy
I’m a terrible sleeper. Anyone who knows me will tell you this. As a highly sensitive person, I’m incredibly in tune to any change in my sleep environment. Noise wakes me. Lack of noise wakes me. I can’t sleep if it’s too dark, but I also can’t sleep if it’s too bright. Once a fortnight or so, I will randomly wake between 1:30 and 4:30. If I don’t go back to sleep within 5 minutes I’m up for the day, basically.
Brushing up on my sleep hygiene and going through some personal changes, I’ve seen drastic improvement in my sleep quality. Good sleep hygiene varies from person to person, but for me includes a bedtime routine, only using the bedroom for sleep, and no daytime napping. I actually had the thought last week that I hadn’t had sleep issues in awhile and was pretty impressed by that fact.
Then daylight savings time ended. We sprung forward an hour. Initially, I had no issues. I am always confused when people talk about gaining or losing an hour of sleep. I sleep the same amount of time I otherwise would have. I just end up waking an hour earlier or later than usual, but it’s a weekend so it doesn’t really matter. I had no problem going to bed on Sunday or sleeping through the night, either. Or Monday.
But all of a sudden, my brain decided to have issues and the past two nights I’ve had trouble sleeping as my body adjusts. Being highly sensitive means one is way more attuned to changes in their environment, no matter how subtle we try to make them. So, basically, my body is freaking out. I’m still working on calming it down.
Are you affected by time change? How’s your sleep hygiene? Tell all in the comments!
E & E Writers Enterprise 