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What Do You All Do To Cope With DSPS? Please Help!

by Naïssa
(Belgium, Europe)

(First of all, English is not my mother tongue, not even second language, so bear with me, please)


I have been reading several of the stories written on this great website. It's such a relief for me to read that there are people like me. Your stories are all so familiar! Thank you for sharing.

I have been struggling for years, wondering what was wrong with me that I could not function like other people. Recently I was diagnosed with DSPS. I'm 37, I also have had these problems since I was 7, but it has not always been a problem that prevented me to work and live normally. I just slept a little after work and slept the whole weekend. Until that was not enough to balance me out and the fatigue just took over.

The professor who finally diagnosed me with DSPS knew very little about it (OMG, if yet another doctor would had told me that "I was just suffering from a depression", I would have kicked him!) and told me there was nothing that could be done to cure it. It could only be shifted a little bit.

During the 7 last years I have taken a lot of medication... benzos, sleeping pills, pills against depression or neuroleptic diseases to help me sleep at night and (prescribed) amphetamine or ritalin in the morning to help me to stay awake... (BTW, apart from the prescribed medication I do not take drugs) That along with meditation, hypnosis, yoga, building up sleep debt in order to sleep... Name it, I have tried it. Nothing helped and nothing is helping. Things just got worse and worse. For the last 9 months I haven't able to go to work, I became isolated from friends, got fybromyalgie and chronic fatigue due to the deprivation of sleep, got cancer because I was totally exhausted...

Is this all happening to you too? Is DSPS dominating your life too?

It's been 3 months now that I know I have DSPS. I take
Provigil in the morning and Melatonine in the evening. It does not help me in that way that I can go to work from 9AM to 5PM.

I have a special LED light and I try chronotherapy, but nothing helps! I'm going crazy. When I finally sleep (from 5AM to 14AM), I sleep like I'm in a coma... I barely hear the alarmclock at 7AM. Or I am too tired to even open my eyes and look into the bright LED light. (I also have sleep paralysis with terrible hallucinations and really bad nightmares - does anybody recognize this???)

My doctors are advising me to ask for invalidity, stop trying and stop torturing myself. After 7 years battling, has it come to this? I have a good degree in law, I love working and I'm supposed to become a vegetable because I can't sleep between normal hours?

I read in a comment about stopping with all the nonsense of treatments and just accept who we are... It sounds like a relief... But then what?

Finding a job to work at night? I applied for a job at a hotel to work as a nightreceptionst, they looked at my degrees and they laughed at me! Am I supposed to lie about my education to find a job? What do you all do? Not working and living in poverty? Keep on trying to work normal hours and destroy myself even more? Suicide? I'm not the type to commit suicide, but for the last week it has started to cross my mind... Me, I survived cancer, I'm so grateful for life and now these thougts are beginning to penetrate my mind. I don't recognize myself anymore.

This hell has been going on for 7 years and it's getting worse every day! I have lost jobs, friends, partners, I have become poor, I'm in fear to lose my house, I have lost my health and now I'm starting to lose my sanity.

What do you all do? Please help! I cannot take it anymore.

Comments for What Do You All Do To Cope With DSPS? Please Help!

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Sep 25, 2013
Sometimes being up all night can be an advantage. NEW
by: Anonymous

You can work while others sleep. Is there any part of your profession that can be done outside usual business hours?

I used to meticulously plan a research schedule in order to work very fast, and efficiently in an archive for a few hours in the evening. The information I gathered took time to sift through, and I planned my next trip in detail via an online catalog - all at night. I wasted no time in the archive doing something I could do later at home.

Maybe you could teach law instead of practice it or do consulting or freelance work. You could write about law or report on it, and I don't know your specific area of study, but law enforcement need knowledge of the law to some extent, and they work around the clock.

Employers usually have to accommodate disabilities.

Feb 13, 2014
schedules NEW
by: Anonymous

You're a lawyer -- can you work for yourself out of your home? Can you do something other than litigation? Why not try to work remotely for someone in a different time zone? A lot of people outsource legal work--you don't necessarily have to be barred in that jurisdiction if you're doing a draft and research for someone who does have the bar in that jurisdiction. I think there are lots of things you could do with some imagination and a good internet connection.... Good luck!

Feb 04, 2015
Some suggestions for afternoon/night work NEW
by: Julia

I too suffer from DSPS and I feel your pain. My answer was to start a home business. Not sure if you are in the US or not, but my father was a lawyer and I saw his friends doing many things on the side that you could do in afternoons and evenings as a lawyer - tutoring for LSAT (the exam required to get into law scool), or for individual law classes, or the bar (final legal licensing exam) for starters. You could begin a business to give people legal advice on purchasing a new home or condo, teach every day legal information classes at a local community center, college or YMCA, or do paralegal work for another lawyer or as a freelancer. Find yourself a few books on alternative legal careers on Amazon and you might be surprised at how numerous and flexible your options really are. Don't panic! And good luck.

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