To think some people deal with lack of sleep better than others?

[FortunesFave]

I'm just TERRIBLE at it! If I'm woken in the middle of the night or if I get much less than 7 hours sleep, I can barely function.

I hear people say things like "Oh I slept terribly...only got about 4 hours" and yet they seem quite alert and capable.

I'm clumsy, grumpy and feel very unwell with lack of sleep.

Or are those other people being brave? DH started a new job today and he woke me up at 5.30 am...he suffers from anxiety so I don't resent him for it...he'd never do it usually but he badly needed company so I got up and spent half an hour with him to boost him up.

Well I didn't go to bed till gone midnight so all day I've been useless! We're in Australia by the way...it's 6.30pm now and all I can think of is bed!

I never have trouble falling asleep....I just can't cope with lack of it!
AIBU to say some people cope better than others?

I'm terrible if I can't sleep. A couple of months ago I had a late night babysitting followed by an early departure for a weekend away (when we could still do that). I was actually sick and had to have a nap after which I was fine.

I envy people who can cope on 4-5 hours. I don’t get enough sleep in general and it’s a big problem. I can do basic stuff : ironing, washing up, general cleaning and cooking but I struggle with proper thinking so I function but not very productively. Coffee doesn’t help any more. And it’s getting worse with age and I have headaches so not good.
Some people can do a quick nap for 20 minutes and then they are better, I can’t.

DH doesn't need to sleep like me. He can go a week with 3hrs sleep a night then sleep 16hrs on his day off and it's all good. I need 9hrs sleep a night. I've fallen asleep at parties, my eyes just start streaming, I cant think, I can barely hold my body up. I just cant function. But I'm autistic and functioning is harder for me and normal days more tiring, if we socialize I'm even more exhausted.

Probably you're right OP & that's why someone like me can be relaxed about having terrible insomnia & others get truly overwrought (their resulting anxiety about not sleeping making the insomnia worse).

Wouldn't it be boring if we were all the same.

I've been an insomniac my entire adult life. I don't think I have ever slept more than four hours straight and that was when I was drunk as a skunk. I usually wake every couple of hours and can then be awake for a couple of hours. So I maybe get five hours of total sleep a night. I think I must be used to it as I think I function fairly normally... I'm so jealous of DH, he goes to bed, closes his eyes and that's pretty much it for 7.5 - 8 hours!

I’m with you. I feel ill, as though I’m starting flu, if I sleep less than five hours.

My husband copes much better with less sleep than me, I need a solid block of sleep to function normally; whereas he can easily stumble through with 3/4 hours if he has to- although obviously he prefers to get more sleep!
Although a few years ago when I was late teenager/early twenties I would go on nights out every Thursday,Friday,Saturday and Sunday night until 4am or sometimes 6am and then sometimes sleep for an hour or so , then have a shower and go to work for a 9am start. No idea how I did it with no sleep continuously (no drugs or anything obviously!)
There is no way in hell I could do that now and that was only 5 or so years ago!

I’m like you OP - I cannot function without a decent nights sleep. I get really angry, teary and generally feel like death. It was awful when my children were babies and I think contributed to me having PND. As I get older and I think heading towards menopause it’s no better.

I’m with you, lack of sleep causes me horrific anxiety, anything less than 6 hrs and I can’t really function and my mood is terrible. I recall many days where I felt a danger to dc because of how badly sleep deprived I was. It caused me to be forgetful, concentrating would be really difficult and my driving would be affected. There’s a reason, sleep deprivation is used as torture.

I feel physically ill with lack of sleep - headaches, dizzy, sick and shaky. I also become over-catastrophic and feel very anxious and upset about the tiniest of things.
It’s horrible.
My sole problem is waking up in the night for a wee. Its every bloody night, regardless of not drinking anything for hours before I go to bed.
Once I’m awake I cannot get back to sleep for hours as my mind starts whirring even though I’m tired. By the time I start to feel sleepy again it’s time to get up.
I’ve resigned myself to the fact I will have to live like this until I can retire and not have to worry about getting up for work.
Only another 20+ years 😩

I do think some people cope better than others, but I also think that you can get used to consistent lack of sleep

I think this is true. It's like alcohol - if you drink regularly, you will feel the impact of one drink less than someone who never drinks. If you are habitually mildly sleep deprived, you will notice the loss of a few hours less than someone who always sleeps 7 hours.

I only get about 5 to 5.5 hours a night- it’s been this way for years and I’m used to it. I function perfectly fine on this amount of sleep, I envy others the ability to sleep for longer, not because I’m feeling tired but because the day seems absurdly long to me, especially at weekends when I’m bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 5am, with nowhere to go!

If I get less than 5 hours though, it takes a toll. I’ll manage one night ok but two or more consecutive nights of less than 5 hours leaves me shattered.

My friend on the other hand considers anything less than 9 hours to be torture!

I've had insomnia problems since I was a child and I just have to function with what I get, but a couple of times a year I will actually sleep well for eight hours or more and I spend the day thinking, wow, this is what other people must feel like all the time, I feel superhuman! So although I "cope" it is just that I am used to it.

I don't have a choice, I've been to sleep specialists etc. but I have ADHD and switching my brain off at night is just so difficult, even with meds.

I think you just get used to it

I have bouts of insomnia where for 3 weeks or so I’ll get 3 or 4 hours sleep a night max and even then it’s not really proper sleep - that kind of light sleep where you’re still aware of every minute that ticks by. I’ll get to the point where I’ll either absolutely lose my shit or I’ll just cry, then it breaks and I’ll sleep fine for a while.

I usually function fine, albeit fuelled by caffeine

I'm a terrible sleeper. I'm lucky to get 3 to 4 hours a night, rest of the time I'm twisting and turning and my mind is racing. I cope very well with little sleep.

This is quite interesting - apparently people are very inaccurate at actually judging how much sleep they've had:

www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/you-may-be-getting-more-sleep-than-you-think-1436803082

I'm awful with no sleep. I get terribly anxious, stressed, can't function.

With my eldest I barely slept at all in tge first week, her dad would shout at me everytime she cried and she would cry all night if she wasn't being held so I stayed awake. I ended up having a complete breakdown at the end of the week, experiencing psychosis and severe paranoia - obviously that is an extreme reaction, and only after a week of very poor sleep. But now I can cope on very little sleep each night and feel quite alert and able to function quite well (albeit with headaches and nausea). My 18 month old still does not sleep through the night so I don't remember the last time I had unbroken sleep, and my eldest wakes up at 5.30 every day.

4 hours is the minimum I can have without being a walking zombie, I can survive on 5 and 6+ is normal. I'll take a lie in when I can get it though and will do 8/9/10 hours but with wake ups for the odd wee.

Yanbu. I do very well on little sleep but my husband doesn't. Our 2yo is a terrible sleeper and our 6yo was until she was 2.

Some nights I'd have very little sleep but still be bright, breezy and motivated during the day. My dh on the other hand, if hes up with dd2 he needs a nap and will be grouchy. I can do a week or so of little sleep before it starts to bother me and then I'll ask dh to get up with her for one night so I can get a couple of hours extra. He'll do it, usually on a weekend day so that he can go back to bed at 7am for an hour or two when I get up and then he'll need a nap in the afternoon to

I probably look like I cope ok, but I don't, I just hide it well. I've not slept through the night since DC1 was born nearly six years ago. My average is now up to 5 hours of broken sleep, after about three years on an average of 3 hours broken sleep a night. It's breaking me but if I think about it it's worse, so I just try to keep going.

I'm sorry you struggle, OP, it's really awful not getting enough sleep

I feel the same as you, OP, and I assume many others as well, but I put on a brave face. Interrupted sleep is a common thing in adult life and you have to get on with things.

I work nights so my sleep pattern is fucked up. Between night shifts, I do 3 nights in a row i get about 4 hours each day. Think I've got used to it, when I'm not working I catch up on sleep.

The other night I could not sleep at all. I ended up reading and googling literally all night. I was exhausted by about 8 a.m. but still couldn't sleep. I then functioned absolutely fine (although I think I looked tired) and still couldn't get to sleep when I went to bed that night. So went 36 hours without sleep.

This only happens on very rare occasions but I am literally very alert throughout.

@FortunesFave I never got used to it either like people said I would when I had children! My first was a dreadful sleeper and often woke up every sodding hour and hardly napped in the day unless I was out walking or driving him about.
Second was thankfully a better sleeper. But sleep is the number one reason we won’t be having a third. I never got used to it or accepted it.
Now they are older I tell them I only parent between 7am and 7pm 😆