I am Hannah, a 25-year-old autistic ADHD-er! I am also a Trustee at Suffolk Family Carers. Since I have discovered I am autistic, I have made lots of accommodations for myself to make day-to-day stuff a bit easier.
This month I thought I would write about something I am starting to struggle with again…getting up in the morning! It started when I was a teenager and is no easier now as a 25-year-old. They are a struggle for loads of reasons but here are my main ones:
- The temperature sensory difference of leaving the duvet now the temperature has dropped. And then having to get dressed in this cold!
- The darkness in the room now the days are getting short. My brain thinks it’s still sleep time.
- My neurodivergent brain gets in a vicious cycle that makes me a night owl. The day is overwhelming in many ways, and I often spend the early evening forced to process the day in a low-level shutdown. By the later evenings I will feel better, and my brain thinks it is party time! I procrastinate bedtime because it feels like I can finally do fun things, hobbies and interests. I then accidentally stay up far too late and suffer greatly in the morning.
What things help?
- Setting the thermostat to come on before wake-up time, and/or use a heated towel rail to hang your outfit on for the next day. You can get handy timer plugs so you aren’t heating these all night.
- A lumie-style alarm clock. Lumie is a brand, but you can get much cheaper ones on amazon. It is an alarm clock that will gradually become lighter and lighter in the 30 mins before the alarm time is set. It means you can wake up in the light, and the idea is that your brain will take in the gradual increasing light treat it like a sunrise. I struggle to go back to sleep when my room is so bright, and it makes me feel like psychologically the day has started.
- I have an alarm clock app that forces you to do a task before it will turn off. For me, I have this set to be 4 mental maths questions, but it has a range of tasks to choose from like you must scan a barcode, which could be your toothpaste barcode in your bathroom. After you do the task, it will send a silent notification asking you to confirm if you are awake. If you do not confirm within a couple of minutes, it will sound the alarm and make you do the task again. This might sound like torture to some but it’s the only thing that has ever worked for me and I have used it for 6 years! The app I use is ‘AMdroid’ on my android phone. I think there are equivalent on ios but you must pay.
