The Middle Distance

It's definitely true that the people who feel the most strongly about a disability designation are those who have wanted desperately to live "normal" (somnotypical?) hours. And the most important thing about being able to identify as "disabled" for them is to increase awareness that this is something that, as far as we know, cannot be changed. Which I do support, 100%. That group is full of people who have gone to so many sleep clinics, tried so many things, screwed up their sleep for years with all these labor-intensive experimental treatments--and still reverted back to a DSPS pattern when all was said and done.

We've all had the experience of not knowing it was a "syndrome," of just thinking we were lazy and undisciplined and thinking that if we just made our "sleep hygiene" better, if we were better people in some regard, we could be "normal." What a relief in some ways to find out that's not true. But also a great disappointment, for those who really hoped to change.

The relationships between depression and sleep disorders are so complicated, because the cause-and-effect goes both ways. How much more anxious and self-loathing you feel when not only are you sleep-deprived, you blame yourself for your inability to sleep and wake "properly" and don't understand why all your efforts to go to sleep earlier, wake earlier, etc., just aren't working.

The worship of "business hours" drives me nuts too. How much more sense would it make to not have everybody commuting at the same damn times!