And yes, it's made it extremely difficult to live a "normal" life like your typical person who can wake up at 7am without issue. It's been a problem with relationships, poor performance in school, issues in promotions and work performance, etc.
It took a long time to fix. Here's some things I tried. Some may have helped or none may have helped.
* I bought blackout blinds and use a sleeping mask (sometimes earplugs)
* I bought a bright light (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07FFJYMVS) and a smart plug. 15 mins before I wanted to wake up I would have a timer turn on the light.
* I eat healthier in all regards
* I started working out
* I started walking a lot more
* I stop drinking coffee at 11am (and drink tea after that)
* I stopped some doing some things late at night (after 23:30) (gaming, programming, eating, using my phone)
* I started listening to audiobooks
I use melatonin to reset my sleep cycle if I mess up and end up staying up all night. A mg or two at around 5pm helps me back into my target range, and from there I usually don't need it.
Routines are important. If I didn't try to actively control it, I'd stay awake until the sun came up and then sleep until noon, and I much prefer working in solitude when I first wake up than when I'm mentally fatigued at the end of a day.
Why can't we just be tired in the evening? I have friends who would fall asleep on the couch while watching a movie if it went past 11pm. Meanwhile I have to do some bullshit ww2 pilot exercise just to fall asleep at 1am.
Before kids it was much much harder to fal asleep. Now i can fall asleep faster than them during sotry time.
Its like night and day. Pun intended
Think of it this way: there's nothing special about a time zone, and yet we know that if we moved several time zones away, we'd shift. The differences are in light patterns, timing of work and social life, food intake, etc. Incidentally, many of these factors are within our control.
Thanks for the tip with the sleeping mask, I will try.
She was not like this when she worked an office job (fashion designer), but now she can't get back to a "normal" schedule.
As someone who's dealt with DSPD in his 20s, I'll refrain from advice. I got no end of people telling me to exercise more, drink less caffeine, or any number of things like I hadn't desperately tried everything. My personal experience was that it naturally got easier in my late 30s, but the less I fought it and the more I worked around it the better I felt. If you are looking for help, I encourage you to check out the DSPD subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/DSPD/
I usually sleep 9-10 hours and feel very tired all day. If I sleep 11-11.5 hours, then I'll feel rested, but this rarely happens.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of days I have an early meeting morning and sleep for 6-7h, but I will feel even more tired than when I sleep "only" 9h. Frustrating because 9h is on the verge of "too much sleep" for most people.
If you're intent on shifting your circadian rhythm backwards, you'd have to get up earlier in the morning at a consistent time and try to eschew what might delay your onset, i.e. blue light emitting electronics, before bed. You can use a blue light filter like flux for that in the evening to help. more on that here - https://insomniasos.net/
Earplugs and a sleep mask are helpful if you're having trouble in the second phase.