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Battling immediate sleep inertia/struggling to stay awake in the morning?

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kathrine74225
kathrine74225

For most of my life I’ve been the type of person that gets up immediately on my alarm, and as soon as I’m up I’m completely awake and alert. Over the last 2 years I’ve struggled more and more feeling alert when I wake up, but I’ve just always put that down to age (I’m 29.. too cynical?). 

Anyway, over the last year I have periods where I just can’t stay awake when my alarm goes off/seem to be in a real deep sleep inertia. I either completely sleep through my alarm, or I switch it off and go straight back to sleep (I barely even know I’m doing it). Or, if I’m lucky, I manage to switch off my alarm and I’m awake for about 10 seconds before immediately drift back to sleep. And when I do get up, I’m feeling very groggy and generally achey all over. I genuinely feel sometimes like I’ve been drugged and my mind is telling me to wake up and get up but my body just can’t do it.

Saw my GP a couple months ago and we did blood tests and all came back fine. It seems to happen in phases where sometimes I can wake up (albeit still feeling groggy) to where I have a couple days of it being really bad (like this morning, where I slept through 6 alarms).

I’ve tried having extra loud alarms, or alarms where I have to get out of bed and to the other side of the room - neither work. It might wake me up/get out of bed but then I immediately get back into bed and asleep (which I don’t remember doing).

To be honest my gut is telling me it’s a lifestyle thing as opposed to any medical thing. I get around 6.5-7 hours sleep a night (no different to most of my life) and usually during the day I feel fine, it’s just that initial waking up stage. I’m wondering if I’m waking up in the wrong part of my sleep cycle hence the complete drugged up feeling?

Does anyone have any ideas/tips of things I can do to help me improve? I’m considering yoga, meditation, and making sure my alarm goes off at a 90 minute cycle to coincide with my sleep cycles, but I don’t know if I’m completely off the mark.. (or missing something else obvious)

Thank you very much! ?? 

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