I have noticed that I am having an extremely difficult time getting out of bed unless I have something important to do for someone else. I have the alarm set for the same time every morning, but will hit snooze over and over again, unless I need to take Vanessa to school (the alarm goes off an hour earlier for that, and I generally get up more easily).
Based on the Vanessa school alarm, you’d think that I might be oversleeping by an hour on “normal” days, so setting the alarm that hour earlier is the solution, but no dice: I’ll still hit the snooze, or change the alarm. It’s not a duration of sleep or quality of sleep issue – I’ve used sleep apps to monitor things like motion and snoring ever since my first (and hopefully last) experience with clinical depression six years ago. Most nights, I get at least eight hours, and most nights my “snore score” is zero, and my sleep motion shows a majority of bedtime is spent in deep, restful sleep with a good heart rate dip. This difficulty getting out of bed is a depression response, I’m sure.
And it’s a vicious cycle: when I sleep late, I invariably feel depressed throughout the day because I have wasted it.
If I recall that episode correctly, I imperfectly corrected the issue by forcing myself to get out of bed at the alarm and ensured I got up the same time every day. Many weekend mornings had me up and about long before Kim, having coffee in the back yard during warm months, or putzing around the kitchen during cold months – waiting for Kim to get up so we could go about our day. Sunday was my favorite for this as we would go to Mass, and then, most Sundays, to Grandma Sue’s afterward. Saturdays normally saw us going in different directions, coming together sometimes mid-morning, sometimes at lunch, sometimes later – but coming together.
I think I’ll try forcing myself to get out of bed at my alarm again. It won’t be as pleasurable as I won’t have Kim’s awakening to look forward to, but the mastery of myself may help in other issues I’m finding in her loss. If I’m successful and get back to where I actually want to get out of bed, maybe I can bump the alarm up that hour, and start an exercise program – I recall spending an hour on the stationary bike each day during that episode in 2014, and I remember it helping me a lot!