What helps – a place to start

Start with the morning, not the night

The most useful thing for a late body clock happens in the morning: daylight, reasonably soon after you wake, helps set your clock for the day and nudges sleep a little earlier that night. A few minutes outside, or by a window, does more than most bedtime routines – and it’s the easiest thing to begin, because it asks nothing of you at the point you’re most tired.

Work with your clock

If your natural sleep time is late, forcing a 10pm bedtime usually means lying awake getting cross about it. Find the time sleep actually comes for you and start there. A late clock can be nudged earlier over time, gently, but head-on it rarely gives.

Give the day somewhere to land

A busy mind at bedtime is often a mind still holding the day. Getting it out of your head and onto something – a note, a list, a quick brain-dump – before you lie down can take the edge off the small-hours spin. It doesn’t need to be tidy. It just needs to be somewhere other than your head.

Make the bedroom feel right for your senses

Small sensory things you’ve stopped noticing can keep a neurodivergent body alert – a light, a hum, a texture. Do a slow tour of the room and change the one thing that bothers you most. You don’t have to fix everything at once.

Let rest count, even without sleep

On the nights sleep won’t come, resting still does you good. Lying quietly, dozing, or simply lowering the demands on your body all help – and taking the pressure off “must sleep now” often makes sleep more likely anyway. (More on this on Rest is part of the plan.)

Aim for gentle consistency

A roughly regular wake-up time helps your clock more than a strict bedtime does, and it survives the odd bad night. One rough night is just one night – you’re building an average over weeks, not grading each one.

Be kind about the nights that don’t work

Lying there furious about being awake is its own kind of alertness. The nights that go wrong are part of the picture for everyone, and treating them gently tends to make the next one easier.

A note on melatonin

Your body makes melatonin in the evening, and it acts as a timing signal for sleep. In the UK, melatonin you take is a prescription-only medicine. Products sold online sit outside UK medicines regulation, and studies have found many contain far more or far less than the label says. If you’re thinking about it, talk to your GP first.

When to get more help

If you’ve given some of this a fair go and your sleep is still regularly wrecking your days – or if something feels physically off, like loud snoring or exhaustion that rest doesn’t touch – it’s worth seeing your GP. And the club is here for the longer, more personal version of all of this, alongside people working on the same thing.