Quality sleep is critical to a healthy lifestyle. Lowered activity within the Hypothalamus can impact your circadian rhythm and DPDR sufferers may experience greater difficulty sleeping. Due to the difficulty sleeping the disorder can bring on, it can worsen Dissociative Symptoms. Good, restful sleep is essential to preventing or alleviating more severe Dissociative Symptoms.

Symptoms Elicited After Sleep Deprivation
  • Mood Changes: (16 studies, 76%), which included aggression, anger, hostility, apathy, anxiety, and depression.
  • Disordered thoughts, confusion, and bizarre behavior: (14 studies, 66%) with studies commonly reporting confusion, difficulties with attention and concentration, fragmented thinking, and nonsensical speech. Participants described that their thoughts had become jumbled, and reported difficulties forming thoughts, finding words, and composing sentences. Memory loss was also a common feature, with participants forgetting names. Motor incoordination, unsteadiness, and ataxia, comparable to intoxication behavior, were also reported.
  • Dissociation and depersonalization: (11 studies, 52%), with participants experiencing a feeling of being separated from others, and estrangement. One participant reported, “I feel as if I’m not really all there. I am discontinuous. I feel discontinuous.” Another said, “I thought perhaps I might be somebody else, so I asked my buddies and they said I was just myself.” The sensations of splitting, being detached, and observing one’s own body from a distance were also reported by some. These feelings of distance persisted until the end of the experiment.
  • Delusions (nine studies, 42%)
  • Distortions in the sense of time: (four studies, 20%): Participants reported that time was a “hodgepodge” and “seemed to pass slowly.” As time without sleep increased, errors in time judgement occurred more frequently, and gross temporal disorientation was reported.
Source: [5]
Studies On Impacts Of Sleep On Dissociative Symptoms
  • Lack of sleep is associated with higher dissociative symptoms. A significant increase has been determined in dissociation levels following sleep deprivation in our study. In our study, both the increase in dissociation symptoms following sleep deprivation and the decrease in the ability to consciously suppress thoughts indicate that cognitive function disorders caused by changes in sleep-wake cycle can be caused through dissociation or deteriorations in both areas. [1]
  • This is supported by the fact that individuals with high dissociation scores have higher memory neglect errors. High emotional reactivity, and neglect errors are typical in individuals with high dissociation scores. [1]
  • We found a link between sleep experiences and dissociative symptoms. Although sleep improvements were associated with a general reduction in psychopathology, this reduction could not fully account for the substantial and specific effect that we found for dissociation. Our findings are consistent with Watson’s (2001) hypothesis that disruptions in the sleep-wake cycle lead to intrusions of sleep phenomena into waking consciousness, resulting in dissociative experiences.
    Accordingly, sleep hygiene may contribute to the treatment or prevention of dissociative symptoms. [2]
  • This study examined in real time, the role of sleep and daydreaming as potentiating states for subsequent dissociation in depersonalization/derealization disorder (DDD). Research and theory
    suggests that dissociation may be exacerbated and maintained by a labile sleep-wake cycle. [3]
  • Patients with DID and PTSD seem to share these sleep-related problems and future studies focusing on the treatment implications are warranted, as the impact of sleep quality on cognitive functioning might be substantial in these patients. The idea that DID is strongly related to PTSD fits well with our findings. [4]
  • During sleep or anesthesia, the brain’s interstitial space volume expands (compared with wakefulness), resulting in faster waste removal. Humans, as well as animals, exhibit different body postures during sleep, which may also affect waste removal. We propose that the most popular sleep posture (lateral) has evolved to optimize waste removal during sleep. [2]

Sources

1. The Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Dissociation and Profiles of Mood, and Its Association with Biochemical Changes

2. Sleep normalization and decrease in dissociative experiences: evaluation in an inpatient sample.

3. Tracking Potentiating States of Dissociation: An Intensive Clinical Case Study of Sleep, Daydreaming, Mood, and Depersonalization/Derealization.

4. Self-Reported Sleep Disturbances in Patients with Dissociative Identity Disorder and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and How They Relate to Cognitive Failures and Fantasy Proneness

5. Severe Sleep Deprivation Causes Hallucinations and a Gradual Progression Toward Psychosis With Increasing Time Awake 

6. The Effect of Body Posture on Brain Glymphatic Transport.