A Shade of Sleep

Hello! Long time no see. I’ve been slow to post lately because I’ve been dealing with my tardive dyskinesia and going on vacation. Anyway, posts are back now!

As it says in the title, I will be talking about common narcolepsy stigma I’ve experienced. I think some of these individuals are coming from the right place and are just uneducated about narcolepsy, while others are ignorant. It kinda just depends.

The biggest one is that I can be called lazy. I don’t personally believe I’m lazy at all, as I function very well with my narcolepsy when it’s not at its worst. However, some days I need extra time to nap or sleep in, and I don’t understand why that’s so frowned upon. Imagine you pulled three all nighters and someone calls you lazy because of how tired and out of it you are. Yeah, you’d get pissy too, so leave me alone. That’s truly the best way to describe having narcolepsy to a non-narcoleptic by the way. Just imagine you’ve pulled multiple all nighters in a row and your body still won’t let you sleep. You’d be just exhausted! Guess what, I’m like that all the time.

Another one is, “You’re so lucky. You can just fall asleep anywhere.” I don’t know about any other narcoleptics, but I don’t feel like I can fall asleep just ANYWHERE. Also this doesn’t really give us an advantage because we can fall asleep while driving, which can be extremely dangerous, so I don’t think we’re very lucky for being able to fall asleep anywhere. I know there’s some people who don’t have narcolepsy who can fall asleep while driving, but we are just more at risk.

Also, narcolepsy is not just sleep issues. It’s also cataplexy, sleep paralysis, and hallucinations. When you only focus on the sleepiness aspect of narcolepsy, you invalidate these other very real experiences. This is also an invisible illness, so people can easily invalidate and stigmatize you. It sucks that we have to prove to other people that we are actually disabled when it shouldn’t even be questioned.

What is some narcolepsy stigma you’ve experienced? Let me know! Thanks for reading!

July 10th, 2026