The Short Version
The Sleep Performance Program is a focused, 4-session OT intervention. We assess your sleep, build the structure around it, and give you protocols that fit your actual life. Not tips. Systems. Designed for neurodivergent adults who know sleep matters but haven't found an approach that sticks.
How Sleep Actually Works
You don't need a PhD in neuroscience, but understanding the mechanics changes how you approach sleep. Most people think of sleep as a single state: you're either awake or you're not. In reality, sleep is a series of cycles, each doing different work.
Sleep Architecture
Your brain cycles through NREM stages 1-3 and REM sleep throughout the night. Each stage serves a different function: memory consolidation, tissue repair, emotional processing. Six hours of quality, well-structured sleep can outperform eight hours of fragmented sleep.
Circadian Rhythm
Your master clock governs not just sleep but mood, appetite, and cognitive peaks. It's set by external cues called zeitgebers: light exposure, meal timing, physical activity. When these are misaligned, everything downstream suffers.
Chronotype
You have a biological preference for when you sleep and when you're most alert. Fighting your chronotype creates friction. Understanding it creates leverage. We assess yours and build your schedule around it, not the other way around.
Sleep Assessment
Before we change anything, we need to understand what's actually happening. Not what you think is happening. Not what your fitness tracker says. A proper clinical assessment.
Why Sleep Changes Everything
Sleep isn't just about feeling rested. It's the upstream input that determines the quality of nearly every downstream output. When sleep improves, the effects cascade through every performance domain.
Concentration & Cognition
Working memory, processing speed, and sustained attention all degrade measurably with poor sleep. One night of restricted sleep produces cognitive impairment comparable to a blood alcohol level of 0.05.
Athletic Performance
Reaction time, endurance, injury rates, and recovery all correlate directly with sleep quality. Stanford research found basketball players who extended sleep saw sprint times, free-throw accuracy, and reaction times all improve.
Emotional Regulation
The amygdala becomes up to 60% more reactive after sleep deprivation, while prefrontal cortex activity decreases. The result: bigger emotional reactions with less capacity to regulate them. This compounds for neurodivergent people who already navigate heightened emotional processing.
Energy & Metabolism
Glucose regulation, appetite hormones (ghrelin and leptin), and cortisol rhythms are all governed by sleep. Poor sleep doesn't just make you tired. It changes your metabolic profile, increases cravings for high-calorie food, and disrupts the hormones that signal satiety.
A Note on Neurodivergent Sleep
Autistic and ADHD sleep profiles often diverge from neurotypical patterns. Delayed sleep phase, sensory sensitivities to light and sound, difficulty with sleep-wake transitions, and medication-related disruptions are common. Generic sleep advice ignores all of this. Our approach doesn't. Every protocol is designed around who you actually are, not who the textbook assumes you should be.
Where People Get Stuck
Most people aren't failing because they lack information. They're failing because the information they have is either wrong, incomplete, or badly sequenced.
Optimising the wrong variable
Buying a new mattress when the real issue is light exposure. Investing in supplements when the problem is caffeine timing. Most people fix what's visible, not what matters.
Treating the symptom, not the system
"I can't fall asleep" is a symptom. The system might be circadian misalignment, cortisol dysregulation, or an evening routine that actively promotes wakefulness. You need to map the system before you fix the symptom.
Following generic advice
"Go to bed at 10pm. Wake at 6am. No screens before bed." This is fine for someone whose biology, lifestyle, and neurology align with that template. For everyone else, it's setting up for failure.
Changing everything at once
New supplement, new app, new routine, all in the same week. Two weeks later you've abandoned all of it. Sustainable change is sequential, not simultaneous. The order matters as much as the changes themselves.
If any of these sound familiar, you're not broken. You just haven't had the right structure yet.
The Sleep Performance Program
A focused, 4-session OT intervention designed to assess your sleep, build the structure around it, and give you protocols that fit your actual life. Part of our Small Hinges Series: short, targeted interventions that create disproportionate change.
Assessment & Mapping
Comprehensive sleep assessment including chronotype identification, environment audit, behavioural mapping, and neurodivergent-specific factors. We build a complete picture of what's actually happening before we touch anything.
Architecture & Environment
We design your sleep environment and circadian alignment strategy. Light exposure protocols, temperature regulation, sensory considerations, and the physical setup that supports your biology.
Routine & Protocol Building
Your personalised evening and morning routines, built around your chronotype and lifestyle constraints. We sequence changes carefully so they actually stick. Includes the 3-2-1 framework adapted to your context.
Integration & Tracking
Monitoring systems, troubleshooting protocols, and long-term sustainability planning. We make sure the changes survive contact with real life, not just the first two weeks of motivation.
Who This Is For
Ready to Stop Guessing?
The Sleep Performance Program is 4 sessions. We assess your sleep, build the structure, and give you protocols that work. Not tips. Systems.
Related Services
Occupational Therapy
Functional support that respects who you are. Sleep sits within our broader OT approach.
Learn more