wherein Liz cordially detests her own brain chemistry

[edenfalling]

Thanksgiving itself went fine, my breakfast with Susan on Friday went fine, the drive back to Ithaca went fine... and somewhere around Friday evening I seem to have started sliding into a blue funk. I can tell by my near-complete lack of motivation, the way simple errands keep falling out of my head, and the stupid, sleep-destroying obsessive reading search pattern I always fall into at these times. (Obsessive reading is a sign that my subconscious knows I'm drifting and is trying to find something outside my own head to latch onto. It is not a very effective way of keeping hold of the outside world, but it's a longstanding pattern dating back nearly eleven years. Not-especially-funny story: depressive reading binges are how I discovered fandom in the first place! Ha. Ha. Ha.) Actually, the slide may have started before Thanksgiving, but the disruption a holiday and a family gathering cause to my normal routines can easily disguise the disruptions a blue funk causes.

God damn it, this is not the time. I have Things To Do. I cannot afford to lose two or three weeks to generalized blecch, lurking gray fog, and increasingly bizarre sleep (or lack of sleep) schedules.

...

I really need to stop by RadioShack on Wednesday en route to the grocery store and buy a cheap travel alarm clock. Then I will put it beside my computer, set it for 2am, and turn it on every night when I sit down to read/write/whatever. Assuming I then pay attention and don't just reset the damn thing several times running (which is what tends to happen to my main alarm on my days off from work), that will ensure that I get at least seven hours of sleep each night, and potentially up to eight and a half hours on days when I don't have to be at work until noon.

Yes.

That is a good plan.

I will do that.

Comments

[rthstewart]

Oh noes! Do try to keep to normal sleep! Get outside for sun (such as it is!) Eat good, healthful food! Take care of yourself, OK?

[edenfalling]

I get some sun just by walking to work five days a week, but I will do my best to take a walk on my days off as well, and eat vegetables and stuff. The sleep... well, I am working on it. *sigh*

[rthstewart]

I hope you had a good night and a good rest. Depression sucks.

[edenfalling]

Seven hours of sleep! Not ideal -- that would be eight or nine -- but nonetheless a lot better than I tend to average during a funk. (...When I am not binge sleeping about thirteen hours, that is. *sigh*)

[branchandroot]

Oh man, the reading. Where you /know/ you should stop and sleep, there's no /reason/ to be madly reading until three or four in the morning, it's probably something you've read before even, and you just can't manage to actually stop. Argh. Alarm clock = good.

*thinks good-sleep, bed-now thoughts for you*

[edenfalling]

Yes, that, exactly. I KNOW it's stupid and pointless and yet I cannot make the connection between knowing that and actually getting up from my chair and going to bed. The circuit won't close. I am hoping an alarm clock will provide enough of an external jolt to overcome my inability to muster any internal motivation.

[lexicology]

Man, depression sucks, and obsessive depressive reading also sucks. I know those feels.

Good luck working through it, hope the alarm clock plan works out for you.

Wait--I just remembered. This site is an online timer and they also have an alarm clock here, so even if you don't get out to pick a clock up, you can keep one open in the next window!

[edenfalling]

Ooooh. I will try that tonight and see how it goes!

[willowgreen.livejournal.com]

That is a very good plan. :: nods decisively ::

Hope the sleep helps and the funk lifts rapidly!

[edenfalling]

The depression and the sleep deprivation creative a positive feedback spiral falling down the well at the center of the mind. It's especially frustrating because I can watch it happen, know exactly what is going wrong, and still fail to be able to flip the mental switch that will make me get my damn ass into bed. :-(

[red-volpe.livejournal.com]

Good luck! I'm rooting for you!
Also, have you tried seeing a doctor about it? Like, a shrink or medical doctor, either one might work. I understand you might not have the money for that, but I just figured I might as well mention it. Sometimes these things are physical, sometimes emotional.

[edenfalling]

I did see a doctor, a decade ago. :-) What I have is periodic clinical depression. There is no trigger that I or my psychiatrists were ever able to identify, but something in my brain chemistry goes slightly awry a few times every year and tries to dump me down a hole in the center of my mind. I am actually quite lucky (well, aside from the bad luck of having depression at all) because A) my symptoms are relatively mild (in their fullblown form, they manifest as a complete lack of motivation and a feeling of gray fog separating me from the outside world) and B) my symptoms are temporary and I KNOW they are temporary. So I can push through the worst of it, grit my teeth, and hold onto the knowledge that this will pass and the world will come back.

But the hole in my mind is still there, and now and then my brain tries to push me over the edge. :-/

[red-volpe.livejournal.com]

Hm. Have you tried taking meds for it? I normally don't advocate meds only, but if you're sure it's a chemical thing, why not?
Also, fruit works well for most things, be it colds or sadness. Do you ever see an unhappy person eating fruit? I don't! :P

[edenfalling]

Because antidepressants are really expensive. Also, since there is no way to predict when I will hit a funk and psychiatric meds usually need a couple weeks lead-in time before they become effective, I had to take them every single day. That doesn't sound bad, except the ones I was one for a couple years (while I was in therapy slowly teaching myself good coping methods instead of the horrible maladaptive ones that led to me dropping out of college, and also working through some issues I had about guilt and how I needed to "deserve" happiness) tended to flatten my moods in general. Which was good at the time, because that effect raised my base mood from "mildly cruddy" to "neutral" and put a floor under the depressive drops... but it also muted the highs (joy, enthusiasm, excitement, humor, etc.).

I do now have coping methods that let me keep going through a funk and short-circuit the worst of the symptoms instead of giving in and letting everything spiral down out of control. My base mood is also now at neutral, since I worked through my self-disgust and other issues. So basically, I am willing to put up with two or three weeks of blecch now and then in return for being able to afford a nice apartment and also experience moments of joy to the fullest. :-)

(Alas, I am allergic to almost all raw fruits -- if I try to eat them, my throat closes and I cannot breathe -- so eating fruit is not a possibility for me.)

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

:( Rotten -- I'm sorry to hear you're having such a hard time.

Is it possible to get some of the reading as iPad or similar, and listen to it, instead of all that light getting into your eyes from the screen? And if you listen lying down, it might be like someone reading you to sleep?

[edenfalling]

Thank you. I will get through it -- I have learned ways to keep depression from seriously impacting my work and general physical life (aside from the sleep thing) -- and I know that my ability to create hasn't gone away forever. It just sucks on an emotional level for a couple weeks, as if the world and the inside of my mind have simultaneously gone gray and empty and pointless. :-/

I don't do audiobooks, alas. This is partly because I strongly dislike the way listening removes my ability to control the pace at which I experience a story, and partly because I just really, really like the act of reading words on a page (or screen). I find it immensely comforting and relaxing... which may be why it's one of my coping-with-depression habits, come to think of it.