it just goes on and on and on
This time I am really going to do something about this. I am going to make a plan. This is me collecting my thoughts, because I am really, really, really sick of feeling this way all the time.
I don't sleep properly. This has been worse recently. I briefly had a period after going off meds a few months ago where things were going very well- namely, I could wake up easily in the morning. Since I knew I could wake up, I went to bed earlier, and was able to get up early to exercise, which helped even more. I was up early enough to eat breakfast. It was fabulous. And then whatever was going on in my brain evened out and it crashed again and I'm back to the same. Meaning: I feel terrible in the mornings, can barely get up regardless of when I went to bed, am tired and sleepy all day, and only feel awake in the middle of the night. THIS BLOWS. And it makes me irritable. This combined without the anger blunting edge of the anti depressants makes me not a fun person to be around.
I just never feel good and there's not any rhyme or reason to when I'm tired or not tired.
Issues:
1. I think a big part of it is don't really have a circadian rhythm. Or if it does it's totally fucked. And sure, maybe it's just "natural" for me to be sleepy around dawn and start to feel alert in late afternoon, but the fact is, right now I have to work a normal schedule. In fact, I don't really respond well to most of the main instinctive signals in general, which I think is telling. I will eat food if it's in front of me, but I can easily go a very long time without eating, especially if distracted. I get dehydrated easily. My sex drive is like my appetite- if sex is available, I'm all for it. If not, I don't really care. Solution: The first, I guess, is mindfulness, which would involve thinking about my body and being more sensitive to it's signals. The issue with this though, is figuring how to think more without triggering my hypochondria or depression. I usually try to *avoid* thinking too much because it usually leads to that. So that's something I need to think more on. I'm already currently having some weird physical symptoms that I am 90% sure are psychosomatic, and I don't want to encourage any more to pop up. Breathing exercises maybe? The second thing is I'm going to try is melatonin pills. The internet seems to be telling me that they are pretty useless for insomnia but may be helpful for resetting sleep cycles, which is precisely where it will help me. I will start off on a super small dose to make sure I'm not allergic, then try more. Maybe I can slowly push my bedtime back to something reasonable (1?)
2. I have terrible sleep hygiene. This is hard to fix because right now there are no carrots to change my behavior. More or less sleep doesn't make me feel significantly better or less tired (though sometimes less sleep= more awake, which is kind of bad), and since going to bed earlier doesn't make me wake up earlier, it just means I lose extra time I could be doing things. I think I need to just pick a sleep time and go with it, and just create a schedule around it filled with ridiculous sleep related things, like dimming the lights and putting on music that will lead me to the right time to be in bed. But I really need to come up with some sort of reward for doing it. (This is also why I don't want to see a doctor- if I had all my ducks in a row it would make sense. It just seems silly to tell a doctor I have sleep problems when my sleep schedule consists of falling asleep on couches at random times with all the lights on, consistently getting about 4-5 hours of sleep a night and going to bed past 5 half the week for no pressing reason.)
3. General health, physical and mental- obviously I know this would all help- eating better, exercising, not crying or trying to punch the internet. I need to start small on a simple schedule and see how that goes. Maybe trying to do certain things once a week. I dunno.
Hmm. I am going to make a chart. And maybe a diagram and spreadsheet. Actually, possibly several. Things to consider: appearance, health, social, and mental.
Okay, sleep now, spreadsheets in the morning- I think I'm starting to lose coherancy. I really hope I can have a productive weekend. :P
Vaguely related: At least not having a working sleep cycle means I could stay up until 5 this morning to watch Tennant get slapped in the face with a fish on a live video feed from Britain (the highlight of my day.). I was actually more awake today (having slept from 5-9) than I was all week. That's actually pretty sad.
Completely unrelated: I love the Sisters of Mercy cover of "Gimme Shelter". I mean, yes, it's over the top, it's the Sisters of Mercy, but it's so...lush. <3 Though the lyric changes are a bit bizarre. And a bit stupid. Dunno what they were going for.