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Woke up this morning, and didn't hear my partner's alarm go off. This is not unusual. Worried that he'd forgotten to set it (which is also not unusual) and that I might have to go in and wake him up manually (which is somewhat unusual, but not unexpected). Then my brain decided I clearly didn't have enough to be miserable about. It decided to kick off the good old "what if you go to wake him up and he's dead?" chain of thoughts.
In a way I was sort of expecting it, since I'd woken up in the middle of the night to go to the loo, and discovered I couldn't get back to sleep due to my brain deciding to pull out the misery tapes for another play-through. It took actual mental effort to boot my brain into my usual "damnit, go to sleep" activities (reciting multiplication tables, counting in binary, counting in hexadecimal) in order to get back to sleep.
Even now, I'm sitting here while my brain (I typed that as "brian" twice... need coffee) hamster-wheels through a series of vaguely "what if my partner died"-related anxieties. None of them actually concrete, none of them really able to be pinned down, just this feeling of part of my brain galloping off in all directions, while the rest of it sits there and goes "meh".
I have depressive motivation blocks again this month - they've been particularly annoying these past couple of weeks, manifesting in their usual fashion of "I haven't taken my meds".
I should explain this one a bit more clearly, for people who aren't depressed. When I say "I haven't taken my meds" I don't mean "I forgot to take my medication". I don't mean "I chose not to take my medication". I don't even mean "I willfully decided I was not going to take my medication". What I mean is this: the thought "I should take my medication" came to me several times each day, and each time that thought came up, there was an air gap between the thought, and the possibility of taking action on it. Someone else once described it as being the equivalent of a car with a dead battery, which is a very good analogy - the thought "I should take my medication" is the key being turned in the ignition, and usually it starts a chain of events. But for the past few weeks, it hasn't been - instead, I get either the mental equivalent of that "ruhr" sound you get with a flat battery, or just the mental equivalent of the key clicking and nothing happening. So the meds stay in their spot in the fridge, and I wind up with less energy than usual, and the whole thing becomes something of a vicious circle, because the thing which kicks off the whole "not taking the meds" thing is depressive emotional flatness kicked off (I suspect) by low energy levels and having had to route a lot more energy than usual into doing things like dealing with people.
I feel I ought to elaborate a bit on the whole "not taking the meds" thing - in addition to the flat mental battery in the motivation system, I also have air gaps between the various steps in the process (get up, go to fridge, open fridge door, take thyroxine box out of shelf in door, open box, take out blister pack currently in use, pop next pill out of blister, put blister pack back into box, put box back into door, close fridge, go to cupboard, get glass, fill with water from tap, take a sip of water, swallow pill) such that doing one of them (for example, opening the fridge to get something else out) won't trigger any of the others in the sequence either.
(Another example of it: I have to hang out the washing - I know the washing machine has stopped, and the clothes need to be hung out to dry. But where normally there'd be a sort of "okay, gotta do this now" emotional and motivational kick to things, today there's nothing. The knowledge is intellectual, and the concept of doing something about it is a distant "maybe").
This runs in combination with the anxiety hamster brain - the anxiety brain is hamster-wheeling about all kinds of stuff (mostly me dying in a ditch alone, friendless and destitute) while the rest of the brain (which is usually on standby to kick anxiety brain off the hamster-wheel for a bit) just sits and glumphs.
Oh, and just for the record, my partner is alive and well, and got up under his own steam.
In a way I was sort of expecting it, since I'd woken up in the middle of the night to go to the loo, and discovered I couldn't get back to sleep due to my brain deciding to pull out the misery tapes for another play-through. It took actual mental effort to boot my brain into my usual "damnit, go to sleep" activities (reciting multiplication tables, counting in binary, counting in hexadecimal) in order to get back to sleep.
Even now, I'm sitting here while my brain (I typed that as "brian" twice... need coffee) hamster-wheels through a series of vaguely "what if my partner died"-related anxieties. None of them actually concrete, none of them really able to be pinned down, just this feeling of part of my brain galloping off in all directions, while the rest of it sits there and goes "meh".
I have depressive motivation blocks again this month - they've been particularly annoying these past couple of weeks, manifesting in their usual fashion of "I haven't taken my meds".
I should explain this one a bit more clearly, for people who aren't depressed. When I say "I haven't taken my meds" I don't mean "I forgot to take my medication". I don't mean "I chose not to take my medication". I don't even mean "I willfully decided I was not going to take my medication". What I mean is this: the thought "I should take my medication" came to me several times each day, and each time that thought came up, there was an air gap between the thought, and the possibility of taking action on it. Someone else once described it as being the equivalent of a car with a dead battery, which is a very good analogy - the thought "I should take my medication" is the key being turned in the ignition, and usually it starts a chain of events. But for the past few weeks, it hasn't been - instead, I get either the mental equivalent of that "ruhr" sound you get with a flat battery, or just the mental equivalent of the key clicking and nothing happening. So the meds stay in their spot in the fridge, and I wind up with less energy than usual, and the whole thing becomes something of a vicious circle, because the thing which kicks off the whole "not taking the meds" thing is depressive emotional flatness kicked off (I suspect) by low energy levels and having had to route a lot more energy than usual into doing things like dealing with people.
I feel I ought to elaborate a bit on the whole "not taking the meds" thing - in addition to the flat mental battery in the motivation system, I also have air gaps between the various steps in the process (get up, go to fridge, open fridge door, take thyroxine box out of shelf in door, open box, take out blister pack currently in use, pop next pill out of blister, put blister pack back into box, put box back into door, close fridge, go to cupboard, get glass, fill with water from tap, take a sip of water, swallow pill) such that doing one of them (for example, opening the fridge to get something else out) won't trigger any of the others in the sequence either.
(Another example of it: I have to hang out the washing - I know the washing machine has stopped, and the clothes need to be hung out to dry. But where normally there'd be a sort of "okay, gotta do this now" emotional and motivational kick to things, today there's nothing. The knowledge is intellectual, and the concept of doing something about it is a distant "maybe").
This runs in combination with the anxiety hamster brain - the anxiety brain is hamster-wheeling about all kinds of stuff (mostly me dying in a ditch alone, friendless and destitute) while the rest of the brain (which is usually on standby to kick anxiety brain off the hamster-wheel for a bit) just sits and glumphs.
Oh, and just for the record, my partner is alive and well, and got up under his own steam.
no subject
Thank you for this description, it helps me understand what my partners Depression feels like a little better.