People who don’t suffer from depression may not realise how much the illness plays havoc with sleep. Initially my sleep wasn’t really affected. Sleep was the only thing I could count on to escape my thoughts and emotions.
I began to oversleep quite a lot. In the past I’d always been that person who thought that waking up at 9am was really late and the whole day was gone. But gradually I wasn’t waking up till 10 or 11am on a regular basis. The days where I needed to be awake early were a real struggle.
Part of this issue as caused by a mood stabiliser called quetiapine which I was taking. Especially initially it can make you sleepy so to begin with I blamed my over sleeping on that. But as I adjusted to the new medication I was still oversleeping. Sometimes I wasn’t even tired I just chose to stay in bed and sleep as I couldn’t face the world. Sleep was still my safe place.
However, I began to get crippling anxiety and fear at night when I was trying to drift off to sleep. All my fears and worries would flash through my head at the same time to the point where they’d cause me to have panic attacks and hyperventilate. This was happening most nights to the point where I began to become afraid of going to bed as I didn’t want those feelings. Once I was asleep my sleep was good quality and is still sleep in as long as ever, but falling asleep was becoming a real struggle.
People kept trying to come up with ways to help, I’d try different methods most nights. To be honest the only thing that really worked was changing thought. As soon as I’d get one of the negative thoughts or worries I’d think of something that makes me happy and try and concentrate on that. Not letting in the negative thoughts is so important.
Falling to sleep at night has become easier for me at the moment, I still oversleep a lot though. It’s something that I’m still trying to improve as I want to be able to function on the amount of sleep I used to have, not this much longer sleep that I currently have.
When someone says depression affects every part of daily life, they’re not exaggerating, it really does…
- Follow my Instagram @positive_blxgger for positive quotes and post updates!
Keeping Sane: positive_blxgger 