Monday, January 05, 2015

Depression Day 5 - Headaches and Isomnia

Headaches and insomnia - is this part of the depression or does the depression cause them?   Either way I have too much of either.  

On about one night in four I have real trouble falling asleep.  I have very little caffeine in my life and never have it after 6 pm, but I seem to be having more frequent nights were I simply can not fall asleep.    My mind is not worrying as such, all manner of thoughts are going through it but nothing worse than during the day.   I stress about it because I know my energy will be way down the next day.

I can tell the difference between getting 8 hours of sleep and 7, there is a clear drop in my intellectual skills.   At six hours I make more and more mistakes and can not easily see the answers to problems.   At 4 to 5 hours I can not get any useful intellectual work done, I can pretend but the work I do will not be worth much as I will effectively have to redo all the work.

I am operating on an average of about 6 hours a night at the moment - not enough to do what I need to do.  It means I only have one usefully productive day in three.   It is rare to get two good days in a row.  

The insomnia saps my energy which means I do not get out and active in the way I need, really in the way I want to.  

Headaches seem to be normal for my day to day to life at the moment.   It takes very little for one to start.   I am almost completely off of alcohol because I can be almost certain to have a headache a few hours later.   I have had massive stress in my life for many years so I do not think these are stress headaches but much of the time that is what it feels like.

I take ibuprofen gel caps to deal with the headaches and this seems to make the headaches go away, but not as much as I would like it to.   I want to be able to forget about headaches and not have a dull pain ready to come out when ever I really do not need it.

It is as if you mind is using my body to attack me and stop me from dealing with the depression.  As if there are demons within me that are looking for ways to screw up my life.  It makes it easier for me to get a grasp on the depression if I can give it a name or some sort of substance, something that is not really me.

I have no desire to have insomnia and headaches being part of what is normally Bernard.   I have an idea of who I am and depression along with its malevolent offspring are not part of that.  

Mood
Happy - 3
Energy - 2
Stress - 8

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