A bit of a catch-up

Let’s see how long Blogger stays up, shall we?

So, in the week since I last posted, I -

a) been adjusting to the anti-depressants. They’ve had an impact, but not a good one – at one point I said to a friend ‘this must be what pregnancy feels like – tummy off, head a bit spinny, tired, smell of meat turns you off…’ Dr said it would take a couple of weeks for the symptoms to subside as my brain chemistry adjusts. Luckily, most of it hasn’t been too bad – the nausea for example is just a background thing. My disturbed sleep patterns and the tiredness are another thing entirely

b) I went to a new counsellor. This one isn’t as interested in taking me through cognitive behavioural therapy – she sees that as not being the issue. Her belief is that I’m hooking into negative narratives and letting them disrupt my life. Her solution – mindfulness training. Being in the moment and learning to push thoughts aside so they don’t impact on what needs to be done. If something’s bad enough, it will come back to dealt with at the appropriate time and place. Often, the thoughts aren’t worth engaging with and so they can just float away. Will be interesting to see how it works out.

c) My sleep patterns are up the wazoo. It takes me hours to fall asleep (no matter how tired I am when I go to bed) and then I’m sleeping really late and upsetting the whole balance of the day. I need to make a good routine for going to sleep – sleep hygiene, the doctor called it. The other thing I’m doing is slowly moving my body back into my usual routine. I’ve been getting up around 11 – today it was 9. Over the next week, I’ll move it down until I’m back at my usual 7am wake-up. Hopefully that, combined with the routine at night, will get me back to my standard sleep of the dead for 8-9 hours.

Mood wise, things have been pretty good. I didn’t do as much work later in the week as I would have liked, but that’s done and no point obsessing over it. Gonna try to get back into regular work patterns this week.