As of today

I wasn't sleeping well so I started taking my sleeping meds again. I think insomnia is just hard wired into my brain at this point. I was taking 5 or 6 pills a night, for the bigger part of last year, to help me go to sleep. Prior to that I had 6 years of on and off insomnia. I had the whole works, couldn't fall asleep, couldn't stay asleep, would wake up early, horrible nightmares, and occasional night sweats. Sometimes I'd have all that in one night. At any rate Doc took me off of most of my meds to avoid daytime sleepiness associated with the rocking case of depression I got going on. A couple of weeks of that with the related "Discontinuation syndrome" from being off Benzodiazapines, which I've been on for more than a year, and everything was going to shit because I wasn't sleeping well or at all. So I finally start taking my sleeping meds again a few nights ago, and right away I start feeling a little better. At least better enough to start being able to identify problems again.

See I've been doing my prolonged exposure therapy like a good little soldier, and I've started to see a marked reduction in anxiety when I'm out. A good chunk of that is due to the fact that I'm not in Downtown Seattle anymore, and I'm a little wary of gauging just how much is actual progress on my part, and how much is a change in environment. Part of it I think was overload, from the move, which caused a backlash of emotional avoidance, and a big wave of depression. I had weird anxiety side effects, but no anxiety attacks. I'm still having weird anxiety side effects. Everyone is cheering me on and saying how well I'm doing, which sort of irritates me, but a part of me craves the affirmation. All that aside, I don't do ANYTHING during the day when my bf is at work, except mess around on the internet, and maybe read or watch tv. So the house is a disaster, because bf is trying to do a million high stress things at once, and I'm completely apathetic about it. Cleaning is an nuisance and since I'm already avoiding most of my life, why not just add that to the list? Problem is I've also been avoiding almost everything else. When I get kicked in the jaw by some unexpected stressor I go straight into a panic attack, which probably means I'm ignoring my anxiety levels altogether instead of monitoring them like I'm supposed to be doing. Its been a year since I dropped out of school. I quit school to deal with the all the things that were driving me into a constant state of terror, and that's what I've been doing. Admittedly it has been a massive undertaking, but that is pretty much the only thing I've done for the last year. I started writing a book, but that has been completely on hold for like a month. I refuse to say I've given up on it, because I want to pick it back up. I've been pretty much hibernating since the move. I don't like change. The move was extremely stressful, and I didn't even do much to contribute to the move because I was so stressed out. Vicious circles, my life is full of them. I still have a lot of work to do to shake off this depression, but at least I see the ripples its caused in my life now. The problem is that suddenly I have to be proactive, when I've been so passive for so long. I'm very hard on myself. I've caught myself thinking about how worthless I am or something along those lines a half a hundred times this week. So then I have to stop and spend a half an hour conducting a running monologue in my head about how feelings like that should be acknowledged but not be allowed to run amuck, and then give myself a pep talk. Its very disruptive. I get so wrapped up in all this that I forget to eat or brush my teeth or what not. The only things I do consistently is smoke cigarettes and drink my almighty cup or two of coffee in the mornings. Depression means I can justify sneaking extra caffeine because I need the energy. I also have attention deficit disorder, which means I'm extremely easily distracted, except when I'm hyper-focused on something like mindlessly surfing the web or reading a sleazy romance novel. So its pretty chaotic in my head these days. I'm constantly reminded of what I didn't or couldn't or should've done, which leads to feelings of being a failure, which leads to depression blah blah blah. So I avoid. I curl up on the couch with my book or laptop and proceed to not move except to smoke or pee all day. Sometimes all this avoidance makes me tired and I take a nap. Craziness. Basically, I've been a miserable person. So I have to figure out how to go about fixing all this, and I'm really open to suggestion at this point, so feel free to comment. I haven't made much progress in therapy due to all this crap, and my therapist ends up listening to me babbling for an hour every week and constantly asking if I'm having feelings of self-harm. I'm not by the way. One of my new favorite songs goes something like "When I was lost I even caught myself looking in the gun's direction, so I've tried everything but suicide, but its crossed my mind. But I'm fine." C-Lo is a genius.