Insomnia - Ups and Downs

[TheOatmeal]

Hey everyone,

This is my first post -- I'm hoping someone has been in the same position. So, a bit over a year ago I started to get insomnia, waking up too early every day and not being able to get back to sleep (waking up somewhere between 2-5am). After about 6 weeks of this, I started to feel in a really low mood and felt upset in the morning for no reason (apart from the tiredness). My wife suggested I go see the GP and he said it sounded like I have depression and referred me to a psychologist. The sessions were fine, I felt good afterwards for a few hours, but after 5-6 sessions felt like it wasn't helping me. So, I went back to the GP and he prescribed anti-depressants to try help out with the insomnia, this was in January.

I put off taking them until about 2 months ago (August), the reason being is I tried some supplements in January that helped me feel quite a bit better and cut down on my irritability. For 6+ months I had many days at work where I couldn't do anything but I still went into the office. My brain refused to function because of what I thought was tiredness, but was likely a combination of tiredness and depression. I let my boss know that I'd been diagnosed with depression and he was very understanding and said I can take off time as needed.

The thing is, it's not like I'm permanently depressed, I only feel terrible for at most 2 days in a row, then have a couple of really good days then return to depression and repeat. I have a feeling that my good days may be a little too good, I tend to take on a heap of projects, have lots of ideas, feel really optimistic and confident about everything, buy more stuff for my hobbies, but then a day or two later I sink back into a struggling depression. Thinking back, I've always been kind of like this, it makes me wonder if I have a mood disorder that includes depression.

Anyway, now I'm seeing a new psych and think I'll stay with him for the long haul until I get to the bottom of this, but I'm wondering if I should ask my GP for a psychiatrist referral since the medication doesn't seem to be working, in fact I think it may be making things worse. Does anyone have any suggestions or a similar experience?

Thanks for reading. In case you're wondering, this is one of my good days 🙂

[PamelaR]

Hi Oatmeal and welcome to our community forums

Thank you for sharing your story. You'll find you are not alone in your journey with mental illness. It is good you've found us here.

It sounds like you are doing all the right things - seeing your gp, a health professional, changing your health professional that doesn't suit. All good things. The next is finding a way of managing those ups and downs that continually happen.

Sleep deprivation makes living very difficult and can be one of the causes for depressed feelings. I've had sleep problems for as long as I can remember. There is no one single method to make changes. There are many views out there about sleep. My thoughts are - I'm a night person, always have been, always will be. It makes life difficult when you've got to get up for work each day, and have a partner who's a morninng person. This doesn't help you much.

There is a SLEEP thread under the Staying Well forum that contains a lot of views from different people about what they do to help sleep better. You can find the thread by doing a search in the search field at the top of the BB webpage.

Also another thread you might find useful is - Depression: Fight It or Embrace. You can find this one under the Depression forum.

Keeep reaching out, if and when you want to Oatmeal.

Kind regards

PamelaR