Self-Evaluation

I've been noticing a pattern in my moods lately. I'm great in the morning. Not hypomanic great, but good, stable, functional, and can see the day clearly in the morning. By about 2 in the afternoon, I start dipping, and by the evening, I'm either in tears, or I'm angry. The bulk of either reaction is sent in the direction of my husband. Poor guy has to endure so much crap from my emotional difficulties.

No matter how much I can get done in the morning... or even in the afternoon... I'm left at the end of the day feeling like I wanted. I feel left out of that feeling of accomplishment- even if I did accomplish things. I feel disappointed in myself for not doing more, or not staying happy.  I'm usually pretty good about recognizing my mood differences and giving myself a break... but when it's happening every single day, it gets pretty tiresome.

As a matter of fact, the past two days have changed slightly... and I'm just tired ALL the time. Seriously, Sunday I was so tired that I slept 13 hours during the night and still had two 2 hour naps... went to bed again at 8 and slept for 13 hours again.

I've heard the explanation that oversleeping can cause fatigue... but I don't think that's what's happening. I think professionals use that explanation for normal human beings who don't have tiring issues. My period exhausts me... depression wants to "check me out" or the normal world. The best way to do that is to make me sleep or so tired I'm not able to handle anything.

I've just been in contact with my psychiatrist about these two patterns- which have been the main daily patterns since he took away my Vyvanse for ADD. I have not had the reaction he wanted on stimulants for ADD, since it sets off my Bipolar hypomania. So for now, I don't get more drugs for ADD. To address the new patterns, he thinks that upping my dose of Lexapro would be a good place to start. My Lithium is perfectly in the range it should be, so he doesn't want to mess with that. Just addressing one thing at a time.

He also recommended I go back to therapy for the depression. I stopped going to therapy when COVID-19 broke out. I thought I was doing okay, but when BOTH my psychiatrist AND my husband think I should go back, I guess I should listen.

I've always been an advocate for talk therapy. But I thought I was in a place where I didn't need it anymore. I think there is still a stigma on therapy- even for a seasoned client like me. I always get to the point where I'm just saying the same thing at every visit, and feel the therapist gets sick of me. I'm sure that's just some distorted thinking on my part. So, I'm now stuck on the decision of going back to my last therapist (super nice, did extra research just to understand my background better), or find a fresh set of thoughts and eyes to help give me a new perspective on things. 

I'm stuck. I don't know yet what to do.

And in the meantime, I'm stuck with this awful pattern of being extra tired and hating either myself or the world by the end of every. single. day.