brains, nightmares

[wispfox]

One of the ways that I handle my depression is to refuse to stop doing things that I must do. This may in part be because I have examples of things which really _do_ suffer badly if I change my pattern (sleep is the biggest one), but also because that's the only way I've found to cause things to become habit.

This is, however, a lot of effort, and not sustainable when my depression gets really bad. And it makes it harder to let myself have a break if I actually require one, because I can't necessarily tell that I actually need one, rather than my depression/lack of sleep trying to convince me that I do.

I appear to have a deep belief - not necessarily born out by experience - that if I stop doing things that I must do, I will just stop doing them. This may in part be because this _is_ true for things that are optional (things that I should, rather than must, do).

I have experience that tells me that giving myself a break from the everything ever that I Must Do is a good thing, but I rarely let myself take very long a break (exception being if I'm sick. Even then, though, it's hard). Stopping doing the things I need to do to survive (including going to work, or school if I'm in school) _scares me_, even in a temporary sense.

I am reminded of this because my dreams last night included, among other things, being just so _tired_ that I stopped doing anything. I had thoughts that I should at least tell work that I was sick, but I didn't actually do so. I don't think I _was_ sick, I think I was depressed (and maybe a bit of sick on top of it). I stopped doing things for a week. Or maybe a year. (not only is dream time weird, so is depressed time)

I think another part of why this kind of things scares me so is that if I'm depressed enough that things I have to do to survive start falling off my plate, I am also probably to a point where other people's reactions to this fact no longer affect me enough to have a useful effect on my behaviour. Since this is in large part what forces me to keep going long past any internal interest in doing such things (if I ever had a job that did not actually clearly need me, I am not sure that I would manage to force myself to keep going in the worst parts of winter), this is perhaps not surprising.

But it's _scary_. Not while I'm in that state, but when I'm not. And, in the dream, the part of me that was watching and not _being_ was terrified.

That's, at least according to my dream, how I lose people. (not just myself, which is par for the course with my depression) That's how I lose the world and being _in_ it. And I think, at some level, that's how I stop being a functional human being.

I am, at some level, always aware that it's not actually that far for me to go to stop being functional. Whether or not this is true, I am not sure. But I _believe_ that it's true, perhaps because I am aware of just how much energy daily functioning takes, due to how much of it is conscious and would not be were I not on the spectrum.

And perhaps because I saw just how badly the tendinitis affected me. I lost a lot of interpersonal connections, due to lack of maintenance energy or ability to type - whether or not this is true on the other people's end, this is true on mine due to how much trouble I have keeping senses of people I do not see/interact with often enough. (this happens in winter anyway; those two years were way worse) I lost a whole lot of my 'hey, you're not doing well' warning signals, since they all required energy I did not have, and since I could not _write_ and thus figure out what was going on. In many ways, I _did_ stop functioning. Were it not for jasra, I suspect that I would in fact have been entirely non-functional.

As you might imagine, having actual proof of how close I am to non-functional _terrifies_ me. I suspected it. Now I know it.

This is probably in part also due to having had a lot of 'you need to be self-sufficient' messages growing up (probably because I was not likely to be without a lot of work!), including all the intensely boring things that is part of that (initially, the tedium of boring homework. And chores). There was a fair amount of - perhaps unintentional - messages that I _had_ to be self-sufficient. That the world (or at least mine) would end if I did not. I'm not sure that this was entirely wrong, even though it made/makes it _very_ hard to accept and ask for help, especially monetarily.

Stopping going to work is a Really Bad Sign, especially if I don't call out sick. This is probably why, in my dreams, it led to all sorts of badness. Stopping doing things that I Must Do is similarly bad, although to an extent I have to let myself do that every so often. But never for more than a day, and usually not for more than half of one. And it's really, really, really hard to do so if I'm not also sick. If I am sick, it's somewhat easier.

I'm definitely having lots of impulses to not do things I need to do. For example, I really really don't want to work on my essays for school applications. And I've given up on various fellowships, since they all need me to actually know what I plan to do, and I don't yet (I suspect it'll be easier to apply for them for a later year after I'm actually in school, so that's my current plan). I _will_ work on those essays, but damn if I do not _want_ to. (I will because I am _quite_ aware of just how tired I am of QA) It is, however, a less direct Thing I Must Do than work is, so it's just an early sign of my depression worstening. It's still _there_, though. (another sign is that I want to hide a lot more than in summer)