Note, this isn’t bad enough to take to a professional since this only happens once every couple months, but…
Is anyone else familiar with the feeling, usually experienced when awaking from a particularly disheartening dream, where you feel something wash out of you in waves, leaving you with the deep feeling that absolutely nothing is right, and nothing will turn out okay, even though you know the feeling isn’t rational? Usually they make me to afraid to go to sleep thinking the dream will come back.
Then again, one time, and one time only, it happened as I was awake, walking to my bed (it didn’t help I was wacked out on several substances,) and made me want to go to sleep, not to mention more interested in this phenomenon and if it’s widespread or not.
It may sound trite but a strict and regular exercise routine works for me and often helps most people going through what you’re feeling.
Setting yourself to auto mode and getting through normal routines of the day… doing the things you have to do, such as: getting up, brushing your teeth, showering, going to work/school/gym, eating healthy meals… you get the idea.
Pretty soon, a day has gone by and you’re one day closer to being/feeling better.
What in the OP meets the clinical definition of depression, exactly? What precise symptom and medication would you suggest combining, Dr. Bosda?
I would submit that a little bit of restraint is in order before we tell everyone to run to the doctor and get pills. The OP describes a weird feeling that happens when s/he gets up, every couple of months, except for one time when it happened as he was going to sleep. If that’s clinical depression, pigs will fly.
I’ve experienced this too, actually, and always when I’m awaking. Maybe it’s one of those between-sleep-and-wake things, like sleep paralysis. It goes away almost immediately. I’m as positive and happy a guy as you’ll ever meet.
It sounds to me like a garden variety anxiety attack. It could be a facet of depression, but inall it sounds like an anxiety attack, which can hit when alseep, or awake. Very scary but very treatable. I would seek the advice of a therapist, maybe a LCSW, before I’d go to the family doc.
First, thank you, RickJay. I hadn’t recieved my Minimum Daily Dose Of Rudeness for today, & I was wondering if I had to phone my HMO, which is a guaranteed source for that, oh my, yes. :dubious:
Second, this is an (self-described) irrational feeling of sadness, recurring in 's life on a semi-regular basis. Seems like a good occasion to go get a check up, hmmm?
And I never suggested-
[ol]
[li]A mental health professional[/li][li]That he take unprescribed medication[/li][li]Hi Opal.[/li][li]Or that I was a doctor.[/li][/ol]
You did, however state your opinion as fact, without qualification whatsoever. You did say it “could be” depression, or that it “sounded like depression”, you said it is depression.
I get these too. I started a thread about it in GQ once, but nobody seemed 100% to catch my drift. I know exactly what you’re talking about, that feeling of the whole will to live falling away as if you accidentally woke up without it. To me, it’s like you suddenly wake up and go, “holy crow there really is no point!” If you try to think about it, for a few seconds you can say, “what if every good thing I am hoping for comes true? What the hell will that amount to?” and you can think about some of your immediate and long term goals and realize that even if the best happens, you’re still going to die and it’s really all just busywork in the long run. But then before you can fully play with all the implications of that realization, you feel normal again, or you fall back asleep, or you wander into the kitchen and eat some yogurt.
Anyway, I think it has to do with some certain brain chemicals bottoming out. That’s only my wild guess based on how it feels. It’s very jarring. But it has been happening to me since at least my teens, maybe even before that. I have always had depression, but honestly, the attacks aren’t so much tied into depression as maybe something else like stress, nutrition, general health. I’ve never been able to pin it down. I don’t see the pattern, really. One of the theories I haved tested out is that it might be aspertame. I used to consume a LOT of it in coffee and diet coke. I’m still experimenting with that, it could be a coincidence. Switching sweeteners does seem to have helped. For a while this summer it was getting me pretty miserable because I was waking up at 5 am with it every night. I was also using equal in my coffee and having a lot of them every day. I switched to splenda and things got better. But who knows?
I have had panic attacks and I know what anxiety feels like and I would not say this is the same experience at all. Anxiety is like you are suddenly worried but despair is like there is no longer any point to having anxiety. It’s a calm and certain feeling, and the dread comes from the fact that there is nothing to worry about, and no point to anything at all.
I’m not sure, but I think anxiety in the middle of the night is more the experience of “bad dream” and agitation, whereas this is definitely a feeling of draining and everything falling out of you.
I’m glad you posted about it because it’s hard to find anyone ever describe this exact thing.
I get despair attacks sometimes and, now that you mention it, they are very much associated with the sleep cycle. For me, I even know and will say to myself, “Don’t worry too much about feeling so shitty. You’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep.”
Interestingly, I’m a big consumer of apertame also.
Maybe it’s an increasing awareness of your vulnerability in the world and the small mite you can change in that world? Or a hint of your mortality?
I have had these “attacks” over the years–I am in my early 40’s. They seem to be a bit more common now than when I was 20. It is very like a wave of darkness–that sounds dramatic, but I cannot describe it any other way. It’s like you suddenly know that there is no point, no hope, no redemption (not necc in the spiritual sense)…and as quick as it comes, it’s gone.
It can shake you up–I have noticed it upon arising and/or just getting into bed.
I haven’t notice a link between artificial sweeteners, but it’s something I’ll pay attention to in future.
IMO, it would only be clinical depression IF it came with other signs and symptoms: change in sleep habits, loss of libido, loss or gain of weight, loss of interest in ordinary activities over the course of a few weeks, etc.
I think most folks just dont’ pay enough attention to their own awareness(if you follow me).
Exactly, it’s a very calm and certain feeling, not panicky at all. I thought it might be panic attacks but it doesn’t sound like them at all.
It certainly feels like brain chemicals to me, or part of the sleep cycle, as there is no external, logical, reason for feeling like that. However, unlike other people have suggested (and this is IMHO so they are entitled to their opinion) it isn’t major enough to hie me immediately to a degreed practitioner.
This happens to me! I’ve had anxiety attacks for years, and this is an entirely different thing. It only happens to me when I awake for a few minutes in the middle of the night, and even then rarely - maybe once every six months.
Everyone else described it perfectly - with me, it’s a completely naked realization of my own mortality. It’s sort of like I wake up without that part of my brain that’s responsible for rationalizing and constantly surpressing that concept - that I will eventually die. It’s the most naked, lucid realization of that - completely calm, rational, and horrifying. It’s a very Kierkegaardian experience.
Huh, well I just checked my Clinical Psyc text book from many moons ago, and you’re correct - Night Terrors is not what I was thinking of. In fact, I can’t find what I was thinking of, but I know that there’s a sleep disorder (possibly sleep paralisys, but I’m not totally sure) where the person wakes up with a feeling of dread and dispair, sometimes crying, and feeling generally miserable. Usually the feeling passes within a couple of minutes and isn’t anything to worry about (certainly not clinical depression), but I sure can’t find a name anywhere.
